Chemists committed to saving the planet

Mar 20 2008 By The Journal

WITH climate change clawing its way to the top of every chemical producer’s agenda, the sector is ensuring it makes a positive contribution to saving the planet.

This involves reducing energy use, since energy efficiency and improving water quality are paramount to chemical firms.

The sector has a good record for improving its efficient use of energy: Under the Climate Change Agreements and a preceding voluntary energy efficiency agreement, the sector improved its energy efficiency by 34% during the period from 1990 to 2004.

The chemical sector accounts for almost a fifth of the energy used by industry in the UK and about 4% of that consumed by all users.

Its annual bill for energy and hydrocarbon raw materials for products is estimated at more than £3bn.

For many companies energy is the single largest variable cost, in some cases 50% or more.

The chemical sector is committed to reducing the industry’s specific consumption by 18% of its 1998 level by the year 2010.

Government climate change agreement (CCA) results for 2006 show the chemical sector has improved its energy efficiency by 20% since 1998.

The sector has exceeded its 2006 CCA target of 18% and improvements since 1998 are equivalent to an annual saving of three million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

Chemical manufacture is often concentrated to ensure energy is produced and consumed most efficiently, something industry is always trying to improve.

An example of the approach to concentrating efficient energy production and use, often referred to as an energy hub, is the Wilton International site.

Here Sembcorp supplies customers with tailored energy solutions and its power station provides 175MW using a very large combined heat and power unit. The station can produce up to 600 tonnes of steam an hour and the adjacent water treatment plant supplies up to 2,000 cubic meters of demineralised water an hour to make this steam.

The recent opening of the biomass fuelled 30MW power plant at Wilton, again run by Sembcorp, shows how these energy hubs might use renewable fuels such as wood to provide heat and power – further reducing industry’s carbon footprint.

Next to the Wilton complex stands the 1,875MW Teesside Power Station and Corus also operates a similar integrated energy and heat system at its Redcar steelworks.

Other process industry centres on the north bank of the Tees historically have shared many of the elements of an energy hub, and have much of the infrastructure needed to support energy intensive processes in the future.

As an example of what can be done is John Baarda’s investment with GrowHow UK at Billingham. The huge greenhouses are growing more than 300,000 tomato plants at a time using supplies of CO2 and steam, from GrowHow’s nearby manufacturing site.

The North East process industry makes very significant use of CHP in the existing hubs and overall the industry makes more use of the technology than any other manufacturing sector.

The sector is projected to make a substantial contribution to achieving the Government’s target of producing 10 gigawatts of energy from CHP by 2010.

With potential for new power stations and the proposed development of a large oil refining complex, further hubs may well be possible in the region. The opportunity to integrate renewable energy and carbon reduction into these schemes is real and will lead to the development of biorefineries.

Further opportunities for development of integrated energy hubs exist across the North East and Nepic, with its members, will be looking for new ways of reducing carbon emissions and improving efficiency for energy production. Nepic also operates resource efficiency programmes which target energy savings and assist the industry making a significant contribution to national targets through programmes such as the regional Energy Resource Efficiency programme as well as Envirowise and the Carbon Trust.

:: By Stan Higgins, chief executive of the North East Process Industry Cluster (Nepic)