Covestro is pushing deeper into industrial decarbonisation with its largest energy efficiency investment to date, unveiling a major upgrade at its Dormagen site that will cut energy use and emissions at scale.
The company is installing a new steam compressor designed to slash energy consumption in Germany by 2% annually compared to 2025 levels.
The low double-digit million-euro project is expected to save a low three-digit GWh of energy and more than 40,000 tons of CO2 every year—roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of a town of 5,000 people or about 20,000 cars.
At the heart of the upgrade is a heat-pump-style system integrated into TDI (toluene diisocyanate) production, a key material used in flexible foams. Waste steam that would normally be released as excess heat will instead be upgraded in temperature and pressure, then fed back into production processes.
“Energy efficiency is a key lever for transforming our production towards climate neutrality and a circular economy. The principle is: the less energy we need, the better,” says Thorsten Dreier, CTO of Covestro.
“That’s why we’re using every opportunity to make our production even more energy-efficient with modern, innovative process technologies.”
Covestro has already cut its energy use by around 40% between 2005 and 2022, and is now targeting a further 20% reduction in energy consumption per ton of product by 2030 (compared to 2020).
The company says the project is part of a broader strategy to capture and reuse industrial waste heat across its operations.
“With these projects, we are not only reducing our CO2 emissions, but also saving on energy costs,” says Andreas Doerfer, Global Energy Excellence Manager.
“To achieve our energy efficiency target, we must utilize all available options for using the waste heat generated in our processes to manufacture our products.”
The Dormagen upgrade follows last year’s installation of an energy-efficient reactor at the TDI plant, further reinforcing the site’s role in Covestro’s industrial transformation strategy.
“This investment clearly demonstrates Covestro’s long-term belief in the Dormagen site and its commitment to investing here,” says Philip Bahke, Head of Operations in Dormagen and North Rhine-Westphalia.
Construction is scheduled to begin at the end of this year, with the compressor expected to go live in mid-2027.
