Sustainability

Climate

As a leading global merchant of agricultural goods, working to help feed and clothe a growing population worldwide, we must take action to mitigate and adapt to climate change, as rising temperatures, frequent weather changes and water shortages affect agricultural supply chains, threatening ecosystems and livelihoods worldwide.

Building a Resilient Business

Climate change poses significant risks to our business, affecting crop yields, supply chains, community livelihoods and access to essential resources like clean water. While its impacts are global, understanding localized risks is key to ensuring the resilience of our operations and value chains.

Climate considerations are embedded in our strategy and guide risk management, financial and operational decisions to maintain business stability and competitiveness. Given the deep connection between nature and climate, there has never been a greater need for our sector to transform how we grow crops, transform, transport and distribute agricultural products, and power our business.

Our Approach

Our focus is to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – from our own operations and those generated by activities in our value chains. Our Climate Transition Action Plan sets out near-term emissions reduction targets and our action plan to lower our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. We calculate our Scope 1, 2, 3 corporate emissions footprint in line with GHG Protocol guidance, reporting these figures annually through the CDP questionnaire and our own Integrated Reports.

Our Targets

Our operations: Reduce our absolute Scope 1 & 2 GHG emissions by 33.6% by 2030, from a 2022 baseline.

Our value chain: Reduce emissions of agricultural commodities originated by LDC* by 20% per ton of product originated (tCO2e/t) by 2030, from a 2022 baseline.

Our value chain: Reduce emissions associated with Land Use Change by 30% per ton of product originated by LDC* (tCO2e/t) by 2030, from a 2022 baseline.

*Commodities originated by LDC include commodities directly originated from farmers – considered as direct suppliers, as well as commodities originated by LDC from cooperatives, local aggregators and other third-party suppliers – considered as indirect suppliers. Commodities originated by LDC do not include internationally traded volumes received from other crop originators as customs cleared for export.

Our Priorities

Decarbonizing Our Operations

To reduce our emissions, we have developed a detailed, asset-by-asset roadmap defining a pathway between now and 2030 with a portfolio of decarbonization levers, their abatement potential, timing of implementation and required budget.

Process improvements and energy efficiency measures include cogeneration (combined heat and power), electrification of heat processes through the installation of industrial heat pumps and mechanical vapor recompression, switching to solid biomass and biogas as fuel sources, investing in renewable electricity through power purchase agreements (PPAs) with wind and solar producers, and procuring unbundled Environmental Attribute Certificates (EACs).

In Action

Offshore wind power in China

The electricity needs of LDC’s crushing plant in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, China, are met with green power produced by the CGN Shanwei Jiazii 500MW offshore wind farm. This reduced the plant’s Scope 2 emissions by approximately 10,000 tCO2e in 2023.

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Reducing Emissions in Our Value Chain

To achieve our Scope 3 intensity targets, we have developed a time-bound roadmap that models the impacts of our two main strategic value chain decarbonization levers:

Eliminating deforestation and conversion from our supply chains:

We anticipate meeting our land use change intensity reduction target through the implementation of our deforestation- and conversion-free (DCF) commitment.

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Advancing regenerative agriculture programs in key supply sheds:

We expect to contribute to our Scope 3 intensity target by advancing the adoption of regenerative farming practices that can deliver on-farm emissions reductions and carbon removals in our key supply sheds around the world.

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Toward More Sustainable Products & Solutions

The need to decarbonize the food, feed and fuel industries creates new market opportunities to offer our customers less carbon-intensive solutions that help reduce their value chain carbon footprint, achieve their climate goals, fulfill regulatory requirements, and integrate climate-positive solutions. To this end, in 2024 we continued to evolve our portfolio with low-carbon-intensity, regeneratively-grown and DCF products and solutions.

Regenerative agriculture

An important opportunity to meet climate targets is to remove carbon through regenerative agricultural practices such as planting cover crops, diversification of rotations and agroforestry. We partner with farmers, input companies and downstream partners to advance regenerative agriculture and provide support with implementation of local transition plans.

We have initiated several programs around the world that help agriculture play a critical role in addressing biodiversity loss, nutrient pollution and freshwater consumption.

