Climate program takes effect

An important component of Bayer’s climate initiative is the EcoCommercial Building (ECB) program. This involves the principle of bringing together the best materials, systems and technologies in order to construct an energy-optimized building to suit the climatic conditions at the site in question. At the heart of this is a comprehensive partnership network that brings together suppliers, building companies and architects. One of the partners is Bayer Technology Services, which contributes its expertise in sustainable construction to the ECB program. Since this is a worldwide project, ECB Centers of Excellence have been set up as points of contact in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, North America, China, Japan and Thailand.

While the EcoCommercial Building partnership project in Masdar is still at the planning stage, some of Bayer’s own buildings constructed according to this concept are already in use. The first EcoCommercial Building (ECB) was opened in Germany in November 2009 – the Bayer CropScience children’s daycare center in Monheim. This was honored with the award for “Energy-optimized building 2009” by the German Ministry of Economics. And an emissions-neutral office building, adapted to the climatic conditions of the subtropics, is currently being constructed in Greater Noida near New Delhi, India.

Another example of an energy-efficient building opened in Diegem, Belgium, in May 2009. This Bayer administrative center consumes around 40 percent less energy than comparable buildings and received the Belgian award for architecture and energy in 2009. And the zero-energy ECB Conference Center which opened at the company’s site in Pittsburgh, United States, in May 2010 also demonstrates the range of eco-friendly applications that are possible using products from Bayer MaterialScience.

Alongside the new construction projects, there is also naturally provision for monitoring the energy efficiency of all existing Bayer real estate to identify potential and improve building operation.

“The EcoCommercial Building program is a good example of how Bayer is putting its climate protection strategy into practice,” states Dr. Wolfgang Grosse Entrup, Head of Environment & Sustainability at Bayer. According to him, it focuses on practical solutions that dovetail perfectly with the company’s structure. “After all, our commitment will only be successful when climate protection is incorporated systematically into both our core business and our sustainability strategy.”

This conviction is also reflected in the Copenhagen Accord, the political declaration of intent reached at the international Climate Summit in Copenhagen in 2009. Among the important priorities expressed is the stated intention to limit the rise in average global temperatures to a maximum of below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. In addition, climate protection is to be classified under the topic of sustainable development to ensure that ecological aspects are not separated from the issues of business development, economic growth and the struggle against poverty.

As part of our climate protection activities, Bayer Technology Services has developed a new type of control tool which is aimed at energy-efficient and climate-friendly production. By mid-2010, around 140 production facilities and buildings will have been put under the microscope. Based on calculations for 126 plants, Bayer believes there is realistic potential for reducing both energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 10 percent through 2013. This is a level that applies approximately to all regions in which Bayer has operations.

In parallel with the Climate Check, Bayer Technology Services has also developed a method for checking resource efficiency, which is to be applied in pilot projects in 2010.

Energy efficiency is also at the center of the new measurement and management method STRUCTese® (Structured Efficiency System for Energy), which has been developed by Bayer MaterialScience in collaboration with Bayer Technology Services and Bayer Business Services. By the end of 2009, STRUCTese® had been successfully installed in 16 plants, enabling energy savings of more than €10 million to be sustainably realized and documented. The method is to be applied globally to 60 of the company’s most energy-intensive production facilities worldwide by 2012.

The centerpiece of the particularly energy-efficient processes for the production of chlorine reported on in the Sustainable Development Report 2008 is the oxygen depolarized cathode technology. This enables hydrochloric acid to be recycled in chlorine production in an energy-efficient way. Bayer researchers have now joined forces with partners as part of a project initiated by the bmbf (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research) with the goal of extending this technology to produce chlorine from common salt (NaCl). Bayer MaterialScience (BMS) has signed an agreement with the engineering company Uhde on the construction of a chlorine production facility based on this principle. For the first time, chlorine is to be produced on an industrial scale using oxygen depolarized cathode (ODC) technology from Bayer MaterialScience in electrolysis cells developed by uhdenora. The plant, which will have an annual capacity of 20,000 metric tons, is scheduled to be taken into service in the first half of 2011.

At the end of October 2009, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed with the China Blue Star Group, one of the world’s top four electrolysis cell manufacturers. Among its declarations, this Memorandum of Understanding states that Bayer will make its oxygen depolarized cathode technology available to the Chinese partner.

“China has always been an important growth market for Bayer. That’s why it is important to US to support the spread of high standards for climate protection there,” states Hans–Joachim Wittig, Head of (NaCl) odc Technology at Bayer Material Science.

The modernization of waste air incineration at the site in Dormagen is an important milestone in Currenta’s climate protection program, enabling the reduction of CO₂ emissions by 30,000 metric tons a year.

Climate protection will play a bigger role in agriculture too in the future, according to the Copenhagen Accord. For example, Bayer CropScience has launched a lighthouse project for sustainable rice cultivation in Indonesia, where one of the goals is to reduce methane emissions by around 30 percent.

