| Caring for the environment |
Climate Change
We have intensively worked on a climate strategy consisting of several separate strategies – energy strategy, greenhouse gas (GHG) strategy, carbon capture and storage (CCS) strategy and an individual GHG trading strategy that focuses on using trading tools for cost effective compliance.
Our strategies focus on further identification and implementation of energy efficiency measures, investigation of carbon capture and storage opportunities and looking for Joint Implementation (JI) and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects, especially at our operations in Russia and Pakistan. In terms of CCS we continued our cooperation within the international consortium established for ECCO project (“European value chain for CO2”) and R&D project with ELGI (Hungarian National Eötvös Loránd Geological Institute) and the University of Miskolc. These projects aim at identifying possibilities to capture CO2 from industrial emission sources and store them safely in suitable geological formations.
Reducing GHG Emissions
In 2008 the MOL Group installations covered by the European emission trading scheme (ETS) emitted almost 6.42 Mt of CO2. Comparing to 4.09 Mt in 2007 the increase might seem significant, but it was caused by the start of Duna Refinery steam boiler full operation, the inclusion of additional installations into the scheme for the second trading period as well as new acquisitions. Since 2008, steam crackers of Petrochemicals division are part of the scheme, flaring has been included and also IES Mantova Refinery as a new acquisition has been included. To enable year-on-year comparison, we need to compare only those installations that were part of the scheme in 2007, excluding the steam boiler which operated for just one month in 2007 as such comparison shows only negligible increase of CO2 emissions by 0.5% (4.26 Mt in 2007 vs. 4.28 Mt in 2008).
Table: CO2 under ETS by year (2004-2008)
We realised and implemented several projects that contributed to CO2 emissions reduction. For instance the replacement of steam technology with hot water system had been continued at Exploration and Production Kiskunhalas Main Gathering Station (HU): it had not only reduced basic air pollutants but also the emissions of CO2, which dropped by 150-200 tons per month. We also increased the capacity of the waste gas utilisation facility at the same station. However we have not limited our efforts to the installations covered by the emission trading scheme: we have decreased flaring of flash gas by the installation of a compressor unit at the Manzalai Gas Plant in Pakistan.
We continued with energy-efficiency efforts at Refining and Marketing as well as Petrochemicals divisions. Even though Petrochemicals division operates only BAT technologies with very small CO2 reduction potential, several projects are planned to fulfil the strategic objective of the Petrochemicals division for 2008-12 to improve the energy efficiency (e.g. utilization of condensate heat value in TVK Power Plant, further investigation of flare gases utilisation).
