Air Products Summary

Brief Description of Air Products:

Air Products (NYSE:APD) touches the lives of consumers around the globe in positive ways every day. With 18,900 employees and operations in more than 40 countries, we serve customers across a wide range of industries from food and beverage, health and personal care to energy, transportation and semiconductors. We supply a unique portfolio of atmospheric gases, process and specialty gases, performance materials, equipment and services. The company’s fiscal year 2011 sales were over $10 billion, increasingly from product and technology solutions for energy, environment and emerging markets. In many ways, our offerings and our applications expertise improve our customers’ sustainability?reducing their energy use, increasing productivity and product quality, and lowering emissions and waste.

Air Products is a founding member of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change Business Environmental Leadership Council, a group of major companies that demonstrate leadership by establishing and meeting greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets; investing in more efficient products, practices and technologies; and supporting domestic and international action to achieve cost-effective emissions reductions. Read the guiding principles [1] of the Business Environmental Leadership Council.

CEO: John E. McGlade; Revenue: $10.1 billion (fiscal 2011); Employees: 18,900 (fiscal 2011)

Climate Targets

Air Products aims to achieve two intensity-based energy reduction targets that tie directly to GHG emission reductions focused on operational efficiency in every aspect of our plants. The targets represent a 7% reduction in energy required for production of our two major industrial gas product families--HYCO (hydrogen, carbon monoxide and synthesis gas) and Atmospheric Gases (oxygen, nitrogen, argon)--and collectively account for the majority of our corporate energy consumption. The target period is 2007 through 2015.

What Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. Has to Say About Climate Change:

"We pride ourselves on operational efficiency in every aspect of our plants and have set aggressive reduction goals for energy and greenhouse gases. There is an ever-increasing need for the energy and environmental technology solutions we provide our customers today, as well as those in development." John McGlade, CEO

Relevant Links: 

• Air Products Company Web Site [2]
• Air Products Sustainability Web Site [3]
• Air Products Sustainability Report [4]
• Air Products CDP Report [5]

Energy Supply Solutions:

Hydrogen Production

Air Products provides solutions to help manage a refiner’s environmental footprint.  Our hydrogen facility design can include cogeneration units to generate efficient steam and power, reducing reliance on other carbon-emitting energy sources.

The production of energy — specifically hydrogen energy — from renewable and low-carbon sources is a vision of the future. Air Products continues to look for methods of production that make use of renewable feedstocks as an alternative to steam methane reforming (SMR), which is the dominant method of industrial hydrogen production today. We are also pursuing longer-term alternative hydrogen production technologies, including biomass, gasification, solar, wind and sewage. Another area of focus is the development of proprietary gasification technology for production of distributed clean energy from industrial organic wastes and biomass to supply heat and power to industrial hosts. We are also helping power utilities convert from coal to biomass via the use of proprietary burners and oxygen enrichment. Finally, we supply industrial gases and technical know-how to advanced biofuels facilities and are currently performing technical and market due diligence to explore partnerships for increased participation in this emerging segment. Some examples are:

Corporate Headquarters Solar Array — The 15-acre solar array on our headquarters campus can generate 2 MW of renewable power. Our own SunSource™ photovoltaic gases and materials were used to make the panels. We indirectly reduce our CO2 emissions by 2,000 tons per year.

Plans for Renewable Energy Facility in Tees Valley, UK — Air Products has announced plans to build a renewable energy plant in Tees Valley, UK to generate 49 MW of renewable electricity for up to 50,000 homes in the northeast of England. The facility will use advanced gasification technology to convert 300,000 to 350,000 tons of municipal and commercial waste that would otherwise be destined for landfill into renewable power and will have the potential to generate renewable hydrogen.

