Jim Fitterling, Chairman and CEO, Dow
Dr. Jennifer Holmgren, Chairman and CEO, LanzaTech
In conversation with: Alex Wood Morton, Fortune

Fortune Global Forum 2024: Accelerating the Global Energy Transition

Photograph by Michael O’Shea for Fortune

Conferences

Um Before we dive in just uh a housekeeping reminder for everyone in the audience, um We would love to hear questions from you and bring you into the conversation. I'm gonna kick off with a, a quick discussion with our amazing panelists and then we will bring some roving mics to you, Jim. I wanna kick off with you. Um Talk me through the transformation of Dow an incredible fortune 500 company into what you describe as the most innovative customer centric inclusive and sustainable materials company in the world. What what does that mean in practice? Well, the, the drive to be most innovative, I mean, we have a tremendous research and engineering background and so how you put that to use is pretty important. Customer Centricity is key. Um The demands are changing so rapidly for us that we have to be close, not only to our immediate customer, we're typically a B to B uh company, but also with the end users and the brand owners, customers to understand the changes that are coming. So uh customers interested in sustainability and innovation, all three go hand in hand. Um Almost everything that we're doing today for new product growth is driven by sustainability and everything we're doing to transform our footprint to get scope one into emissions to zero is the same. And then inclusion is just about creating the environment for people that allows us to attract and hire the best talent in so that we have the workforce to do that. Because the only way to have an innovative company is to have great people. It's fantastic and, and, and Jennifer, I want to turn to you. Now, you're really at the forefront of a number of practical applications of sustainable technologies. Can you share with us your vision for what many of us call the circular economy? Well, simply put we have a dream that someday everything you use in your daily lives will come from carbon that's already above ground. So that is the circular economy that we no longer throw things away. And that instead we use them to make the next product and the next product. And I understand you, you may have brought a prop with you and I want to hear more about what you're carrying with you. So this is uh so let me just take one second to tell you what we do. So we take carbon emissions and we ferment them to ethanol and then we use ethanol as an intermediate from which to make sustainable aviation fuel, uh polyester, polyethylene, et cetera. And an example of a commercial plant that we have is a steel mill in China that is would normally emit carbon dioxide and particular emissions. We take that we just pump that into our bio reactor and we convert it to ethanol that ethanol is then converted to the monomer that ends up being made into polyester. This is a crag hopper jacket that is under their Co2 Renew label. They have a whole line and basically the polyester in this jacket was going to be pollution and, and that is the circular economy. No pollution products. Hold on. Absolutely fabulous. And, and just so I get this right. This is actually into real world products happening already. Yes. Just go to the Craig Hopper website and type in Co2 Renew and we're there. You can go to the RE I website and just type lands and you'll see polyester jackets, running pants, et cetera. It's fabulous to hear that, you know, we, we talk about these things as being so conceptual and they're here and they're now and you're making it happen. Thank you. Um Jim, I'm gonna send back to you now. We've heard so much over the conversations over the last day or so. It feels like we're entering into a new political era. Um And especially when it comes to the green transition. Um We've seen a lot of successful projects particularly from Dow and from Lanza Tech where you're working in different countries as different countries take a different view on the transition. Describe to me your experience in Canada and how do you get that buy in politically? You know, we have a very interesting first mover project in Canada uh which is to create the world's first net zero scope one into ethylene and derivatives facility. And to give you an idea of the scale, uh we'll build a new 2 million ton ethylene facility. Uh next to an existing 1.5 million ton facility, we will fire the furnaces for those big uh transformative units from hydrogen uh which is made from waste by products from our own process. So typically when you take natural gas, liquid like ethane and you crack it, you get ethylene, which is the product we want to make plastics. Maybe for plastic packaging could be plastics for piping whatever. Um And then we make hydrogen and methane. We'll take that hydrogen and methane waste product, convert that through a process technology that will convert to pure hydrogen and we'll use that pure hydrogen to fire the furnaces, making the whole thing a closed loop and no scope one and two emissions. Um that will be about 25% of our global ethylene and polyethylene capacity. Why is that important? Well, brand