Low-carbon fuels

As global renewable fuel requirements continue to grow, demand for low-carbon feedstocks is on the rise. LDC has a longstanding history in biofuels markets and produces several biofuel products and by-products, such as biodiesel, bioethanol and palm-fatty-acid distillate globally, including in North America, Indonesia, Germany and Argentina.

By prioritizing the supply and processing of sustainable, low-carbon and second-generation biofuel feedstocks, we aim to contribute to a cleaner, more sustainable energy future. Energy customers are seeking reliable supply options to meet their sustainability goals and, as part of our ambition to scale regenerative agriculture, we strive to enhance the sustainability profile of these feedstocks and lowering the carbon intensity of renewable fuels.

In Action

Introducing camelina to support the production of advanced biofuels

Camelina is used as an ultra-low-carbon feedstock for advanced biofuels production.

It is an ‘intermediate crop’ planted during winter, between main crops in South America, helping to preserve soil health, especially between summer crops of soy and corn. It is already promoted by LDC and Global Clean Energy in South America, as part of a strategic collaboration since 2023. Grown on fallow land, camelina doesn’t compete with food-crop production and provides additional income to farmers. This next generation oilseed plant improves soil health and increases soil carbon content, contributing to carbon removals. Camelina oil is also classified as an advanced feedstock which allows significant emission savings versus first generation biofuels and fossil fuels. Camelina meal is an ingredient for high protein animal feed production and camelina oil is used to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and Renewable Diesel (RD).

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Participation in global carbon markets

LDC is an active player in the global voluntary carbon market, as well as in established carbon compliance schemes such as the EU Emission Trading Scheme, the Tianjin Emission Trading Scheme in China and the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA). Our carbon reduction project portfolio within and beyond LDC’s operations is a source of high-quality carbon credits and removals that help meet our own and our customers’ GHG emissions reduction targets and, ultimately, mitigate climate change.

LDC co-finances, provides offtake guarantees and facilitates the technical development of projects from early stage until issuance of carbon credits. All our projects are certified by leading carbon standards, including the Verified Carbon Standard, Gold Standard, American Carbon Registry and the Climate Action Reserve.

In Action

Household water filtration systems, Kenya

This Gold Standard project involves the distribution of water purifiers to over 640,000 households in the country.

Households can purify water, removing bacteria and toxic substances, without needing to boil it on fires fueled by unsustainably harvested wood, a previously common practice that contributed to deforestation and environmental degradation. The project is expected to generate 2.2 million tCO2e in emissions reductions from 2020 to 2025.

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Improved cropland management, China

This project is introducing regenerative agriculture practices on 20,000 hectares of degraded cropland in Hebei Province.

Improved practices, such as reduced tillage, optimized chemical fertilizer application and returning straw residue to grain fields, were implemented, monitored and verified in 2023. The project is estimated to sequester over 2.4 million tCO2e over its 20-year lifecycle.

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Collaboration for Decarbonization

Collaboration is central not only to our own decarbonization journey, but to the many sustainability challenges facing our industry, which can only be addressed if all value chain participants are united in their efforts.

We strongly believe that necessary value chain transformations must happen at industry level, which is why we continually leverage our position as a leading global actor, to influence others across our supply chains to take actions to mitigate climate change, making deliberate time and resource investments to work together to generate efficiencies and leveraging collaboration for more impact.

We actively engage in sector-level initiatives to reduce emissions across supply chains, such as the Value Change Initiative, the Agriculture Sector Roadmap to 1.5°C, WBCSD Agriculture and Food Scope 3 Action, Verra Scope 3 Standard Working, the Cool Farm Alliance.

Since 2023, LDC also partners with MassChallenge Switzerland and created the LDC Climate Resilience Prize, which awards startups with the most promising climate impact project in the food and agriculture space.

“We’re pleased to sponsor the LDC Climate Resilience prize, established in 2023 with MassChallenge Switzerland, to support visionary startups whose ideas, technologies and solutions have the highest potential for lasting positive climate impact in food and agricultural supply chains.”

Michael Gelchie

Chief Executive Officer, LDC