Chemours Chief Sustainability Officer on the Importance of Partnerships for Creating a More Sustainable World
By Amber Wellman, Chief Sustainability Officer, Chemours
As the modern world continues to progress faster each year, we are facing both societal challenges and opportunities for creating a more sustainable world. Climate change, nature loss, social inequality, and public health are some of the most pressing issues of our time, and they require bold and collaborative action from all sectors of society. We believe in the power of partnerships to find the best solutions to big challenges. By working together with our customers, regulators, policymakers, and communities our products can help enable important applications that deliver on societal goals, such as transitioning to clean energy, advancing electronics and electrifying transportation, progressing a greener and more inclusive future, and helping improve lives everywhere.
That’s why we are leaning in and deepening our commitment to sustainability, putting it at the center of everything we do, from the way we operate our facilities, to the way we innovate our products, to the way we engage with our stakeholders and employees. We organize our sustainability strategy around four pillars: Environmental Leadership, Innovation & Sustainable Solutions, Community Impact, and Greatest Place to Work. These pillars are built upon our values, inspired by our vision, and guide our actions and decisions every day. We know we cannot achieve our goals alone, and that is why we are strengthening our partnerships as a way to accelerate progress. I want to highlight just a few examples of the progress that makes us proud and the partnerships that we know will allow us to go even further:
Under the Environmental Leadership pillar we are focused on reducing our environmental footprint and enhancing our positive impact. We set an ambitious target for 2030 to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 60%, and we are thrilled that Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) recently approved our near-term target. Our Scope 3 target for 2030 to reduce by 25% per ton of production was also approved by SBTi, and we look forward to providing further detail on that goal in next year’s report. In this report, we celebrate that we have already achieved a 52% reduction in our Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions since 2018, and we are sharing our decarbonization roadmap to 2030 and beyond. Looking toward the future, we recognize that we must go beyond climate and understand our intersections with nature. That is why we partnered with the Wildlife Habitat Council in 2023 to begin assessing our impacts and dependencies on nature and continue that partnership through the launch of a Chemours' signature initiative aimed at natural habitat renewal across our sites.
Through the Innovation & Sustainable Solutions pillar, we are developing and delivering products and solutions that enable our customers and end-users to achieve their own sustainability goals. We have already demonstrated that 48% of our revenue comes from products that make a specific contribution to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). For example, our Nafion™ membranes play a vital role in hydrogen production, fuel cells and energy storage – three transformative energy areas. Through the Clean Hydrogen Partnership, an innovative public-private collaboration that brings together the U.S. Department of Defense, the University of Delaware, Chemours, Plug, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), we expect to further advance membrane performance in order to drive down the cost of clean hydrogen production and improve efficiency in converting hydrogen to energy. Further, the Center for Clean Hydrogen at the University of Delaware, supported by investment from Chemours and part of the Clean Hydrogen Partnership, will enable real-world fabrication and testing of hydrogen technologies at commercial scale.
In the Community Impact pillar, we are making a positive difference in the communities where we live and work. In 2023, we awarded more than $5.6 million in grants for initiatives that increased access to STEM skills, advanced safety, and created more sustainable environments within our communities – bringing our total investment since 2018 to more than $24 million. Our partnership with Discovery World Museum in Parkersburg, West Virginia, will provide a hands-on entry point to STEM concepts, activities and experimentation for young visitors. The Chemours grant helps fund Science Saturdays, supplies admission passes for underserved children and families, and gives Chemours volunteers the opportunity to share their passion for STEM with the next generation of problem-solvers while creating a pipeline of future talent for our industry.
Finally, under the Greatest Place to Work pillar, we are committed to living our values and the safety and wellbeing of our employees. We celebrate having 15 global regions certified as a Great Place to Work® in 2023, covering more than 92% of our global workforce. We also added an eighth Employee Resource Group (ERG) in 2023 with the launch of the Native American Employee Network. Our ERGs act as internal partners to help us recognize and celebrate the strength that lies in our diversity.
We are proud of what we have achieved so far, and we know that there is still more work to do. Guided by our values, we are constantly looking for ways to improve our performance, increase our impact, and strengthen our partnerships.
Read the full Chemours 2023 Sustainability Report
For more about Chemours and its 2030 Goals, visit our site.