owners use our product for, they might use it for the packaging, they might use it in textiles, they might use it in any number of things. They might use it in the ingredients that go on the inside of the package which has a big CO2 footprint for them. So if we can make those ethylene derivatives with zero scope one and two emissions, we help them tremendously reduce their footprint and that demand driver is still there. The other thing I mentioned is all all industries that make basic materials. Um The the products that we were just talking about, the project that I talked about need a tremendous amount of energy. So we have to manage through that energy transition. So we talk about cir circular hydrogen or blue hydrogen. In this case, um We're looking at small modular nuclear reactors to be able to take an existing site and convert from combined cycle natural gas to power and steam from a small modular reactor, take the entire site to zero scope 12 emissions. Um And those two things are very critical because they're 24 7 reliable power, steam and energy for the transition. So that project I mentioned in Canada is there because we're close to our raw materials which we need to be to be low cost. There are tax incentives for in making that hydrogen investment, which is a little bit more expensive but not prohibitively expensive. Um And then we also have access to a carbon capture pipeline that's in existence. So we have a place to sequester the CO2. And uh there are long term policies to be able to support it with a price to car for carbon. They have a market price on carbon in Canada. That price signal is important to drive that next wave of investment. Um We moved to Canada first because they had those policies in place. A lot of that same policy is in the Ira. Um some from the infrastructure bill, some from the IRA that's here in the United States. And actually some of the infrastructure that we need to be able to do those kinds of investments here will be coming. It's, it's under development now. So it, it really sounds like you do need to have that leadership from political leaders and policymakers to start that Jennifer on, on the partnership side of things, I mean, how have you found working with other organizations as a smaller player? And how is that um dynamic played out? Well, we have so many large partners and investors and including we have a collaboration with Dow on making uh low carbon surfactants. Um I actually think that for a small company like ours, it's extremely important to partner with the large players because we don't have the domain knowledge that allows us to be successful, right? We don't want to re invent everything, we just wanna invent the piece that we're inventing. And um so I find that these partnerships are super important in terms of um giving us knowledge. But I would also say for all of you who are in large companies, um Please try to remember that IP is the only thing a small company has and if you're need for exclusivity or certain rights is, is what you've come in to talk about, then it's, it's very difficult for a company like ours, a large company has many sources of revenue. And if the specific project doesn't move forward, that's fine. But for us, if a specific project doesn't move forward, it's life and death. So I think the relationship can work really well if, if everybody understands what the other partner needs and we're very fortunate to have just fantastic. Yeah. And, and so we, we've heard about that partnership element now, I, I have to talk about misinformation for a moment as well because from where I'm sitting in, in Europe, where I'm based, we hear a lot about carbon capture and there are a lot of people out there that are very skeptical about the technology. How do you win the hearts and minds of the skeptics? You don't, you know what? Um I, I always, I always like to say um whenever you have a new technology, it's almost like you're going to the ministry of no, everything is no, there's always a reason why it doesn't work and you know, or why it can't work or why it can't scale or why people won't want it or why it's not perfect. And the perfect being the enemy of the good is, is really the biggest thing we deal with. Um And it's tough for me to make those arguments and win those arguments. And so I think the success comes from allies. It comes from people like all of you sitting in this room who whenever somebody says, well, the Lance Tech technology can't scale. You're the one that jumps in and says, well, but if it does scale where we do submissions and we'll displace fresh fossil carbon. So why don't we give it a chance? And so I need the allies. I need the people that lean in to help us be successful. And Jim from the, the larger company perspective. Yeah, I grew up in Missouri. So show me is the answer for us. I mean, you, you have to build it and you have to show people what it can do and that requires taking some risk. Uh Jennifer's right about IP, you've got to protect your own. Ip, I think that's one of the things that all of us, you know, around the world agree to is you wanna protect your technology, but you also have to take some chances to get out there and make these things work. And