Energy Demand Solutions

Many of our product and technology solutions enable more efficient production by our customers, resulting in energy savings and lower GHG emissions. Some of the more significant include:

Oxygen:

• Oxygen for oxyfuel combustion that reduces fuel consumption and GHG emissions; for de-bottlenecking catalytic cracking units and sulfur recovery units; for facilitating CO2 capture and sequestration; in integrated gasification combined cycle power facilities; for waste gasification; and in biomass combustion/gasification for renewable power and biofuels.
• Oxyfuel combustion increases flame temperature and the amount of available heat, leading to fuel efficiency gains of five to 65 percent. Customers have reduced GHG emissions by one million MT CO2-e per year using our oxygen and oxyfuel combustion technology.
• Since 2000, our oxygen enrichment technology installations on cement and lime kilns have reduced customers’ combined CO2 emissions by over 270,000 MT CO2-e. • As an alternative to traditional cryogenic air separation units, our ion transport membrane (ITM) in development has the potential to produce oxygen more economically and efficiently by 30 percent, decrease oxygen plant footprint by 50 percent, and reduce the cooling water requirement by 60 percent.

Hydrogen:

• Hydrogen for use as an emission-free transportation fuel; in the production of biofuels from renewable feedstocks; and to enable refiners to meet fuel emissions standards while increasing the amount of fuel that can be produced from oil.

Hydrogen for clean transportation fuels:

• As the world’s leading supplier, Air Products has built, owned and operated more than 30 hydrogen plants in partnership with Technip-Coflexip and operates more than 650 miles of hydrogen pipelines globally.
• Hydrogen is critical to produce cleaner transportation fuels – it lowers sulfur in fuels and the corresponding sulfur dioxide (SOx); cleaner fuels enable catalytic converters to more effectively remove other pollutants from transportation fuels, such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulate matter and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).• Hydrogen also increases the amount of fuel that can be produced from every barrel of crude oil, enabling refineries to avoid building new facilities, saving imports and reducing the associated CO2 emissions.

Hydrogen fueling infrastructure:

• Air Products has installed more than 130 fueling stations in 19 countries. With more than 50 patents in hydrogen dispensing technology, Air Products provides liquid and gaseous hydrogen and HCNG (hydrogen/compressed natural gas) fueling, and has developed a variety of enabling devices and protocols for fuel dispensing at varied pressures.
• Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. has helped pioneered the LNG industry and have been designing liquefaction systems and supplying cryogenic heat exchangers for LNG plants all over the world for the past 30 years. Building on the leadership position, Air Products saw a breakthrough in liquefaction technology with the introduction of the AP-X™ process in 2004. The new AP-X™ process is capable of producing 50% more LNG product in a single train process. Such projects are key enablers to bringing greater quantities of clean natural gas to the energy consuming markets of the world.

• Process Improvements

Many of our product and technology solutions enable more efficient production by our customers, resulting in energy savings and lower GHG emissions. Some of the more significant include:

• As the world’s leading supplier of hydrogen, Air Products is providing hydrogen to petroleum refiners to help them meet government mandates worldwide for producing low-sulfur, cleaner burning gasoline and diesel fuel. See our Hydrogen Article [6]
• Nitrogen for unconventional natural gas production and increased demand for energy-integrated liquefied natural gas (LNG):
• Air Products has designed manufactured and exported over 80 LNG heat exchangers for projects in 15 countries.
• We supply air separation units with proprietary heat exchangers to produce industrial gases in conjunction with the reuse of cold energy from vaporization of LNG before it enters the pipeline distribution system. We estimate 120,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions reductions achieved each year at ASUs reusing LNG cold energy.\
• High purity process gases and cleaning agents and services that support the production of solar cells and the drive for renewable energy sources:
• NF3, Air Products’ nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) is estimated to have reduced the electronics industry’s global warming potential (GWP) gas emissions by 19.5 million MT CO2-e from 2000 to 2008.
• C4F6 and C5F8: As a replacement for C4F8, these etching gases have significantly lowered GWP values of <1 and 100, respectively, and reduced GHG emissions approximately 1,100 MT CO2-e over the past four years.
• Gases for high efficiency lighting and insulation of windows to reduce energy losses from buildings.
• Catalysts/surfactants for spray polyurethane foam insulation:
• Air Products’ catalysts and surfactants in polyurethane foam insulation provide an annual emission reduction equivalent to 4.8 million MT CO2-e.
• Curing agents for epoxy resins used in high strength-to-weight composites that enable weight reduction in transportation vehicles and wind turbines.

