Climate protection needs collaboration

Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time. At BASF, we believe that achieving Net Zero is possible – if we act together. Many solutions are readily available: the task now is to scale them and apply them where they create the highest impact.

For most industries we serve, measuring and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a key requirement for maintaining competitiveness and meeting growing regulatory requirements and consumer expectations.

We support you in your green transformation – by providing transparency, enabling better decisions, and offering solutions that reduce emissions along the value chain.

Transparency: understanding your product carbon footprint data

Solutions: your options for GHG emission reduction

Our drop-in solutions for your existing formulations deliver the same high performance your applications require - while reducing carbon footprint:

1. Switch your existing BASF products to the EcoBalanced grade.
2. Switch your existing BASF products that are based on palm kernel oil to the RSPO grade.

We also support you in designing your future formulations:

1. Include BASF products with a high share of renewable feedstocks, which in many cases can contribute to reducing GHG emissions.
2. Include BASF products that enable emission reduction in the use phase of your products.
3. Optimize the entire formulation for PCF reduction.

Products in our EcoBalanced portfolio have the identical composition, and therefore the same specifications, quality, and performance as their conventional grades, while offering a lower PCF based on the application of the mass balance principle. This allows you to achieve PCF reduction at scale without the need to reformulate your own products. BASF has a large and growing toolbox of PCF reduction levers making that possible:

• Biomass Balance approach (BMB): Biomass Balance is a mass balance approach that replaces fossil feedstocks with renewable feedstocks in the BASF production system and attributes them to specific sales products. The promise: For every ton of purchased BMB products, we replace the required amount of fossil feedstock with renewable feedstock at the beginning of our value chain (e.g. biomethane, bio-naphtha). This reduces the consumption of fossil feedstocks and decreases the PCF taking biogenic carbon into account. Our products are certified according to the independent certification scheme REDcert2 and audited by TÜV Nord.
• Green utilities: This lever offers the attribution of renewable electricity and low-PCF steam to selected products based on a mass balance approach.
• Low emission feedstock attribution (LEAF): Through collaboration with our own suppliers, we identify and source feedstocks with a lower carbon footprint which can be attributed to specific sales products based on a mass balance approach. These feedstocks are not limited to renewable materials, and PCF reduction may result from a variety of emission reduction measures implemented across the upstream value chain. 

• New technologies: Looking ahead, we continue to invest in new technologies for emission reduction such as electrically heated steam cracker furnaces, heat pumps and e-boilers for steam generation, carbon capture and utilization (CCU) and carbon capture and storage (CCS).

   

The effect depends on the product and the method used. Learn more about BASF’s methodology, data quality and verification approaches on our  Methodology site 

BASF’s Biomass Balance (BMB) approach contributes to the use of renewable raw materials in BASF's integrated production system 

RSPO: sustainably sourced with large PCF advantage

BASF offers a very broad range of ingredients based on RSPO-certified sustainable palm kernel oil.

Published life cycle assessment studies by Schmidt et al. show that RSPO-certified palm kernel oil can reduce greenhouse gas emissions on average by 54% compared to non-certified palm kernel oil¹, primarily due to lower peatland cultivation and increased biogas capture from palm oil mills.

Attributional, mass allocation.

• Source: Schmidt et al. 2026 
  A comparative life cycle assessment of palm oil—Differentiated by RSPO certified and non-certified, regionally, temporally, and by grower type - ScienceDirect 

Renewable feedstocks: the PCF benefits of biogenic carbon 

How are biogenic CO₂ emissions being accounted for in a PCF?

Explore examples for industry-specific formulation development:

Emission reduction in the use phase of your products

For many applications, a large GHG emission reduction potential lies downstream – in how products are used.

Discover application-specific innovations and formulation concepts that help to reduce GHG emissions in the use phase of your products:

Formulation optimization: design for performance and PCF

Whether you are developing a new formulation from scratch or optimizing an existing one for a re-launch, formulation design is a powerful lever for PCF reduction.

BASF combines deep application expertise with sustainability know-how to support your formulation decisions, from ingredient selection and dosage optimization to overall formulation architecture. No compromise required: you can reduce PCF while maintaining the performance your formulations are designed to deliver.

Explore examples for industry-specific formulation optimization (all documents and recordings are based on PCF data and methodology at the point of creation):

• Home Care formulations: we have developed formulation concepts that demonstrate how selection of chelating agents can reduce the PCF of an automatic dish wash formulation by up to 40%, and the PCF of a hand dish wash formulation by up to 20%. For detergents, our formulation concepts show a PCF reduction potential of up to 27% for liquid formulations and up to 15% for pouch formulations. 
  Learn more and contact your BASF account manager to receive more details.