um to some extent, people believe what they wanna believe, right? Until they've seen something different, until they've seen a future or they've seen an opportunity that they can't imagine. And so I think the physical, like we get enamored with the show and tell the physical aspects are huge. Fantastic. Um I'm gonna break four questions from the audience in just a moment before we do. I think given the audience of people that we have in the room. Um What lessons would you both share to our audience of business and policy leaders on the green transition? What have you learned? And what can you share as advice for going through that? And Jennifer, I'll start with you. Well, I, I think the biggest thing in terms of policy is we cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We fall in love with these beautiful ideas that are gonna be silver bullets and sometimes those silver bullets prevent progress. And you know, are we going to have hydrogen steel? Yes, when are we going to have it? Not for a while? So why not just capture steel emissions today? And so what tends to happen is we slow ourselves down? These are calls to inaction. What we really need is people to agree, small bits of progress is better than dreaming of the unicorn that's going to show up in 2035. I I would agree. I think um in the US uh on energy, we've, we've often talked about our energy policies and all of the above policy, but all of the above and focused on being a leader in those technologies focused on being low cost in those technologies. And one of the things that Jennifer mentioned, you know, in the pursuit of the perfect, we sometimes forget how expensive it is. So that project I talked about in Canada, which we will, you know, make 3 million tons, 3.5 million tons of capacity with zero scope one and two emissions. That's going to be about a billion dollar project to make the additional hydrogen that we need. It will be the largest hydrogen project that's ever F ID. If I was to do that with green hydrogen, I would need seven gigawatts of electricity and all the electrolyzers to make the green hydrogen, it wouldn't be a billion dollars more expensive. So for me to do it at a price where a brand owner can say I can convert my product line uh means I can't wait for green hydrogen. I have to move now and make that transition now. Fantastic. Um If you could raise your hand in the audience, if we have any questions, I can't see anyone that uh we have one at the front. We've got a mic. Thank you. If you could say your name and company, that would be fantastic. Je uh I'm the founder and president of women in the world, uh sustainability woman in the world. I know Jennifer. Uh Thank you for all your leadership. My question is uh the, the uh you know, I congratulations on moving us from linear to circular model. Um And every, you know, every uh in innovation in, in that, in that transition is, is critically important in, in the era of uh you know, needing the world, needing more collaboration and partnership. You know, we, we are moving to looking at advanced recycling uh chemical recycling in, in context of taking, you know, truly circular uh direction in terms of getting the consumer waste as an input, as a, you know, waste as an input and then, you know, creating that bigger circle circle. Uh So two questions, are you uh are you collaborating with other chemical companies like Eastman, um Dupont and BASF who are looking at that? Uh So that's one question. Second question is, you know, we've seen like new shiny things. I mean, you sell the world's biggest fiber to fiber recycling um 60,000 tons a year, you know, went through truly crisis and chaos. So they're back on their feet and, and you know, on their way to make an impact again, but is, is land the tech, another shiny thing. How do you maintain this momentum? Thank you. Well, on circularity, I, I would say a huge opportunity. All the companies are working some together and some in competition on all forms of technologies. Uh We have a target to have 3 million metric tons of recycled materials. Uh I think the biggest thing is getting the high quality materials back in. So one of the biggest limiting steps on our ability to recycle is getting that waste. We don't want it to go to landfill. We'd rather have it sorted out and brought back uh to the entry point for feedstocks on, on the issue of, are we the next shiny object? That's a great question. Um One comment I would make is I think what we have done as a company is shown that gas fermentation works and scales. We have six commercially operating plans. And what I'm starting to see is a bunch of other companies doing gas fermentation. So I would say gas fermentation is becoming a thing and, and I, I think we've enabled that and is it a shiny object if there is something better that, that can do the things we do? I'm all for it. I, I think the competition is really climate change and not companies versus other companies. So I welcome being obsolete. All right. Thank you so much for your fabulous question. I'm so sorry. I think we are completely tight on time. I wish we could get more, more questions in. I wanna say a huge thank you to both Jim and Jennifer for being fantastic. Thank you.