Finland-headed oil refiner and renewable products major Neste Oyj has announced that it has signed its first renewable hydro Power Purchase Agreement (hydro PPA) with Vattenfall, one of Europe’s largest producers and retailers of electricity and heat. Vattenfall will deliver hydropower from its Nordic hydropower plants and the deliveries will start at the beginning of January 2022.
According to Neste, it has three climate commitments. These cover the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from its own production – Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions as defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GGP); the emission intensity of the use of products sold by Neste – Scope 3 emissions as defined by GGP, which include all other significant emissions throughout our value chain; and the reduction of customers’ emissions with Neste’s renewable and circular solutions – Scope 2 emissions as defined by the GGP.
As part of these climate commitments, Neste aims for 100 percent renewable electricity use globally by 2023. In order to proceed with the target and in addition to the new hydropower agreement, Neste has increased the use of renewable electricity at its Porvoo refinery in Finland with wind power and has agreed on wind power deliveries with its partners Statkraft, Ilmatar, and Fortum.
Reach renewable power purchase goal in 2022
Thanks to the new hydropower agreement, Neste will achieve its renewable electricity target in Finland. The transition to renewable electricity has also progressed in other Neste’s production sites according to plan.
For example, about 75 percent of the electricity used in the Rotterdam refinery in the Netherlands in 2021 has been renewable electricity certified with Guarantees of Origin (GO).
We aim to make the Porvoo refinery the most sustainable refinery in Europe by 2030 and reach carbon neutral production by 2035. We will achieve these ambitious targets by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from production and using renewable electricity, for instance. Thanks to the hydropower agreement we have signed, we will reach an important milestone at the beginning of 2022 as our Porvoo refinery and operations in Naantali will use 100 percent renewable electricity. We will continue to work actively to achieve carbon neutrality, said Markku Korvenranta, EVP Oil Products at Neste.
The total annual volume of the hydropower agreement with Vattenfall is 800 GWh of renewable electricity purchased with Guarantees of Origin, which corresponds to some 67 percent of the electricity consumption at Neste’s sites in Porvoo and Naantali.
The transition to fully renewable electricity will reduce Neste’s indirect greenhouse gas emissions – Scope 2 – of its electricity purchases for its sites in Porvoo and Naantali to zero.
