Air Liquide
From WikiClimate
Contents |
Company Details
- Company name: Air Liquide
- Country: France
- Sub Sector: Speciality Chemicals
- Industry Group: Materials
- Parent Sector: Materials
With more than 40,000 employees in 75 countries, Air Liquide is the world leader in industrial and medical gases. The Group offers innovative solutions based on constantly enhanced technologies and produces air gases (oxygen, nitrogen, argon, rare gases...) and many other gases including hydrogen.
Carbon Disclosure
The following data is © Carbon Disclosure Project and was provided by Air Liquide in response to the Carbon Disclosure Project Greenhouse Gas Emissions questionnaires.
Regulatory risks
We do not consider our company to be exposed to regulatory risks because Air Liquide’s European operations conform to the CO2 directive in Europe. The objective of the European directive, which establishes a quota system for greenhouse gases emissions in Europe is to decrease these emissions like the Kyoto Protocol. Implementation for CO2 in the industrial sector began on January 1, 2005.
General and regulatory risks management
Air Liquide uses a uniform groupwide risk analysis and management framework in its Industrial Management System (IMS). The IMS was launched in 2004 and had been rolled out in nearly all the Group’s units (over 99% of the Group turnover) by the end of 2007. Risks are reassessed on a regular basis by the Group’s experts.
General opportunities presented by climate change
In our production units:
- Air separation units, which are at the heart of our business (accounting for over 82% of our large production units), do not depend on combustion processes to operate and do not release greenhouse gases: these units do not have chimneys.
- Our cogeneration units produce steam and electricity simultaneously and much more efficiently than units producing these fluids separately. These units save large amounts of energy and avoid CO2 emissions: in 2007, Air Liquide’s cogeneration units prevented the emission of 573,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
- Although hydrogen production releases carbon dioxide, hydrogen’s main application is desulfurizing hydrocarbons: in 2007, hydrogen supplied by Air Liquide to refineries worldwide prevented the emission of some 780,000 tonnes of sulfur oxides into the atmosphere, which is about twice the total emissions of a country such as France.
In our products and services:
- Many industrial gas solutions, such as the use of oxygen in combustion processes, help our customers optimize their energy consumption and, therefore, contribute to reducing their carbon dioxide emissions. Around 33% of Air Liquide’s revenue is directly tied to applications and activities that help preserve life and the environment.
- Moreover, oxy-combustion could play a critical role in capturing CO2 in the subsoil: in the combustion of air (composed of about 21% oxygen and 79% nitrogen), the concentration of carbon dioxide in the fumes emitted into the atmosphere is low due to the presence of this nitrogen. This low concentration in the fumes makes it very difficult economically to extract it to sequester it in the subsoil. On the other hand, pure oxygen combustion emits fumes with a high concentration of carbon dioxide making it possible to capture and sequester it. In the long term, this is probably one of the leading technologies that could decrease carbon dioxide emissions and help reduce the greenhouse effect. Air Liquide is taking part in several research programs in Europe and the United States on combustion with oxygen-enriched air or pure oxygen as well as on technologies that capture this gas after combustion. Air Liquide is currently taking an active part in genuine industrial-sized pilot programs in this area such as the TOTAL project in Lacq in France. In addition to providing 4 proprietary pure oxygen burners of 8 MW for the project, Air Liquide is building an on-site unit that will supply TOTAL with oxygen (some 240 tonnes per day). The goal of the project is to convert an existing 30 MW boiler so that it can be used for oxy-combustion, and subsequently capture and compress the CO2 emissions before injecting them into a depleted natural gas deposit at a depth of 4,500 meters.
In our research and development:
- 60% of the Group’s R&D budget is devoted to work on life, the environment and sustainable development (energy efficiency, cleaner production processes and new energies) (See 2007 Reference Document p.10-11).
- Examples: fuel cell systems (AXANE subsidiary), cogeneration, CO2 sequestration, hydrogen as a clean energy, 2nd generation biofuels (Lurgi subsidiary)
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
- Greenhouse Gas emissions methodology used: Other
- Accounting year: ??
- Total global Scope 1 activity in Metric Tonnes CO2-e emitted: 8,100,000
- Total global Scope 2 activity in metric tonnes CO2-e emitted: 7,995,000
