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A Climate Success Story🎉 without a Happy End🙁?
This chart📉 shows something we would like to see more often: emissions are going down rapidly. Those are emissions of N₂O from the production of a chemical🧪—Caprolactam—used to make certain plastics&synthetic fibers.
N₂O is 273x as damaging as CO₂. However, N₂O emissions from chemical plants🏭 can be avoided with cheap🪙 technology. The curve is declining rapidly because Envalior(BE) and Fibrant(NL) have implemented N₂O abatement in recent years. 🧵
I showed that chart📉 in a presentation at #39c3 as an example of how to utilize UNFCCC data, joking that there probably aren't many people asking themselves what the N2O emissions of Caprolactam production are, or what that even means. Hours later, I read that Domo Caproleuna, a German Caprolactam producer, had filed for bankruptcy.
They aren't alone. Many relatively climate-friendly Caprolactam factories in the EU🇪🇺 have been shut down or are in danger.
A curious fact about N₂O and the EU's Emission Trading System💶 is that emissions from some chemical processes are covered by it, while others—like Caprolactam—aren't. That means these factories are avoiding their emissions mostly voluntarily.
This raised a question: are there policy options to change this, to let cleaner producers gain an economic advantage💶? It's complicated, maybe. Longer answer in my latest newsletter:
https://industrydecarbonization.com/news/some-of-the-cleanest-polyamide-and-nylon-precursor-factories-are-shutting-down.html
