Ecolab celebrates 100 years in 2023. Could you remind our audience of Ecolab’s mission?
We put water and sustainability at the center of our strategy, our entire innovation pipeline being focused on helping our customers become more effective in their plans to reduce GHG, optimize water and energy use, and generally gain more data visibility. The world is moving at a much more accelerated pace since the pandemic, markets are becoming more regulated, and businesses struggle to define and carry out their plans, especially when these need to be localized; Ecolab brings digital platforms to help customers benchmark consumption patterns within their sites, and with the intelligence gathered, to ultimately make a switch from reactive to proactive plant management.
How do you observe the importance placed on sustainability to have changed in recent years in Latin America?
2030 is much regarded as an inflection point for humanity in terms of curbing that 1.5 Celsius target established with the Paris Agreement and reinforced recently at COP27. The truth is that 2030 is not so far, it is already on the medium-term horizon, which adds a lot of pressure on all companies. Latin America is a highly diverse region, with different maturity levels, and great disparities in terms of the availability of water, energy, and other natural resources. While some of our customers rely on 100 years old infrastructure, others are much quicker to adapt. There was a time when our customers saw sustainability as an additional cost. No longer true. We have demonstrated sustainability is an investment and that productivity goes hand in hand with sustainability. For example, by reducing 40% of water use, a company can also indirectly cut down 22% of energy use, as well as 12% of GHG emissions, so there are interconnected effects across both cost and environmental dimensions since moving, heating or cooling water requires energy.
The other big change we are seeing reaping across the region is regulation, from where to discard certain resources, to the allergenic content and general composition of those products. For trading to continue between countries, everyone needs to speak the same language in terms of regulations. In Latam, for instance, we have seen the wider adoption of REACH and a general alignment to European standards, local players gradually adhering to the same rigors of sustainability.
What is the specific context of Latin America in terms of water use and climate change?
Climate change has a bigger impact than ever. In a global survey conducted just last year, 80% of people declared to be impacted by climate change in one way or another; in Northern Latam, including Mexico, more than 90% felt directly touched by climate change, typically through a shortage of water or food. As in most developing countries, agriculture plays a big role in Latin American economies, so 70% of the water spent goes to agriculture in the region. Much of that water is lost (evaporated) due to poor management and bad infrastructure. Investments must be directed to redistribute resources; for example, the north of Mexico, where 80% of the population lives and 80% of GDP is generated, is severely water deprived, with a water availability of only 30%; meanwhile, the south, where only 20% of the people live, has 80% water availability. In the future, I believe it will become a normality for companies to have to treat water before using it, especially in water-stressed areas.
Could you explain in more detail the ways in which Ecolab supports petrochemical clients?
The stakes in for refineries are very high: Any unplanned halt in production can cause losses of US$1.5 million/day, which is why automatic control, through solutions like our Ecolab3D, is essential to make predictions. If a refinery with a capacity of about 200,000 bpd can improve the consistency of the crude mix, it could save 50 cents/barrel – this is US$30 million/year. Within our CrudeFlex program, Ecolab offers technologies like 3D TRASAR to determine the quality of the crude mix, understand those properties and differences (amino concentration, salinity, etc.), and reduce contaminations and variability. Latin America continues to depend on petroleum, just like modern populations remain incredibly dependent on plastics. McKinsey points to 2030 as a consumption peak for the oil economy, but investments in this space carry on for now, so Ecolab is here to support our customers in the energy space, both traditional energy but also hydro and geothermal.
