Companies are investing in recycling waste and biofuel development.
Agilyx and ExxonMobil have created Cyclyx International, a joint venture to recover and sort waste plastic. In return for an investment of $8m for a 25% stake in Cyclyx, the oil major will get priortised access to plastic waste for recycling projects that it is developing.
The challenge of recycling plastic lies in both the collection of the waste by chemical or mechanical means, and the subsequent sorting and pre-processing. According to the new company, by 2025, Cyclyx plans to develop systems that can collect and sort 300,000 tons/year.
Meanwhile the world's largest bioethanol plant with an annual capacity of up to 35 million litres is, for the first time, based on wood. Located in OMV's headquarters in Hallein in Austria, the facility marks the start of co-operation between OMV and AustroCel Hallein GmbH, supplier of second-generation bioethanol.
The bioethanol, produced exclusively from environmentally friendly cellulose scrap, is extracted from the wood sugars left over in cellulose production before being fermented and distilled. Substituting fossil fuels will save around 45,000 metric tons of CO2 a year.
OMV has pledged to reach net-zero emissions in operations (Scope 1 and 2) by 2050 or sooner. It is currently investing in the Schwechat Refinery so it will be able to substitute large quantities of fossil diesel with biodiesel in an innovative co-processing approach using hydrogenated vegetable oil. this should lead to an annual reduction in OMV’s carbon footprint of up to 360,000 metric tons of fossil CO2, equivalent to the annual emissions of around 200,000 cars driving an average of 12,000 km per year.