Clariant joins pre-competitive development platform for low carbon emitting technologies

• Clariant together with other companies from the chemical industry and the World Economic Forum (WEF) establish a breakthrough pre-competitive development platform designed to accelerate net-zero climate technologies
• The first-of-its-kind collaboration catapults the Low Carbon Emitting Technologies initiative (LCET) from incubation to its next mission-critical implementation stage

Muttenz, October 22, 2021 – Clariant, a focused, sustainable and innovative specialty chemicals company, announced today that it has reached an agreement with the WEF and major chemical companies to establish a breakthrough development platform by 2023. A Project Development Company will be designed as a new stand-alone entity operating on a pre-competitive basis and supporting partners in setting set-up joint projects aiming to share early-stage development risks and invest jointly in the development and implementationof low-carbon technologies.

This agreement follows a two-year collaboration between WEF and the founding companies of the LCET initiative, including Air Liquide, BASF, Covestro, Dow, Mitsubishi Chemical Corp, Royal DSM, SABIC, SIBUR and Solvay. The joint venture represents the transition from a knowledge-sharing platform to an implementation tool aimed at accelerating greenhouse gas reductions in the chemical production chain.

"Chemicals are present in almost all products of daily life. They are essential to more than 95% of the goods produced worldwide. For this reason,  most industries are customers of the chemical industry. Our role is to enable our customers to reduce their carbon footprint. In order to address these challenges, we need to share technologies and common approaches," said Conrad Keijzer, Chief Executive Officer at Clariant.

"We are working together in the LCET initiative to jointly address mission-critical technology challenges that cannot be tackled by one company alone," commented Martin Vollmer, Chief Technology Officer at Clariant. "We want to actively contribute with our outstanding research and development expertise in the fields of biomass valorization focusing on agricultural waste streams for the production of advanced biofuels and bio-based chemicals, as well as in the field of innovative, high performance catalysts to support the transformation of our industry towards net-zero emissions."

The LCET initiative aims not only to promote R&D alliances, but also to enable joint ventures or start-ups and reduce investment risks.