Message from our CEO

An update on our sustainability efforts from Sean Keohane, president and CEO

Sustainability is an essential part of who we are as a company and will play an even more integral role in our future. Over the past year, we have strengthened our sustainability commitments and advanced our actions, and I am pleased to share our progress with you in this report.

Aligned with Our Purpose

Our work is guided by our purpose; to create materials that improve daily life and enable a more sustainable future. This is the driving force behind everything we do. It’s why we collaborate with our customers to develop innovative products that solve their performance and sustainability challenges. It’s why we develop new technologies to continuously improve our processes and reduce our impact on the world around us. It’s why we actively support our employees and communities and seek a shared dynamic for growth with all our stakeholders. Cabot’s employees are a highly engaged team that truly live our purpose, uniting us as One Cabot and leading us to achieve great things together.

Our purpose motives us in our work, guides our decisions and it serves as a unifying aim as we engage with all stakeholders. It’s clear that now more than ever, businesses must play an active role in support of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. That’s why we remain a proud signatory to the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) and are committed to reporting on the progress of our sustainability program.

Delivering on Our Goals

Cabot has been committed to improving our safety, health, and environmental performance for decades. Over the years, we have evolved in our focus, our goals, and our ambitions. What began as a journey to improve personal safety and reduce our environmental performance now influences every aspect of our business. For example, we are focused on developing and manufacturing products with clear sustainability attributes and increasing circularity in our operations. We are also collaborating with our suppliers to create greater impact in our value chain, and are fostering a culture that is focused on sustainability and values inclusion and diversity. Our 2025 goals set us on our path toward a more sustainable future.

Throughout the year, we focused on taking actions across all of our material topics, including making progress on our environmental commitments; advancing our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) efforts; and driving sustainability in our product development programs. In this report, you will read stories and examples of how we continued to invest and meet those commitments. The following are a few key achievements from the year:

• We achieved record volume of exported cogeneration power as a result of our long-term investment strategy in energy centers, which convert waste heat into useful energy without any incremental greenhouse gas (GHG) or other emissions.
• We continued to invest in our DE&I efforts, with 99% of our people managers completing unconscious bias training.
• We became an inaugural sponsor of the Future of STEM Scholars Initiative (FOSSI), which focuses on creating pathways for underrepresented groups to enter and succeed in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers within the chemical industry. We are proud to fund scholarships for five students majoring in STEM at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
• We have achieved 69% of our 2025 economic value generated and distributed goal of investing $1 billion in capital and technology to sustain our operations and grow our portfolio. These investments are fueling growth and development in product innovations that bring broad sustainability benefits to the world. Leading among these innovations is our battery materials business, which delivers essential chemistries to enhance the performance of lithium-ion batteries and the electrification of the automotive industry.
• We are committed to creating value for our customers through investments in product development and process improvements that result in direct sustainability benefits for our customers and more broadly. In doing so, 100% of our new product development projects were assessed for sustainability impacts and benefits.

As I look back on the past year’s progress, there are many things to be proud of, and I am excited about the opportunities we have to continue to advance in our sustainability journey.

Our Sustainability Ambitions

With climate change at the forefront in our minds, we announced our ambition to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 in alignment with the Paris Climate Agreement. As part of our 2025 Sustainability Goals, we established a goal to reduce our GHG emissions intensity by 20%, using 2005 as the baseline. By the end of 2021, we had realized 91% of this goal. To expand on this goal and achieve our ambition of net zero by 2050, we are currently evaluating options for establishing interim GHG emissions reduction targets aligned with current climate science including methodologies developed by the Science Based Target Initiative (SBTi). Additionally, in 2021 we conducted a climate scenario analysis aligned with the Task Force for Climate Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) and have published our risk and opportunities table on our website and in this report. These steps are important signals of our ongoing commitment to transparency and disclosure.

We believe the transition to a lower carbon economy will require a vibrant chemistry industry, as so many of the challenges and opportunities require chemistry innovation, whether that is the electrification of the transportation sector or more energy efficient buildings. Achieving this goal will require collaboration, innovation, and supportive public policy. Positive change at the scale and pace we need demands bold solutions, and we are actively engaged and collaborating with our employees, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders to help us achieve our goals. We are grateful that so many have chosen to join us in this work.

In Closing

I invite you to learn more about our sustainability program, progress, and aspirations for the future through this report and our website. We’re clear on our purpose as a company and are committed to progress, partnership and transparency.

I am immensely proud of the dedication and passion of our people to fulfill our purpose each and every day. I would also like to thank our various stakeholders for their engagement and contributions to helping our sustainability vision become a reality. We continue to learn and improve, and this engagement is critical to our success as we work purposefully to deliver our strategy and our sustainability ambitions.

Thank you for your partnership as we continue "Creating for Tomorrow."