The chemicals exec looking to decarbonize — and rebuild trust

VERBATIM

Amber Wellman is leading Chemours through a new phase in the global chemistry giant’s decarbonization and sustainability journey. Wellman started as chief sustainability officer in April and rolled out the company’s sixth sustainability report last month. Chemours is reporting a 30 percent decline in Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions since 2018 — halfway to its 2030 goal.

Beyond the raw numbers, the company has some reputation to win back, too. DuPont spun off its performance chemicals division in 2015 to create Chemours, and both are tied up in courts over legacy “forever chemicals” contamination.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Your sustainability report shows that titanium technologies made up most of your revenue. Is that sector of your business also responsible for the most emissions?

We have a pretty unique lever in achieving our greenhouse gas emission reductions — particularly Scope 1. That’s why our 99 percent reduction goal in fluorinated organic chemical emissions is so critical. It’s not a direct correlation right now for the decarbonization roadmap to our business revenues. The reduction of fluorinated organic chemicals is a significant part of achieving our absolute 60 percent reduction.

Beyond that, we have a commitment for being net zero by 2050. And that’s where we’re now kicking off additional technologies like carbon capture and storage, the use of renewable thermal, how do we further electrify some of our process technologies — it’s going to require investment in technical innovation. So as we implement our decarbonization roadmap, it’s going to shift from business to business in terms of what are the carbon emissions that we need to focus on.

It’s interesting to hear you talk specifically about absolute emission reductions given the rise of carbon offsets. Does Chemours use offsets, and is it at all a part of your decarbonization plan?

We’re looking at a lot of different options as our path to net zero 2050 because we won’t be able to remove all emissions. So there are lots of things that we’re considering. But the absolute reduction is something that we found is critically important, and we actually modified our goal in 2021. Our initial goal when we came out with our corporate responsibility commitments in 2018 was an intensity reduction. And we realized right away that that wasn’t bold enough. So we made our goal an absolute reduction of 60 percent.

You’ve obviously decided to disclose some amount of information publicly through this sustainability report. Where do you stand then on the SEC’s climate disclosure rule?

We believe that transparency and disclosure is an important part of the process. And our sustainability report for the last several years has been modeled after the [U.N.'s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures] and follows the Global Reporting Initiative’s framework. When we look at Europe and the [Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive], it goes far beyond what the SEC is proposing. And we believe that disclosure is a very important step. That being said, there needs to be [a] clear framework and clear principles around what needs to be disclosed.

I know there’s quite a bit of debate right now about Scope 3 disclosures, and that gets very complex. But what we believe is that it’s important for us to understand that so we can use our influence and drive better performance across our supply chain.

We think it’s very important that we use the entire value chain to influence better performance because these are global goals we need to achieve in order to prevent the worst outcomes from climate change.

I was surprised that I didn’t see the words “advanced recycling” in your sustainability report. Why not?

Circularity is absolutely a priority for us. And we’re having discussions right now about what that will mean in terms of external commitments. So let me first just say that our EVOLVE 2030 methodology ... is a very quantitative, very thorough assessment of how we produce our materials and how they’re used across their lifecycle. The next revision of that is going to include circularity principles. So we’re looking very seriously at quantitatively how do we assess the circularity of our products?

You might have also noticed that we committed to Remove2Reclaim, a three-year project where we partner with the plastics industry to recover titanium dioxide from end-of-life plastics. And we’re also exploring what are options around fluoropolymer recycling. How do we make our membranes in a way that they are more easily recovered, reprocessed, recycled at the end of their useful life, and the same thing goes for refrigerants. We’re exploring what that might look like to reclaim and recover refrigerants, but it is very early. I would say stay tuned, you will likely see more commitments from us in the future.

On PFAS, 3M made a commitment to phase out the production of those chemicals by 2025. Will Chemours follow that same path?

We’ve been very clear that we’re committed to fluorinated chemistries. And I think the important part is that all PFAS are not the same. And I think that’s been something that has been a little confusing and misleading externally because we talk about PFAS as if it’s this monolithic thing. If you think about as an analogy to hydrocarbons, there are so many different hydrocarbons. You can’t compare olive oil to motor oil, and the same thing is true in the PFAS space. Our fluoropolymers and refrigerants and gases are safe for their intended use. And they’re incredibly critical for the industries that they serve. And we’re committed to advancing those chemistries. So I can’t speak to what went into 3M’s decision, but we believe that our fluoropolymers are critical to driving change in sustainable technologies.

3M made many of the same arguments that you just made — that these chemicals are not a monolith. And yet, they reached the decision that they did. So why are you reaching a different decision?

I can’t speak to what went into their decision, and 3M is a very large company. But I know that for Chemours and for our value chain partners, we believe that there’s so much benefit that will be derived from these chemistries. And what differentiates Chemours is we’re committed to the responsible manufacturing of them. And that takes significant investment in innovation and in capital. And we’re willing to put our money where our mouth is there.

We believe that our materials are going to make a difference in clean energy, advanced electronics, semiconductors, very important value chains for the future, and we can make them responsibly.

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