The global chemical industry stands at a pivotal moment in 2026, navigating growth opportunities amid sustainability pressure and technological transformation. This ETS brief presents the market growth projections — global market size, production growth, distribution CAGR, and U.S. output growth — with their published sources.
It summarizes the forces shaping the landscape: the accelerating push toward decarbonization with scope-1 and scope-2 reporting built into R&D and operations, machine learning and predictive analytics delivering efficiency gains across operations and material discovery, strong growth in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East against a Europe constrained by energy costs and regulation, and demand from semiconductors and electronics, batteries and energy storage, electric vehicles, and construction materials.
The brief then names four critical supply chain challenges — volatile feedstock and energy costs, compliance pressure, visibility gaps, and legacy planning systems — and the SAP solutions for each: Integrated Business Planning for scenario modeling, Supply Chain Control Tower for end-to-end visibility, and built-in compliance in SAP ERP Cloud for hazardous materials, sustainability reporting, and supplier ESG standards.
The full brief is available above as a PDF. For the three-page summary see the "Chemical Industry 2026 Market Outlook Fact Sheet", and for the complete 16-page deck see "Chemical Industry 2026: Market Conditions and Outlook" in the Resource Library.