The Chemical Industry Touches Everything – And Together, We’re Transforming It
Chemicals are the building blocks of 95% of everyday products — from smartphones to packaging, medical devices to electric vehicles. Yet the industry that makes all of this possible is responsible for around 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions: more than twice the entire aviation sector.
The scale of the challenge — transforming feedstocks, closing material loops, decarbonising hard industrial processes — sits across competitive boundaries. No single company can solve it. The technologies are emerging. What the industry lacks is not ambition. It lacks the structured mechanism to turn ambition into investable, scalable action.
That is the gap the Global Impact Coalition was created to fill. We co-build the projects and partnerships that no company can build by itself — at a pace the industry has never managed alone.
Who We Are
The Global Impact Coalition brings together the world’s leading chemical and industrial companies — with a combined annual revenue of over $350 billion. Incubated at the World Economic Forum and now operating as an independent not-for-profit, we are directed by the CEOs of our member companies and backed by a community of senior executives, technical experts and sustainability leaders.
We are not a trade association, a think tank, or a discussion forum. We are an execution platform. Every project we take on has a clear path to spin-out — and the project companies take them forward independently from there.
Together, we’re creating pathways to net-zero emissions and circularity by:
De-risking investments
We share costs and expertise to overcome the financial, technical, and market barriers that slow down transformation
Building cross-sector connections
We bring together chemical producers, technology providers, brands, retailers and waste managers to create solutions that work across the whole chain
Scaling what works
We move promising technologies and business models from concept to commercial reality faster than any single company could achieve alone
Amplifying impact
By pooling resources and influence, we drive reductions in emissions and advance circularity at a scale that matters globally
How we Create Real-World Impact
We co-create breakthrough projects:
From recycling plastics in end-of-life vehicles to gasification technologies that convert waste into feedstock, we develop projects to spin-out readiness. Two have already reached that point — taken forward independently by the member companies involved.
We build cross-sector partnerships:
We connect chemical producers with brand owners, retailers and downstream partners to create commercially viable solutions. These alliances tackle high-risk challenges that no bilateral business partnership can solve — because the problems span too many players to be owned by any one of them.
We accelerate transformation through structured execution:
By sharing expertise and pooling resources across companies that would otherwise be working in parallel, we accelerate the path from concept to spin-out readiness. GIC does not run projects indefinitely — it builds them to that point, then hands them over. That discipline is what makes the model work.
How we work: a method designed to go from idea to spin-off at speed
Meet some of our Global Impact Coalition leaders
Charlie Tan
Chief Executive Officer
Davide Del Ben
Senior Manager