Elevating Sustainability to a Core Business Priority and Value Driver

For many years, the negative externalities of heavy industrial operations were brushed off as merely the cost of doing business, or an inescapable feature of working with damaging by-products and high-temperature environments. Today, with 22% of global CO₂ emissions attributable to heavy industries, such mindsets have thankfully shifted.

Everyone from regulators and the working public to politicians and C-level executives is now recognising and emphasising the existential importance of reducing carbon emissions. As individuals make lifestyle changes for the good of the environment, they expect industry and politicians to do the same. Now it seems that business and sustainability are no longer distinct entities, but rather two sides to the same coin.

Words and PR messages are no longer enough; improving sustainability must be centred around taking action. This has been underlined by government-level initiatives, not least the requirements of the Paris Agreement, which place a shared accountability for dramatically reducing carbon levels. The drivers for change extend beyond regulatory requirements, with improvements in cost reductions and brand perception presenting attractive outcomes for companies that lead in this regard.

For industrial organisations to achieve this, improving sustainability cannot be seen as a peripheral area of industrial practices, rather it needs to be fully integrated into all growth and innovation strategies.

The Drive to Innovate

Progress relies on change. When it comes to facilitating sustainability as a core business driver, capitalising on the latest developments in science and technology enables new approaches that have never previously been possible. Our own company is an example of an opportunity that emerged from an important scientific breakthrough; that being the discovery of a natural organism that can ferment gaseous carbon and convert it into ethanol. This process is like traditional fermentation except a biocatalyst instead of a yeast ferments carbon containing gases, instead of sugar.

This one discovery has since given birth to a global business that supports the wholescale adoption of more sustainable business models across industries not conventionally seen as environmentally friendly. Since the discovery of this organism alone, we’ve created more than 90 million litres of ethanol and mitigated more than 100 million tons of CO₂.

This is just one example of the many opportunities that exist. By re-evaluating operations and identifying areas of waste, businesses can make fundamental change to business models in line with their ambitious sustainability goals in order to find new sources of value.

The Drive to Succeed

We’ve put this ethos into practice in a joint project with global steel producer ArcelorMittal. Working alongside digitisation experts Rockwell Automation, LanzaTech’s gas fermentation technology is enabling the capture and valorisation of carbon from emissions at one of ArcelorMittal’s steel mills in Belgium.

Conventionally, blast furnaces are one of the most wasteful parts of steelmaking operations. As illustrated in the diagram below, we’ve tackled this problem with our technology to capture the carbon in the steel off-gases and convert it to ethanol using proprietary microbes that feed on the gases rather than sugar, as in traditional fermentation. As a result, the carbon is recycled into a valuable commodity that enables economic routes to sustainable fuels, including sustainable aviation fuel, and chemicals that can serve as building blocks for everyday consumer products, such as plastics and synthetic fibres that can be used in CarbonSmart^TM packaging and textiles applications.