Germany/The Netherlands – Chief Technogy Officer (CTO) of chemical giant, BASF Melanie Maas-Brunner is one of the key talkers at European Industry & Energy Summit 2021, on December 7 in Rotterdam Ahoy. Recently BASF announced major steps for the transition of its sites in Ludwigshafen and Antwerp.
For example, in the spring BASF and energy company RWE presented a plan to build a two gigawatt offshore wind farm in the German part of the North Sea. With this, the partners want to supply BASF’s enormous chemical site in Ludwigshafen with green electricity. Also, a three hundred megawatt electrolyzer should enable the production of green hydrogen. An investment of four billion euros.
The goal of RWE and BASF’s project is to electrify production processes for basic chemicals. BASF wants to be climate neutral by 2050. By 2030, the chemical company wants to emit 25 percent less CO2 worldwide than in 2018.
Antwerp
With that goal, BASF also has big plans in Antwerp and the Netherlands. For example, in June it reached an agreement with Vattenfall to purchase 49.5 percent of the Dutch offshore wind farm Hollandse Kust Zuid. The construction of wind farm Hollandse Kust Zuid will start in July 2021 and is expected to be fully operational in 2023. It will then be the largest offshore wind farm in the world with 140 wind turbines and a total installed capacity of 1.5 Gigawatts.
BASF will use its share of electricity to support chemical production at sites across Europe. In particular also the large chemical site in Antwerp. The Antwerp site is the largest chemical production site in Belgium and the second largest BASF production site in the world.
Melanie Maas
Melanie Maas-Brunner (1969, Korschenbroich Germany) studied at RWTH Aachen University and received her doctorate in chemistry in 1995. Before joining BASF in 1997, she worked as a research assistant at the University of Aachen in Germany and at the University of Ottawa in Canada.
She is responsible for the divisions European Site & Verbund Management; Global Engineering Services; Corporate Environmental Protection, Health & Safety; Advanced Materials & Systems Research; Bioscience Research; Process Research & Chemical Engineering; BASF New Business.
Registration
Registration for European Industry & Energy Sunmmit 2021 is available at https://www.industryandenergy.eu/eies2021/. The event will take place on December 7 and 8 in Rotterdam Ahoy. Attendance can be either physical or online.