Waste Management Solutions

Potential environmental impacts are evaluated during product development through a stage-gate process where environmental concerns must be addressed before a product can move through a gate and to the next phase of development. We also proactively identify alternative raw materials and develop products that have less impact on the environment. For commercial products, potential environmental impacts are assessed through our product risk review process, which establishes risk management measures for products based on their intrinsic environmental hazards. We also evaluate environmental protection during plant design and operation.  From an operations perspective, we have set specific goals to reduce emissions, water consumption, hazardous waste and energy use. We also established greenhouse gas reduction targets based on our verified GHG inventory. Importantly, the majority of our products and services enable our customers to reduce their environmental impacts. Some examples include use of our hydrogen by refiners in processing crude oil, thus producing cleaner fuels that enable vehicles to operate more efficiently and reduce emissions of SOx, NOx and particulates; water treatment technologies that improve water quality and reduce wastewater sludge; and performance materials, such as water-based products that eliminate solvents and reduce VOCs, low- or no-emission catalysts, and replacement products for nonylphenol and nonylphenol ethoxylate-containing surfactants.

Products and Packaging Materials Reclaimed: 

Most of our products are consumed either through combustion or reaction or are atmospheric gases that can be safely vented after use. Our customers generally do not reclaim our products. We supply the majority of materials in two-way bulk or semi-bulk containers or via pipelines, so packaging materials are not required. For small-scale supply, cylinders are returned and reused, and drums are typically reclaimed after use by our customers. In our Electronics business, for example, we use a very high percentage of returnable containers (>99 percent) requiring little or no packaging materials.

Transportation Solutions

Transportation Impacts:

In the U.S. alone, Air Products operates a fleet of more than 650 heavy duty trucks that consumed approximately 8,000,000 gallons of diesel fuel and traveled more than 51,000,000 miles in 2010. As business conditions improved in 2010, our product deliveries, mileage and resulting emissions increased. However, through our efficiency programs, we were able to increase the amount of product loaded in each trailer, which reduced our emissions per loaded mile and avoided a higher level of emissions. We joined the SmartWay^SM Transport Partnership (a collaboration between the U.S. EPA and major companies and associations) in 2009 and set preliminary emission reduction targets for 2015 of 10 percent on NOx and particulate matter and two percent on CO₂ (2009 baseline). The SmartWay program changed its NOx and particulate matter calculation from 2009, so we are working with the EPA to define these changes and recalculate an equitable, year-on-year performance comparison.

Air Products has installed more than 130 fueling stations in 19 countries. With more than 50 patents in hydrogen dispensing technology, Air Products provides liquid and gaseous hydrogenand HCNG (hydrogen/compressed natural gas) fueling, and has developed a variety of enabling devices and protocols for fuel dispensing at varied pressures.

Carbon Sequestration and Offsets Solutions

Air Products is the global leader of technical options for capturing CO2 from fossil fuel conversion before it reaches the atmosphere—key to Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) for greenhouse gas mitigation.

Our view spans natural gas reforming, gasification, and oxyfuel coal combustion and is formed by experience in existing operations that involve capture of CO2 from natural gas reforming, management of syngas from gasification, and oxyfuel combustion in markets such as steel and glass. Air Products' technology in development offers lower cost of capturing CO2 and builds on more than 70 years' experience implementing advanced separation technology.

In our operations today, Air Products has experience with the capture of CO2 from natural gas reforming, and we continue to work on incremental and step change improvements.  Air Products has been selected under the Industrial Carbon Capture and Sequestration Program (ICCS) to design, construct and operate a system to capture CO2 from two steam methane reformers in Port Arthur, TX.

