Building resilience to climate threats
As extreme weather events become more frequent, chemical and pharmaceutical producers are taking steps to fend them off in future
The summer of 2018 has highlighted how business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions might prevent the chemical and pharmaceutical industries from doing business as usual. A long drought in Europe underlined German chemical giant BASF’s reliance on the parched Rhine. Low river levels forced it both to adjust production at its Ludwigshafen headquarters, unable to draw water for cooling, and explore delivering its products by routes other than shipping. Meanwhile in the US, two senior executives from French speciality chemical firm Arkema were charged over an explosion at its Crosby, Texas, plant during hurricane Harvey in August 2017. If found guilty of ‘recklessly’ allowing chemicals to get into the air they could be fined up to $1 million and jailed for five years.
Beyond more frequent records for high temperatures, global warming drives records for intense wetness and dryness, in part because hotter air can carry more water. To continue to profit in the current and future changed climate, businesses should have suitable resilience plans.