气候变化领域集成服务门户

The chemical industry is one of the typical sources of harmful pollutants and some of which are difficult to tackle. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are of great concern to the performance of chemical industries regarding environmental impacts, and one of the core programs is the global voluntary Responsible Care Program (RCP), aiming to encourage the industries to voluntarily report environmental performance data. Due to the voluntary reporting system, the collected datasets are huge while often heterogeneous, which makes it difficult to analyse the performance and evaluate the difference before and after the launch of the program. Direct comparison of actual indicators may fail to provide an accurate estimation of the implementing efficiency of the RCP. In this study, an original algorithm is developed to analyse the environmental KPIs of chemical companies involved in the RCP, in order to investigate the efficiency of the program and provide insightful suggestions for further development of the data reporting, as well as to provide advice for the further application of the program. The results showed that most of the environmental impacts of the chemical industries in the RF, e.g. soil pollution and water pollution, has been decreasing after the launching of the program. However, for both the companies involved in the RCP and the entire chemical industrial sector of the RF chemical industry, the GHG emissions maintained an increase. A major insightful conclusion is more energy has been used for improving more direct environmental impact, while the attention for impacts with longer harm potential, e.g. GHG emissions, has been shifted. Further policies and regulations should be targeted at the impact of the chemical industry on climate change, and new technologies should be encouraged to improve the efficiency of energy use and thus decrease GHG emissions. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.