Ninety-third Chem Show meets $93 a barrel

Weather and natural disasters flash across our TV screens and greenhouse gases and global warming may or may not be their cause.
Russell Heinen, spoke about green chemical engineering and its role in the global atmosphere, during the Chem Show’s opening keynote at the Javits Center in New York Tuesday.
The chemical/petrochemical industry and ancillary products are a primary source of greenhouse gases (GHG) and global warming.
Kevin Swift, chief economist for the American Chemistry Council, was supposed to give the keynote but couldn’t get to the venue … bad weather.
“Even the U.S. is acknowledging that there may be something called global warming as President Bush is making environmental proposals as recently as last week,” said Heinen, vice president at SRI, a consulting and information research organization that covers the chemical industry.
Large oil companies, formerly skeptical of the global warming concept, are on board too, for marketing and public relations purposes if nothing else.
“While regulations, water, product toxicity, product lifecycle, and government subsidies and the encouragement of the biofuel industry are all important influences on our business, the biggest concern and pressure now is that oil is $93 a barrel,” Heinen said.
“Carbon credits are certainly a factor in our future but energy is clearly the biggest concern of the chemical process industries (CPI).”
Heinen pointed out the numerous improvements in energy usage over the years by CPI and called on the three biggest emitters of GHG–the U.S., China, and the Middle East–to get on board with the Kyoto accords and REACH.
REACH is a European initiative whereby the burden of proof for demonstrating the safe use of chemical transfers from EU member states to industry.
These three countries/regions are responsible for 41% of the earth’s greenhouse gas emissions and so far have not joined international agreements to stifle the problem.
– Nicholas Sheble