Chemical companies are putting European assets up for sale as they review their operations in the region to cope with high energy prices and competition from newer plants in Asia and the Middle East.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire owner of petrochemicals group Ineos, has consistently warned that Britain’s chemical industry is heading for extinction because of high energy prices and carbon taxes.
Considering the damage chemical companies do to the environment and public health this sounds like a very good thing for Europe, but they will look for places where the leach is looser and it might be a really bad thing for the planet as a whole. I hope EU governments care enough about that
In Europe they can’t do much harm, we have very strict regulations. But without chemical industries, we’ll not have modern society: no food for 8 billions, no tech, no gas and no batteries, no plastic. You want to remove from Europe the chemical industry and than what?
Can’t do much harm? Chemical companies are still dumping forever chemicals (PFAS) in our rivers. With or without a permit to do so. Yes, governments give companies permits to pollute our rivers. Just look at recent examples like 3M polluting the Scheldt:
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/dutch-government-hold-3m-liable-forever-chemicals-damage-2023-05-23/
This
+ Kicking chemical companies out will just make them behave severely more recklessly somewhere else, which is gonna overally harm the environment
Well we have food for 16 billion and half of it is thrown away.
And 80% of the other half is used to feed animals, turning every 1000kg of food into 1kg of food.
There is a minimum viable petrochemical sector. It’s not the current one.