Anne Lamp, a process engineer with a doctorate, is taking part in the chemistry summit in the Chancellery today. Before the meeting, the start-up founder criticized her colleagues from the chemical industry. Instead of demanding billions for cheap electricity, the industry should better invest in renewable technologies
Ms. Lamp, you are the only start-up founder taking part in the top meeting between the chemical industry and politicians in the Chancellery today. What feelings do you have going into the appointment?
I’m looking forward to it, it’s an honor for me to be able to take part as a representative of the regenerative economy. For over ten years I have been concerned with the question of how production processes can be designed so that they do not harm the environment, but rather benefit people and are in harmony with nature. I researched this, gave lectures, analyzed companies that were already successfully practicing a Cradle-to-Cradle approach and founded a start-up myself three years ago.
Cradle-to-cradle means “from the cradle to the cradle”, what exactly does that mean?
It means thinking in cycles in which waste is not created in the first place: you have to manufacture products right from the start in such a way that they can be technically recycled or that they circulate in the biological cycle.
However, the chemical industry is currently plagued by completely different concerns: high energy costs are threatening the industry’s existence.
The media gave the impression that today was a crisis meeting in which short-term fire brigade operations were decided. But the idea of this top meeting was originally for politicians and industry to think together about how we can realistically achieve sustainable chemical production.
Petroleum-based plastics are found in almost everything we use every day: smartphones, cars, clothing, furniture, shampoo and cosmetics. Can these huge quantities even be produced in such cycles?
Yes. That works. An example that everyone knows is PET bottles, for which a separate cycle has been established. High-quality raw materials are obtained from the old bottles in a simple mechanical process and used to produce the same product. In order for this to be worthwhile, guidelines are needed. PET bottles, for example, must be returned and recycled. This is an incentive to enforce standards. If the manufacturers mixed in hundreds of chemicals, no high-quality raw materials could be recovered and they realized, oops, maybe we should have designed it differently from the start.
Are there other role models?
My favorite example is mattresses. Many are made of polyurethane, a plastic that cannot be easily recycled, and end up incinerated. A Dutch company has managed to set up its own circuit for mattresses. The ones they use are made of polyester, are collected and recycled for further processing. Building something like this takes years and is not easy. But the most important thing is that you want it.
The Chemical Industry Association suggests ways other than the circular economy to reduce the industry’s high CO2 emissions, such as carbon capture. How do you assess the potential?
Carbon capture involves capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and using it as a raw material instead of using petroleum. In principle, this is a good approach. But: The processes are incredibly energy-intensive. The same applies to so-called chemical recycling, in which materials are broken down into their basic chemical components and reassembled again. According to calculations by the chemical industry, the climate-neutral transition using these technologies would require eleven times as much electricity as today. This simply cannot be achieved because we are also electrifying mobility and heat supply at the same time. Renewable energy is also only available to a limited extent.
How willing do you think the chemical industry is to fundamentally think about these challenges?
The problem is that the business models of the conventional chemical industry have been designed for decades to bring new substances onto the market. Now it is ready to replace petroleum-based raw materials and fossil energies. But on a large scale this is very complex. At today’s meeting in the Chancellery there is an elephant in the room that no one is talking about: the production volumes of classic basic chemicals are not compatible with a climate-neutral circular economy.
You have a start-up with 40 employees, 460,000 people are employed in the chemical industry plus half a million at suppliers. Aren’t you making it too easy for yourself if you declare their technologies to be unsustainable? It’s about a lot of money and a lot of jobs.
I can understand that it is a huge challenge to develop new business models. Listed corporations in particular are under immense pressure from shareholders in view of the current decline in sales. But just like in the auto industry, change will come and it makes no sense to continue investing in fossil-based technologies. There are already many innovative companies that make sales with sustainable, climate-friendly technologies – and they create jobs that are truly future-proof.
In the acute crisis, the chemical industry association is calling for industrial electricity prices to be subsidized by the state. Some Prime Ministers and Economics Minister Robert Habeck support this. What is your position?
To say, dear Germany, if you don’t give us cheaper electricity, then we’ll close locations here and invest abroad in plants that will continue to burn fossil fuels for the next 20 or 30 years, borders on blackmail to me. It is also not a real strategy for the future – in doing so, companies are shirking the social responsibility that they so like to claim. In addition, neither electricity is saved nor new business models are devised. There are hardly any incentives. I think it would make more sense to invest in sustainable investments in Germany. The procedures are already there, and the companies working on them need huge amounts of capital.
You yourself have just received over 30 million euros from investors to build a factory in Hamburg. How difficult is it to get capital?
That was quite a feat and we are very proud of having achieved it. It’s really not easy to get money to set up production facilities. You have to go step by step, from the laboratory to an initial test facility to large-scale industrial production. In between lies Death Valley, the valley of death, which many innovative companies do not survive. When you hear that a subsidized industrial electricity price will cost around 30 billion euros, I think that if only half went to promising start-ups, it would bring in a lot more.
What does your start-up “Traceless” produce?
We use bio-based residues from agriculture and use them to produce plastic-free granules that can be melted. This is a basic property that plastics also have. Only then can you shape, press and pour them. We market these granules to plastics processors who, for example, use them to make coat hooks for the textile trade or cutlery for airlines. Our material production emits up to 95 percent less CO2 than conventional plastics.
Why can so much CO2 be saved?
Because the process is much simpler and also takes place at significantly lower temperatures than is usual in classic raw material production. To date, plastics have been made from petroleum, which is first broken down into basic chemical components in high-temperature processes, which are then reassembled into polymers. We take polymers from nature and do not have to laboriously produce them.
What happens to the coat hook or the plastic spoon when you no longer need them?
Either they decompose under natural conditions within a few weeks, they are essentially composted. Or they end up in waste incineration, where they leave no harmful substances behind and generate energy from biomass. I think we have an incredible amount of potential for sustainable products in Germany. We just have to use it.