Air Products’ business strategy is to provide sustainable solutions to customers and help them achieve their objectives. We are driven by an important ambition: to innovate alongside our customers and help them be more sustainable. We aim to produce products that improve energy efficiency, reduce environmental impact, and address societal needs such as health, safety and improving quality of life. In 2021, 56% of revenues were derived from sustainable offerings.
We are committed to enabling our customers to enhance their sustainability. We track our progress through customer avoided CO₂ emissions that our customers and their customers would otherwise emit if not for the products we produce and supply. In 2021, we made progress toward our goal of annually increasing avoided CO₂ emissions, with total avoided emissions increasing from 72 to 82 million metric tons of CO₂e avoided. This is approximately equivalent to the emissions from almost 18 millions cars and more than three times our own direct and indirect CO₂e emissions.
Much of Air Products' hydrogen supply today is used in the production of cleaner traditional transportation fuels. It is used to refine heavier, sour crudes to increase refinery yields and reduce emissions through the production of cleaner fuels including ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel. Hydrogen is an essential part of de-carbonizing the transportation sector, particularly heavy-duty vehicles.
Helium and our high purity medical gases help sustain life. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is dependent on helium, which is used to keep MRI magnets cold and superconducting. Helium is also valued as a gas for lifting, breathing, leak detection, space exploration, semiconductor manufacturing, scientific applications, and shielding. It has unique properties that optimize performance and productivity, reduce labor costs, and improve safety. As a leading producer and supplier of helium, Air Products has pioneered many of the helium extraction, production, distribution, and storage technologies still in use – including cryogenic equipment for most of the world's helium recovery plants.
The use of LNG continues to increase globally with strong energy demands in growing economies. Air Products’ LNG technology and equipment enable the efficient and economic production and transport of this critical energy resource, including from stranded energy sources around the globe. More LNG is produced using Air Products’ mixed component refrigerant and liquefaction processes than any other processes, with over 100 LNG trains currently in operation. We manufacture this efficient and reliable equipment at our state-of-the-art facility in Florida.
Gases for MAP and Freshline® solutions use high-purity gases and equipment to extend the shelf life of food, improve taste, reduce waste, and help to keep production cost down. The research and development team at Air Products has been at the forefront of food freezing for over 50 years, pioneering cryogenic technology, and continuing to push the boundaries of efficiency and versatility while working to ensure safety and hygiene.
Our products are used in hundreds of different applications. Some of these uses result in significantly lower carbon emissions compared to baseline technologies they replace or improve upon. Each year Air Products tracks emissions avoided by our customers, and in some cases, users further downstream in the supply chain. Emissions are estimated based on the emissions avoided per unit of gas and then multiplied by the amount of gas sold in a year. Included are the emissions avoided through integration of Air Products with its customers, including the use of customer waste gases as feeds to our processes and providing customers with efficiently produced by-product steam from our hydrogen plants. In 2021, we enabled 82 million metric tons of CO₂e to be avoided by our customers and their customers.
Air Products’ oxy-fuel combustion technologies are used in energy-intensive applications like cement, metals, and glass manufacturing to increase production, lower fuel use and costs, reduce emissions and optimize efficiency. Air Products has been a leader in oxy-fuel technology since it was first introduced over 50 years ago and continues to help customers improve operations and efficiency through new burner designs and performance testing at our world-class combustion laboratory facilities.