JEDDAH — “Since sustainability became a foundation of our 2025 strategy – the roadmap to our emergence as the preferred world leader in chemicals – we have come a long way, Yousef Al-Benyan, acting Vice-Chairman and CEO of SABIC, said Wednesday at the launch of SABIC Sustainability Report 2015 entitled “Enabling Tomorrow’s Solutions”.
The report prominently featured a CO2 purification plant that opened last year at United, a SABIC affiliate in Saudi Arabia, boosting the company’s overall operational efficiency. The new facility can capture and purify up to 500,000 Metric Tons of CO2 from the production of ethylene glycol every year.
“This impressive project has become a standard bearer for sustainable, efficient and environmentally conscious development,” Awadh Al-Maker, Executive Vice President for Technology and Innovation at SABIC. “The project shows how technology can reduce emissions, convert waste CO2 into valuable products, and increase operational efficiency, providing SABIC with both short- and long-term gains.”
The purified CO2 is channeled through a network to other SABIC affiliates, where it is used in the production of useful products, such as urea for agricultural nutrients, liquefied CO2 for the food and drink industry, and methanol, a building block for many other chemicals that we use daily. The network enables SABIC to maximize resource efficiency by enabling integration between multiple sites.
SABIC continued progress to meet ambitious goals in resource and energy efficiency throughout its global operations: reducing energy consumption, greenhouse gas (GHG), and water intensities by 25 percent, and material loss intensity by 50 percent from levels in 2010 by 2025.
SABIC’s global utilization of CO2 as a feedstock increased to 3.3 million Metric Tons, helping to reduce material loss intensity by 29 percent since 2010. Over the same period, GHG emissions intensity has decreased by 7.8 percent, energy intensity by 8.1 percent, water intensity by 11 percent.
Innovation and sustainability solutions
“With our commitment to ingenuity and collaborative approach to technology and innovation, SABIC created a demonstration house for its Home of Innovation initiative that is designed to achieve a net-zero energy balance in the demanding conditions of the Saudi Arabian desert. SABIC also qualified 23 new sustainability products: solutions that enhance economic, social, and environmental benefits throughout the lifecycle.
In Environment, Health, Safety, and Security, SABIC continued strong improvement globally. This progress is marked by a reduction in the EHSS incident rate by 30 percent to reach 0.48, which is a strong step toward our 2025 goal of 0.25 incidents for every 200,000 hours worked. Hazardous substance chemical release incidents also fell by 36 percent and the volume of accidental releases by more than 92 percent. Process safety performance metrics continue to improve, and there were no major process safety incidents, occupational illnesses or fatalities. Development of a product safety metric progressed this year, and more than 11,000 product safety inquiries were received, which indicated an increasingly complex regulatory environment.
Supply chain was another area of forward progress with the launch of a comprehensive supply chain and procurement framework that continues to push SABIC toward a leadership position in sustainability; the implementation of two new key performance indicators plus standardized, global EHSS incident reporting; and the completion of educational programs to optimize performance. Significant developments occurred in modernization of the road and ocean fleet, and other enhancements to the company’s intermodal transportation network. — SG
