Energy
Energy is essential to the chemical industry. INEOS believes a sustainable energy strategy must combine engineering, realism and long-term competitiveness to keep plants running, protect jobs, support investment and reduce emissions over time.
At INEOS, we approach energy in the same way we approach safety and operations: through engineering, realism, and long-term competitiveness. A sustainable energy strategy must keep plants running, protect jobs, and enable continued investment while delivering lower emissions over time.
INEOS operates large, continuous, energy- intensive assets. These assets require reliable, high-quality power and heat, delivered at scale, 24 hours a day. For most sites, this means a dependency on national power grids and associated infrastructure. The pace and effectiveness of grid decarbonisation is therefore a critical external dependency for INEOS, for the wider chemical sector, and society. Electrification, renewable power sourcing, and power purchase agreements can only deliver meaningful emissions reduction if clean electricity is available in sufficient volumes and at competitive prices, and if the transition is properly managed by sourcing the fossil fuels needed during the transition from secure locations and locations with the lowest impact.
INEOS is actively reducing its own emissions through energy efficiency, fuel switching, on-site generation, and long-term power purchase agreements. However, company action alone is not enough. Industrial decarbonisation cannot run ahead of system decarbonisation.
Commercial competitiveness is equally essential.
Energy costs are a decisive factor for investment decisions in chemicals. Europe already operates at a structural energy cost disadvantage compared to regions such as North America and the Middle East. If decarbonisation policies increase energy prices or reduce reliability without adequate safeguards, production will move, emissions will not fall globally, and Europe will lose strategic industrial capability. A sustainable energy strategy must therefore maintain a level playing field and avoid carbon leakage.
INEOS invests where energy is reliable, affordable, and supported by long-term policy certainty.
Large-scale projects – whether new assets, electrification, hydrogen conversion, or carbon capture – require confidence that energy systems and markets will remain viable over decades. Short-term measures, unstable pricing mechanisms, or poorly designed market interventions undermine that confidence and delay investment.
Regulatory pragmatism is critical. The chemical sector cannot decarbonise on paper. It requires proven technologies, enabling infrastructure, and commercially viable pathways. Regulation must recognise site-specific constraints, technology readiness, and the long lifetimes of industrial assets. Mandates that move faster than engineering reality risk shutting down assets rather than transforming them.
INEOS supports policies that accelerate grid investment, expand clean power generation, and enable industrial electrification, hydrogen networks, and carbon capture at scale. We also support market mechanisms and regulatory frameworks that protect industrial competitiveness while delivering real emissions reductions.
Sustainable energy provision for the chemical sector depends on three fundamentals:
- Decarbonised and reliable national power systems
- Competitive energy pricing to sustain
- European industry, and pragmatic regulation that enables investment rather than discourages it.
Project Greensand Case Study
The transition from demonstration to full-scale operation represents a leap forward in the deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as practical and scalable in Europe.
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Electrochemistry At Industrial Scale
INEOS Electrochemical Solutions enables essential chemistry
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Hydrogen Fuel Switch - Hull
During 2025, INEOS implemented a major £30m investment at its Hull manufacturing site at Saltend, to convert key plant assets to operate on hydrogen instead of natural gas.
Read the case study