Air Products is also working to develop novel precombustion decarbonization technology via Sorption Enhanced Water Gas Shift (SEWGS). SEWGS is attractive for de-carbonizing gas turbine fuel, and hence provides opportunities for power generation with minimal CO2 emissions, high power efficiency and potentially lower cost of capturing CO2 for storage. This SEWGS process development is an integral part of the CACHET project coordinated by BP.  (For more information, please visit www.cachetco2.eu/overview/sp1.html [7]). Process development for SEWGS is a joint effort of Air Products and Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) with support from a number of oil companies. This development is an integral part of CACHET, a collaboration project coordinated by BP comprised of research institutions, universities, energy companies, engineering agencies and manufacturers from the EU Member States, USA, Canada, China and Brazil.

Air Products is also a recognized leader in the emerging field of Oxyfuel CO2 capture technology. Our Oxyfuel combustion system coupled with our unique compression/purification technology can represent a carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) system with the potential to produce electricity economically from coal while creating a CO2 stream of the purity required for either sequestration or EOR. Not only is our Oxyfuel technology applicable to new-build supercritical power plants, but it also can provide a solution for retrofitting the existing installed base of coal-fired and oil-fired power plants.

Air Products’ proprietary carbon dioxide (CO2) capture, purification and compression system at Vattenfall AB's research and development facility in Schwarze Pumpe, Germany is onstream and performing a key role in the world's premier demonstration of oxyfuel carbon capture. Vattenfall, one of Europe's leading energy companies, held an inaugural ceremony today at the facility which hosts what is viewed globally as the preeminent CO2 oxyfuel project. Air Products’ technology is focusing specifically on the purification and compression of oxyfuel combustion flue gas during the scheduled three year demonstration project. At the Schwarze Pumpe facility, Air Products will take flue gas directly off Vattenfall's 30 megawatt (MW) wall-fired boiler at the oxyfuel pilot plant. It will purify and compress the carbon dioxide to a purity acceptable for storage or enhanced oil recovery. Air Products' proprietary sour compression technology uses a staged compression process to optimize pressure, hold-up, and residence time to allow removal of impurities during the compression process. This allows cost savings in the oxyfuel combustion process and minimizes the concentration of acidic components, important in preventing corrosion during the CO2 storage process. This pilot will demonstrate the efficient purification of CO2, and removal of atmospheric gases, in particular oxygen. In addition, it will incorporate novel membrane technology, targeting carbon capture rates as high as 98 percent. (More information on Air Products’ CO2 purification technologies can be found at www.airproducts.com/CO2_capture [8]).

Emissions Trading, JI, & CDM Solutions 

• Our current strategy regarding allowance trading under EU ETS is to properly manage the compliance obligations of our facilities. Air Products is not trading allowances speculatively.
• Air Products participates in the EU ETS Phase 2 emission trading scheme for facilities we own and operate.

BELC Company GHG Reduction Targets

Air Products and Chemicals

An additional 7 percent reduction in energy consumption at our large air separation units per quantity of gas produced by 2015.  

An additional 7 percent reduction in fuel and feedstock consumption per quantity of hydrogen produced at our hydrogen, carbon monoxide and synthesis gas plants by 2015.

BELC Energy Efficiency Initiatives

Air Products Summary

Internal

Gases and Equipment and Energy businesses

Products & Services

Many of our product and technology solutions enable more efficient production by our customers, resulting in energy savings and lower GHG emissions. Some of the more significant include:

• Oxygen for oxyfuel combustion that reduces fuel consumption and GHG emissions; for de-bottlenecking catalytic cracking units and sulfur recovery units; for facilitating CO2 capture and sequestration; in integrated gasification combined cycle power facilities; for waste gasification; and in biomass combustion/gasification for renewable power and biofuels.
• Hydrogen for use as an emission-free transportation fuel; in the  production of biofuels from renewable feedstocks; and to enable refiners to meet fuel emissions standards while increasing the amount of fuel that can be produced from oil.
• Nitrogen for unconventional natural gas production and increased demand for energy-integrated liquefied natural gas (LNG).
• High purity process gases and cleaning agents and services that support the production of solar cells and the drive for renewable energy sources.
• Gases for high efficiency lighting and insulation of windows to reduce energy losses from buildings.
• Catalysts and surfactants for polyurethane foam that provides superior insulation.
•  Curing agents for epoxy resins used in high strength-to-weight composites that enable weight reduction in transportation vehicles and wind turbines.

Supply

Most of our products are consumed either through combustion or reaction or are atmospheric gases that can be safely vented after use. Our customers generally do not reclaim our products.

• We supply the majority of materials in two-way bulk or semi-bulk containers or via pipelines, so packaging materials are not required.
• For small-scale supply, cylinders are returned and reused, and drums are typically reclaimed after use by our customers. In our Electronics business, for example, we use a very high percentage of returnable containers (>99 percent) requiring little or no packaging materials.
• In the U.S. alone, Air Products operates a fleet of more than 650 heavyduty trucks that consumed approximately 8,000,000 gallons of diesel fuel and traveled more than 51,000,000 miles in 2010. As business conditions improved in 2010, our product deliveries, mileage and resulting emissions increased. However, through our efficiency programs, we were able to increase the amount of product loaded in each trailer, which reduced our emissions per loaded mile and avoided a higher level of emissions. We joined the SmartWay^SM Transport Partnership (a collaboration between the U.S. EPA and major companies and associations) in 2009 and set preliminary emission reduction targets for 2015 of 10 percent on NOx and particulate matter and two percent on CO2 (2009 baseline). The

SmartWay program changed its NOx and particulate matter calculation from 2009, so we are working with the EPA to define these changes and recalculate an equitable, year-on-year performance comparison.

Success

• Air Products’ Port Arthur II integrated hydrogen/cogeneration facility was named one of POWER’s natural gas-fired Top Plants of 2007.
• Hydrogen’s contribution to an increase in product yield is equivalent to avoiding more than 10 new grass-root refineries between 1976 and 2006 along with the related carbon footprint during their construction and operation.
• Air Products estimates that 1 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reductions are achieved each year at oxy-fuel or oxygen enrichment installations provided by Air Products, even after accounting for the indirect CO2 emissions required to produce the oxygen utilized in the oxyfuel applications .
• In 2010, Air Products has been awarded the prestigious Rushlight Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Industry Award for its innovative Series 100 Hydrogen Fueling Station technology. The technology, which is helping break down barriers to the development of the hydrogen economy, clearly fit the Award’s aims of promoting and celebrating leading environmental technologies in the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland.
• A team led by Air Products and including Imperial College London and Doosan Babcock Energy Ltd. were presented the Rushlight Carbon Capture and Storage Award 2008 for work addressing impurity removal in carbon dioxide (CO2) waste streams from coal-fired power plants

Awards and Recognition

• Included on the Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index as one of the best performing sustainable companies for 2010/11
• Named a Maplecroft Climate Innovation Indexes (CIIs) Leader, ranking #1 in our industry sector and #4 overall out of 350 U.S. companies evaluated for climate-related innovation and carbon management programs
• Named to the Global 500 Disclosure Leadership Index AND the Global 500 Performance Leadership Index as well as the S&P 500 Disclosure and Performance Leadership Indices for 2011. ( For the past two years, Air Products was named to the S&P 500 Disclosure Leadership Index)
• Remained a constituent on the FTSE4Good Index Series
• Earned a rating of 100 percent on the 2011 Corporate Equality Index (CEI) and recognition as one of the Best Places to Work among the largest publicly traded and privately held U.S. employers from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
•  Remained a constituent on Vigeo’s Ethibel Global Sustainability Index and included in Ethibel’s EXCELLENCE and PIONEER registries.