Green steam for Sasol site

Hamburger Energiewerke, Hamburg’s municipal utility, is to build a biomass cogeneration facility at Sasol Chemicals’ Brunsbüttel site. When fully operational in 2025, this will supply at least 70,000 MW/year of ‘green steam’ to the site, enabling Sasol Chemicals to reduce CO₂ emissions by some 13,000 tonnes/year. The company is targeting a 30% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Combined, the two facilities will supply half of the site’s steam consumption. The new one will operate almost exclusively with fermentation residues sourced from plants that have been certified under Germany’s Renewable Energy Sources Act. It will also generate over 90,000 MW/year of sustainable electricity.

Brunsbüttel, which makes chemical building blocks for personal care, cleaning and industrial applications, has been using steam from another biomass facility since 2014. Together with the company’s other facilities at Marl, Germany, and Augusta, Italy, it recently received ISCC+ certification for the use of mass balanced biobased and recycled feedstocks in alcohols, ethoxylates, linear alkylbenzenes and derivatives.