Renewable Chemical Sustainability Survey

Hello from China!

I am attending the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Conference (CPCIC) this week in Tianjin and will give a short presentation about bio-based chemicals commercialization as well as moderate a panel of speakers on September 12.  Unfortunately, twitter is not working here in China (as well as Facebook and Google) and therefore, I am restricted in a lot of my social media activities.  I have not realized how dependent I am to Google! My blog email is associated with Google and therefore I am also unable to access most of my emails unless I go through a VPN network, which is a bit difficult to do from time to time not to mention finding an available wifi!

Anyway, tonight is my lucky night for getting through my emails and let me post this one about Genomatica’s recent sustainability survey conducted with ICIS.  The companies did the first survey in 2009 and this is the third in a series.  This is believed to be the most extensive survey to-date of the chemical industry on the topic of sustainability. The survey drew 958 responses worldwide, with 53% of respondents at the level of vice president, general manager or above.

Key findings include:

• 69% say their company has a sustainability policy in place or are currently developing one.

• 67% describe their company’s top business priority in sustainability as either promoting or marketing sustainable products, taking an active lead on sustainability issues, or engaging customers on a business level.

• 81% of producers say it’s very or moderately important to be a front runner in sustainable chemicals.

• Amongst producers, 35% are investing in R&D in renewable feedstocks and 31% have a strategic commitment to their use.

• On economics, 43% of producers say there is long-term economic advantage to renewable feedstocks; and 51% say they should reduce exposure to the petroleum market.

• 72% of producers now offer more sustainable versions of chemicals or plan to offer them within two years. That allows chemical users to do better planning for sustainability.

• Producers say that 80% of their customers are showing the same or higher interest in sustainable chemicals than just one year ago, with a sizable segment showing much greater interest. This signifies strong growth in customer demand and helps drive faster action by producers.

• 75% of chemical users either offer products made with more sustainable chemicals or expect to do so within two years. They’re taking action to make products that they plan to differentiate based on sustainability, to meet growing demand.

Leading ‘technology developers for sustainable chemicals’ include BASF, Dow, DuPont and Bayer, in that order. Genomatica comes in fifth. Genomatica announced that it has also recently been named a 2015 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum.