We will face several major challenges in the future: how to boost economic growth, spread wellbeing amongst a larger portion of the population, and finally, avoid irreversible climate change caused by the increasing industrialisation.

A group of pioneering research companies consisting of the Carbon Productivity Consortium & the leader in the field - Covestro - is trying to address these issues by creating tools and practical solutions to improve the current processes. The commitment to work in that direction has also been demonstrated by the UN who set up the United Nations Global Compact - a worldwide call aimed at all the most important companies to align their objectives and strategies with the universal principles of human rights, labour market, the natural environment and the fight against corruption. At their first summit, in September 2017, Covestro’s CEO presented the strategy of the Carbon Productivity Consortium in an informative speech.

The main objective is to reconcile the use of fossil fuels with the need to protect the natural environment.

The secret here lies in maintaining the enthusiasm and vision necessary to get rid of the cliches and commit to finding a compromise between these issues in the spirit of growth. The key lies in the ‘x10’ Formula:

To improve 10 times the energy produced by a unit of fuel.

How? Through finding new solutions to manage processes, optimising the use of raw materials and/or using innovative technologies to recover what gets lost in the atmosphere and reuse it transforming it into products. There is another linked initiative lunched by the United Nations: the Global Goals for Sustainable Development, which includes 17 objectives to be achieved by 2030 to protect our ecosystem.

There’s already an online platform where Carbon Productivity Consortium offers to companies two practical tools to help them embrace this new innovative vision of the future.

1. The Carbon Productivity Tool analyses production processes and allow you to calculate how, where and how much you can optimise the use of fossil fuels through nine levers and criteria developed for this specific objective.

2. The Carbon Productivity Map tracks down in continuous progress the private and institutional realities aimed at improving carbon productivity.

The objective of the Consortium and Covestro - one of its major supporters - is to promote a new mentality that favours vision and innovation through research, underlining the necessity to to let the Earth breathe but also generating benefits of the economic growth and preserving a good reputation. Moving in this direction will bring benefits to everyone involved.