COMPETITIVENESS AND FUTURE ASSURANCE
Heat records, forest fires, dried-up rivers and lakes — climate change caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can no longer be ignored. In Germany, industry is responsible for around one-fifth of GHG emissions. According to the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection, two-thirds of these emissions are generated during energy production, while one-third is released during the manufacture of products in the metal and chemical industries, for example.
While such process-related emissions – methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases in addition to carbon dioxide (CO2) – are mostly unavoidable, the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels to generate electricity and heat can very well be reduced or even completely avoided. This is the reason why the German government is pushing for the conversion to a climate-neutral industrialized country – across the entire value chain.
