Leading industry and healthcare-focused gases, technologies, and services company Air Liquide announced today the launch of ADVANCE, its new strategic plan for 2025. Decarbonization-related opportunities and initiatives form a major part of the strategy, which includes plans for the company to invest €8 billion in hydrogen supply chain by 2035, and to dedicate half of its industrial investments through 2025 to the energy transition.

The company stated that ADVANCE places Sustainable Development at the heart of its strategy, and is structured around four pillars of financial performance, decarbonization, fostering progress through technological innovation, and acting for all.

Benoît Potier, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Air Liquide Group, said:

“In a world transformed by the covid epidemic, and marked by a geopolitical crisis whose dimension of humanitarian disaster is overwhelming, we have to act today but also keep preparing the future. With ADVANCE, financial performance, as well as environmental and societal performances, are combined in our objectives.”

Last year, Air Liquide launched a set of sustainability initiatives, including targets to begin reducing absolute emissions around 2025, and set goals to reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 33% by 2035 compared to 2020, with the target of reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.

Its new plan includes an acceleration in hydrogen development, including targets to triple hydrogen revenues in order to reach more than €6 billion by 2035 by investing approximately €8 billion in hydrogen supply chain by 2035. The company also aims to bring its total electrolysis capacity to 3 GW by 2030.

On the technological innovation front, the company outlined plans to focus on five new markets, including hydrogen mobility, and notably heavy-duty mobility in which low-carbon hydrogen will play a key role, electronics, healthcare, industry, and space.

To include the perspective of its stakeholders and those of society at large, the company aims to foster employee engagement and engage shareholders and communities. Targets include having 35% of women among its engineers and professionals, and 100% of its employees to benefit from care coverage and have the opportunity to engage in activities to support communities by 2025.

Potier added:

“For Air Liquide, building the future means delivering strong financial results, as it is a condition to our durability and our ability to invest for the future ; but it also means to act as a leader in decarbonization of the industry, to promote progress through technological innovation and to act for all. With ADVANCE, Air Liquide is opening a new chapter of its history by linking inseparably growth and sustainable future.”