How a decade of sustainability accomplishments lead Dow to a decade of even bigger goals

At Dow, environmental sustainability is our business plan.

In 2006, we set out on a decade-long quest to accomplish a set of ambitious sustainability goals. The 2015 Sustainability Goals focused on expanding our efforts into products and solutions that helped our customers and the world to save energy, grow better food, and create clean water supplies. And we implemented these goals without losing sight of our operational footprint.

We recently released our 2015 Sustainability Report, which offers an in-depth look into exactly what we accomplished over the last decade. As the Corporate Vice President, EH&S, and Chief Sustainability Officer at Dow, I knew that as a company, and with our partners, we would be working hard and accomplishing a lot. But it is still impressive to see all of our efforts laid out in black and white, to measure and analyze the positive impacts we have made.

Here are a few key accomplishments our company made over the last decade, though there are many more listed in our new 2015 Sustainability Report:

We shifted our operational paradigm of energy use and climate change impacts.

Our 2015 goal was to maintain greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) below 2006 levels, on an absolute basis, for all GHGs. We exceeded that goal: our GHG emissions reduced from 44 to 32 million metric tons per year, which is 12 million metric tons per year or 27 percent below 2006 levels.

We continue to focus on managing our footprint and providing solutions to reduce GHG emissions and save energy. Far ahead of schedule, we met an additional goal to use 400 megawatts of clean power by 2025 by now having 545 megawatts of capacity that are either low carbon or from renewable sources.

As a result, we have increased the goal to 750 megawatts by 2025.

Our products made significant, positive impacts in food, water and energy usage.

Focusing on the “handprint”, or impact, of our products was a key consideration in our 2015 Sustainability Goals. We are proud of our breakthrough product innovations, such as BETAMATE? Structural Adhesives, an enabling technology for dissimilar material assembly, improving vehicle safety and durability while optimizing weight reduction. As a result, 23 million tons of CO2 emissions and 10 billion liters of gasoline have been saved since 1999.

Dow innovations under the 2015 Sustainability Goals also helped support human health. Since 2005, Dow’s Omega-9 oils helped eliminate more than 1.5 million pounds of trans and saturated fat from the North American diet. Omega-9 oils address an important societal need to improve the fat profile of popular foods and decrease the instances of Type 2 diabetes, as well as cardiovascular and coronary disease.

1.8 billion people will live in water-scarce regions by 2025. This stark fact forces us to think of water conservation and reuse in new ways. FILMTEC? ECO Reverse Osmosis Elements, another one of our breakthrough technologies under the 2015 Sustainability Goals, address water scarcity challenges by delivering 40 percent better water purification using 30 percent less energy than industry-standard reverse osmosis.

Though those accomplishments are noteworthy, our future depends on not losing any of the momentum we have generated. That is why we are already moving ahead with our 2025 Sustainability Goals. Even more ambitious than our previous goals, the 2025 Goals redefine the role of business in society by providing blueprints not just for our company, but for the planet.

By 2025, through the goals Dow will:

• Develop new business models to advance the circular economy, by making waste products into building blocks for valuable new products and services
• Lead the global “blueprint” for sustainable action by rallying partners in government and the private sector
• Deliver $1 billion in net present value through projects that are good for business and good for ecosystems
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Earlier I said that sustainability is our business plan, and we do expect our 2025 Sustainability Goals to be profitable. We expect these goals to generate a $2 billion return on a $1 billion investment over ten years. The impact of sustainable innovation on our bottom line is clear—and we know that Dow’s greatest opportunities in the future lie where our combined expertise intersects with global needs