The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Last week, Brussels revealed its big plan to boost the EU economy while aiming to be carbon neutral by 2050. Called the “Clean Industrial Deal”, it is all about decarbonisation.
But good intentions to reduce carbon should not blind us to the fact that the green transition is intrinsically, intimately and inescapably about chemicals too.
Here are four key reasons why chemicals and the climate are so closely linked:*
- The chemicals industry drives demand for oil
- It uses huge amounts of energy
- Plastics rely on oil and chemicals
- Low-carbon technologies rely on chemicals.
1. Chemicals use lots of oil and gas
Some 99% of chemicals are made from fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) and currently represent 14% of global oil demand. That’s one in every seven barrels of oil. Chemicals also account for 9% of global gas demand.
And there’s no sign of things slowing down. Petrochemicals, the fossil-based building blocks of many other industrial chemicals, are projected to account for around a half of the growth in global oil demand between 2017 and 2050 — more than trucks, aviation and shipping.
That’s a heck of a lot of fossil-carbon. It is no surprise then that many of today’s largest oil and gas giants are also petrochemical producers, such as ExxonMobil, Shell, Ineos and Petrochina.
🔥 TERRIBLE TWINS: The chemicals industry drives demand for oil.
2. Chemicals use lots of energy
All chemicals require energy during extraction, production, transport and disposal. In fact, the chemicals sector uses more electricity than any other manufacturing sector in the world, ahead of steel and cement. For instance, bulk chemicals represented around one-third of total US industrial energy consumption in 2019. In Germany, steel and chemicals account for 60% of the country’s consumption of liquid natural gas.
As a result, the chemicals sector globally is the third largest industrial source of greenhouse gas emissions (after steel and cement), emitting an estimated 3.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases each year. That’s three times more than aviation!
🔥 TERRIBLE TWINS: The chemicals industry uses huge amounts of energy.
3. Plastic = oil + chemicals + greenhouse gases
Plastic is made from oil and chemicals, and is therefore a major driver of climate change. Production is growing steadily and is projected to triple between 2015 and 2060. Moreover, the production and end-of-life phases of plastic often lead to emissions of potent greenhouse gases. For instance, in 2015, the global plastics industry released an estimated 1.7 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide.
With plastics production increasing, it’s estimated that it will release over 56 gigatonnes of greenhouse gases between 2015 and 2050. That’s more than 10% of the entire remaining carbon budget.
🔥 TERRIBLE TWINS: Plastics rely on oil and chemicals.
4. Climate technologies too often rely on hazardous chemicals
Chemical pollution is becoming an unwanted consequence of efforts to reduce climate change. Several known hazardous substances are widely used in renewable-energy technologies, such as solar panels, wind turbines, advanced batteries, and electric vehicles.
Electric vehicles, for example, rely to a large extent on chemistry, including PFAS and various plastics such as polyethylene, polypropylene, and fluoropolymers. Other examples include polyurethane foam insulation, used to help meet climate targets by reducing energy needs for buildings, or F-gases, used in heat pumps.
There are established alternatives to these toxic chemicals – but the strength of the legacy chemical industry lobby means there is still a mistaken assumption that they are necessary for the green transition.
🔥 TERRIBLE TWINS: Low-carbon technologies rely on chemicals.
Conclusion
Climate change and chemical pollution are terrible twins that threaten life on this planet. Combatting one means tackling the other, and vice versa. Carbon-zero alternatives therefore need to reply on safe chemicals that contribute neither to climate change nor hazardous pollution. In many cases, those safe alternatives already exist – they just need to be implemented.
* Unless otherwise stated, the data in this article are taken from S. Balan et al, “Confronting the interconnection of chemical pollution and climate change”, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 55, 2025