But in addition to implementing active measures for climate protection, responding to the effects of climate change is also an integral part of the Group-wide sustainability strategy. With this in mind, Bayer is working, for example, on increasing the yields and stress tolerance of crops, focusing in particular on state-of-the-art cultivation methods such as plant biotechnology. Researchers at Bayer CropScience are collaborating in international partnerships specifically to develop, among other crops, varieties of cotton and wheat that are resistant to drought.

Another important project is devoted to tackling malaria, because experts from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) fear that climate change could cause the number of malaria sufferers to rise by between 40 and 60 million cases in Africa alone. The tropical disease could also spread to areas that were previously unaffected by malaria. Bayer CropScience has been working for many years with the World Health Organization (WHO) in the area of vector control. Now scientists at Bayer have developed a method of incorporating long-lasting active substances into the material of mosquito nets .

In major urban centers, such as New York City, building operations account for 80 percent of emissions, though on a per capita basis, the city emits less than half the amount of greenhouse gas compared to the United States as a whole. Globally, urban populations are increasing rapidly. Currently, 50 percent of our population lives in cities. This figure is expected to increase to 70 percent by 2050.

On numerous occasions, leading policy-makers have vowed to reduce carbon emissions by as much as 80 percent by 2050. While intermittent steps are being taken, a holistic approach with verifiable attainments at credible intervals is largely missing.

The EcoCommercial Building program is of great significance in this context. This program will develop methodologies, approaches, associated guidelines and workbooks, as well as examples of solutions in different climatic and social economic contexts. This will provide measurable and verifiable data that can be credibly reported and thus help make it possible to successfully reach the necessary targets in both rehabilitation and new construction.

The Bayer Climate Program focuses on energy and resource efficiency regarding chemical processes, building materials and operations as well as agriculture. Valuable contributions to tackle climate change will result from this effort.

The “Green IT” initiative from Bayer Business Services focuses on energy-saving potential in IT and communication technology. The goal of this initiative is to improve the energy efficiency of Bayer’s data centers in Leverkusen (Germany), Pittsburgh (United States) and Singapore by 20 percent between 2009 and 2012. These efforts are being supplemented by projects for cutting energy consumption and conserving resources at PC workstations and with centralized printers.

As another supporting measure under the Climate Program, Bayer is setting up telepresence rooms and optimized video conferencing systems to reduce the amount of travel necessary. So far, corresponding systems have been installed at the company’s sites in São Paulo (Brazil), Raleigh, Pittsburgh (both United States), Leverkusen, Monheim (both Germany), Lyon (France) and Singapore.

Furthermore, by reconfiguring its fleet of vehicles worldwide, Bayer aims to cut corresponding CO₂ emissions by 20 percent through 2012 compared to 2007 levels. Through the increased use worldwide of vehicles with consumption-optimized engine technologies, a reduction of almost 10 percent in the average CO₂ emissions per kilometer could be achieved in new registered vehicles procured compared to 2007. This initiative has received the International Green Fleet Award 2009 from Fleet Europe, the European specialist magazine for operators of international vehicle fleets.

Based on the slogan “Green Supply Chain & Logistics,” Bayer Technology Services is supporting the optimization of logistics processes. With the goal of bringing “all products under one roof,” Bayer HealthCare has managed through this initiative to cut the number of warehouses worldwide and increasingly organize the transport of freight by railroads and waterways rather than by air.

How cooperation in research and day-to-day business can lead to successful climate protection is illustrated by the “F3 Factory” (Flexible, Fast and Future Factory) research consortium headed by Bayer Technology Services. This is a project sponsored by the European Union where for the first time 25 competing companies and research institutes have been collaborating on the development of efficient and sustainable manufacturing processes. These are to become accessible to the public in a new technology center at the CHEMPARK Leverkusen site to be completed by the beginning of 2011.

Bayer MaterialScience also cooperates closely with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), in whose Sustainable Building and Climate Initiative (SBCI) the company is intensively involved. Bayer MaterialScience supports the SBCI proposals for an internationally coherent and standardized method for measuring the climate footprint of buildings.

Every two years, the Bayer Science & Education Foundation presents the Bayer Climate Award in recognition of pioneering interdisciplinary research on climate change. The prize, which is worth €50,000, was awarded in 2010 to Professor Peter Lemke. His groundbreaking research on polar ice provided a key set of basic principles for climate sciences long before climate change became the focus of wider public awareness.

Lemke has worked at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven since 2001, where he is currently Head of the Department of Climate Sciences. He is also Professor for Physics of Ocean and Atmosphere at Bremen University.

As part of the Bayer Climate Program, seven schoolchildren in Germany received scholarships from the Bayer Science & Education Foundation to attend a two-week sustainability camp in Pittsburgh, United States, focusing on climate protection and sustainability. The camp was jointly organized by the Bayer USA Foundation and the environmental organization RiverQuest. The seven schoolchildren from Germany were joined by five children from the United States to focus on water as an ecosystem, the sustainable use of resources and the challenges posed by climate change. One scholarship student was also invited by Bayer to attend the Climate Summit in Copenhagen.