The company intends to invest more than 30 billion Czech koruna ($1.4 billion) in driving decarbonization and increasing energy efficiency, developing renewable energy, expanding capacities for biofuels and biomaterials, advancing plastics recycling and building footholds in alternative fuels, such as hydrogen.

Plans also include spending 5 billion Czech koruna on digital transformation and implementing digital solutions.

“Although crude oil will be an indispensable raw material for years to come – mainly for the chemical industry – we need to be on the lookout for new, state-of-the-art and environmentally friendly solutions to be able to substitute this dependency gradually,” said Orlen Unipetrol chairman Tomasz Wiatrak, adding that the company wants to be emissions neutral by 2050.

Orlen Unipetrol said global demand for petrochemical products keeps rising and it sees “significant development potential in the industry”. It intends to leverage this potential by producing 270,000 t/y HDPE in its new PE3 unit at Litvinov, which went on stream in April 2020. The unit replaced the older PE1 facility.

The company is also planning to produce dicyclopentadiene (DCPD), a new product for its portfolio, with a 26,000 t/y plant expected online by end 2022.

With these two plants and other projects, Orlen Unipetrol will boost its total petrochemicals production from 900,000 t/y to 1.2 million t/y by 2030. Plastics waste recycling will account for up to 15% of the group’s total plastics production.

For its refining business, Orlen Unipetrol expects the volume of fossil-based products sold to fall from 5 million t/y to 4.4 million t/y by 2030, while the volume of advanced biofuels will reach 200,000 t/y. These fuels, it said, will be produced according to circular economy principles by processing plastic or organic waste.

With regard to decarbonization of its energy sources, the group is gradually replacing its existing coal-fired heating plants with new steam-and-gas facilities and solar sources. Projects include building a new combined steam-and-gas plant at Zaluzi, near Litvinov, that would replace an existing facility at the heart of the largest chemical site in the Czech Republic. The total annual volume of generated electricity would nearly quadruple to 2,500 GWh, enabling Orlen Unipetrol to become both a consumer and seller of electricity.

Orlen Unipetrol will also develop activities related to hydrogen as an energy carrier for use in its production processes, in the energy sector and in transportation. Besides producing hydrogen traditionally from oil, it will also use water electrolysis and membrane electrolysis from chemical processes using renewable energy.

Author: Elaine Burridge, Freelance Journalist