The business challenge
A global leader in Oxo chemicals with operations in Europe, Americas, and Asia had committed to realize European Green Deal reduction goals, but was faced with the challenge to break down the sustainability targets over the years, define a roadmap to close the sustainability gap, while still realising ST business results. This in a challenging environment (COVID, energy crisis, Ukraine war, …).
Big steps had already been made on GHG (Scope 1, Scope 2), waste, energy reduction. The key challenge was to get the entire company on board to work on Scope 3 GHG reduction, taking regional differences into account.
We have committed to Europe’s GHG reduction targets. We defined a GHG reduction program and governance a year ago, but things are not really moving forward. I’m afraid we will not reach our targets… Can you help us to make things move forward?
client quote
The Approach
We engaged senior management through an End-to-End (E2E) ambition and action workshop, aimed at building a deep understanding of Scope 3 decarbonization. This workshop helped each department recognize its role in the process and concluded with personal commitments from each top manager, ensuring full alignment across leadership.
To mobilize the management team and experts, we co-created a sustainable chemicals progression roadmap. This was done through transversal working streams, each led by a member of senior management, fostering collaboration and accountability across the organization.
In parallel, we established a separate innovation stream to focus on generating breakthrough ideas to help the company reach its 2050 sustainability targets. This innovation stream allowed for forward-thinking and ambitious approaches to long-term decarbonization goals.
Additionally, we set up a drumbeat and integrated governance structure (PMO) to implement the roadmap in manageable progression cycles. These cycles were designed to match the organization’s capacity for change, embedding the new way of working into company rituals, such as budget planning, project approvals, and performance dashboards.
Finally, we involved various organizational layers in implementing the initiatives, ensuring that the changes were seamlessly integrated into the business and embraced at all levels.
Results
- The project successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed approach. A roadmap of initiatives to reach the Climate 2030 targets was defined. The project was delivered on time, engaging all countries and organizational layers in the approach.
- In 4 months, we achieved alignment on the targets and the roadmap to reach them
Client quote on the result:
“This program is the result of a process started years ago, bundling all our activities under one single roof. It represents both a very structured approach and a clear roadmap towards our goal of climate neutrality.”
Christoph Balzarek, EVP Corporate Development at OQ Chemicals)
