Honeywell Pledges for Carbon Neutrality by 2035

Honeywell is an industrial conglomerate, and it has been in existence for over 130 years. It has a strong presence in India and is also a dedicated partner to India, investing in cutting-edge technology development, engineering centers, manufacturing facilities, and their workforce across the country. Honeywell is committed to creating solutions for the challenges faced by the Indian industry.

It has recently made a significant pledge to achieve carbon neutrality in its operations and facilities by the year 2035. Now, Honeywell's aim is to attain carbon neutrality by 2035 with counterbalance its carbon emissions. The company is committed to eliminating an equal amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

While presenting the project Carbon Neutrality, Ashish Gaikwad, Managing Director, Honeywell Automation India Limited, spoke about how Honeywell remains committed to driving innovation and tackling global challenges like climate change for a better future for all. He said: "60% of our Research and Development Budget is invested in Sustainability research with a focus on bringing technologies that can protect the environment and prevent climate change. Our Honeywell Technology Centre in Gurugram is focused on refining technologies, petrochemical production, and biofuels.  It is a key contributor in developing sustainable solutions like Ethanol to Jet and Diesel, Carbon Capture technology, low global warming potential refrigerants, blowing agents like Solstices that has a staggering 99.9% lower than HFCs, and Battery Energy Management and Storage solutions to enable the transition to renewables and offering to enable plastic circularity to reduce plastic from going into landfills.

Additionally, we are actively working towards reducing our carbon footprint and contributing to a healthier planet by continuously implementing over 6,100 sustainability projects since 2010. We are well on our path to being carbon neutral by 2035. Honeywell Technology Solutions are powering innovation that has the potential to positively impact the planet.”

Additionally, Deepak Bisht, Director, HAIL spoke with us to throw more light on the initiative.

Read here to know more:

DQ: Give us some key highlights from your presentation

Deepak Bisht: I think primarily I will focus on the sustainable technologies we are working on. There are a lot of technologies that we have been working on and are all ready to offer. The adoption of those technologies sometimes depends on the right kind of I would say the legislations or the adoptions which the government has to come up with policies on. So absolutely technologies are there, the commercialization of these technologies will depend on how quickly the government can come and start putting the legislation around it. So these are going to be important.

DQ: You spoke about conversion of ethanol to jet. Could you please give us some detail about it?

Deepak Bisht: Sure. You know it's not a very complex process. There are broadly 3 steps in the entire process. What you do is you take ethanol, dehydrate, remove the water molecule, you make ethylene. Now there are lots of ethylene molecules that can combine. To form a molecule that is equivalent to a jet molecule and then you hydrogenate it to make it stable. So these are the three steps in which we are converting a smaller molecule into something which is equivalent to a jet molecule. An absolutely from a molecular perspective, they are exactly the same as something coming from a fossil theory. So that is the whole process looks like it is important.

If India has to meet a sustainability target by 2070 or maybe get to a 50% by 2035, they have to start looking at de-carbonizing many of these fuels. Gasoline. They are doing enough by doing 20% blending of ethanol. There is nothing at this point in time on the diesel part and the jet part. Jet is being driven globally as sustainable aviation fuel. The Indian government has to adapt to it. Otherwise, many of our global fight flights will not be able to go into those countries that will enforce that legislation. So we will have to really figure out a way of solving it immediately. The biggest component of a fuel pool is diesel, Diesel is one of the biggest bugs. The government also has to start thinking about how do they go ahead and de-carbonize diesel.

So we have the technology, some of these technologies like ethanol to jet can always be supposed to make more green diesel. We have eco-finding technology which can also make jet as well as green diesel. So from a technology perspective, there are technologies that exist. It is a matter of when the government really starts enforcing it and making these things costlier than conventional crude processes. So absolutely it will not be adopted by people without any legislation or incentivizations. So the government has to figure out some policies with respect to it.

DQ: You also spoke about plastic circulation? Do you need any specific segregation for this plastic circulation or any kind of plastic can be used?

Deepak Bisht: We can do any kind of plastic but the only restriction is in terms of something which contains chlorine. There is a Polyvinyl chloride PVC type of plastic and it is not the ability of the technology to handle it. It is just because the chlorine molecule will form at CL and that creates a lot of issues with the downstream processes. That is the only limitation. The technology will still convert it, So now absolutely you do not need segregation. The process is very simple, you go and convert, and melt it.

Make it in a liquid form, crack it at higher temperatures, collect the crack product, and then stabilize it and it is called a recycled polymer feedstock. You can transfer that recycle polymer feedstock and put it into a steam tracker to make a virgin polymer virgin ethylene which can go into a polymerization process. So absolutely the downstream is already ready. The upstream is putting up an upcycle kind of technology that can make and can help recycle more and more of it.

DQ: Have you tied up with any plastic waste recyclers?

Deepak Bisht: We are working globally with a lot of different waste suppliers, we are seeing a lot of interest globally also in adopting it. At this point in time, I think we are working with at least 4 to 5 globally in order to do that, especially countries that have very clear-cut segregation and collection policies. Plastics are the people who will adopt them faster.

DQ: At Honeywell, you took a pledge that you will go carbon neutral by 2035. So what are the practices behind that?

Deepak Bisht: We have plenty of it, let's start with the most scope ones. If you start with scope, one kind of input. Anything which we use, anything with the electricity we consume, the utilities, we are consumers, and we are trying to make it all sustainable. That is the first step and I think the majority of those steps are being taken. The second step is to start looking at scope two and scope wherein the kind of people we work with, the companies we work with, the companies who provide inputs to us slowly we are converting them into somebody, someone who has adopted those.

Sustainable practices. So absolutely there is a very structured way in which we are moving forward. We are changing all our utilities to become more and more sustainable. Whatever we can do internally to put in either solar kind of panels, we are doing it and additional ones are going to be bought from preferentially those people who are making renewal budget.