Evonik and Shell are making inroads into defossilizing heavy duty road transport with bio-LNG. Shell is supplying 100 tons of bio-LNG made from agricultural waste to Evonik, which is equivalent to the average fuel consumption of three trucks in a year. Evonik passes on this volume of bio-LNG from Shell to selected logistics partners. With this initiative, Evonik is committed to reduce its own emissions by shipping its products environmentally friendly with bio-LNG-fueled trucks. Shell is scaling up the bio-LNG supply chain while offering customers progressive emissions reductions.
“Working across the sector with customers and partners is the only way we will be able to change heavy duty transport sustainably. The collaboration with Evonik has presented the opportunity for us to jointly help drive the defossilization of transport within the chemical sector, delivering a positive step toward the sector’s climate targets in a commercially viable way with bio-LNG. That is very promising and good news to the sector”, said Thomas de Boer, Vice President at Shell Commercial Road Transport.
The joint action by Evonik and Shell is part of an initiative that the specialty chemicals company launched in January. The aim is to lower the group’s indirect CO2e emissions from the transportation of raw materials and finished products. This is to be achieved through increased cooperation with selected logistics partners that use trucks running on with bio-LNG. Already today, 10% of Evonik’s truck transports for packed goods in Europe are shipped in climate-friendly trucks. The company has set for itself the goal of increasing this share of packed goods in Germany to 20% by 2025.
“With our initiative, we show that sustainable mobility with Shell bio-LNG is already possible today. Our innovative membrane technology for efficient upgrading of biogas makes it possible to use liquefied or compressed biomethane as an alternative fuel,” commented Volker Wehber, head of Evonik’s global SEPURAN® Green business for biogas membranes.
Shell offers a blend of bio-LNG to its entire branded LNG station network in the Netherlands, allowing around a 30% reduction of carbon emissions to all customers. Furthermore, the company plans to offer a blend of bio-LNG to its entire branded LNG network in Germany by the third quarter of 2023. To support the effort, Shell is currently building a new biogas liquefaction plant at its Energy and Chemical Park Rhineland. The plant’s 100.000-ton annual bio-LNG volume could help to reduce the commercial transport’s carbon emissions, aiming for carbon neutrality for the entire German network.
Source: Evonik
