Climate change: Covestro plans to use green hydrogen to make mattresses, water barrels more sustainable

Covestro’s Shanghai plant is likely to be German firm’s first plant globally to use green hydrogen, putting it on track to reach its decarbonisation goal

Fortescue Future Industries will supply Covestro with green hydrogen, which will allow it to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 900,000 tonnes a year

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Published: 7:30am, 8 Feb 2022

German chemicals firm Covestro is likely to deploy sustainably sourced hydrogen at its Shanghai plant, its first facility globally, putting it on track to reach its decarbonisation goal.

Covestro last month signed a memorandum of understanding to procure up to 100,000 tonnes of green hydrogen per year from Fortescue Future Industries (FFI), which will allow it to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 900,000 tonnes a year.

The Leverkusen-based firm reported 5.45 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 from energy use. It has previously targeted to cut its emissions from energy sources by 50 per cent by 2025 from 2005 levels. Covestro is expected to provide an update on its climate goals by next month.

“As part of its circular economy vision, Covestro has committed itself to [transition] to the use of renewable materials and climate-neutral production,” said Richard Fu, media and public relations manager at Covestro China. “In the long term, we aim to completely replace grey hydrogen and ammonia in our production chain with alternatives with zero carbon footprint. We expect that the integrated production site in Shanghai might be the first Covestro site worldwide to benefit from the green hydrogen shipments.”

Green hydrogen is made by using clean electricity from renewable energy to electrolyse water. Photo: Shutterstock

The feedstock from FFI would cover a major portion of the “grey” hydrogen and ammonia made from fossil fuels that Covestro procures externally currently, he added.