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Energy efficiency cases by Downstream leaders
EU’s 2030 framework for climate and energy with its goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to improve energy efficiency, the companies’ aim to cut expenses and optimize production costs make the question of energy efficiency arise more and more often. We can see the news with companies announcing modernization projects or reporting about energy efficiency revamp results appear all the time, and we are going to see even more of it in the future.
As event organizers, we keep up with the new solutions and projects in this field. Our clients often share their insights so we gathered some of the remarkable cases on energy efficiency optimization.
ExxonMobil, U.S.A.
ExxonMobil is cutting energy costs due to its co-generation technology. They use gas turbine for both electricity and heat generation instead of purchasing electricity for production and steam generation from a local power facility. Through this solution Exxonmobil reduces CO2 emissions by 6 mln mtpa. At the moment company has interests in about 4,600 megawatts of cogeneration capacity and in the next 3 years, the company aims to increase this number to 5,000 megawatts.
Repsol, Spain
This company develops several modernization projects for energy efficiency at a time. The first is replacement of two old compressors at the Muskiz facility with the new ones that will reduce CO2 emissions by 77,000 tonnes annually. The second is upgrading two furnaces at the Cartagena refinery in order to reduce energy consumption through residual heat recovery and to cut down carbon emissions by 14,000 tonnes per year. And the third is integration of Repsol HEAT Exchanger Network to monitor fouling in heat exchangers. This tool allows to carry out predictive maintenance and find the ways to improve operation. Repsol has also joined World Bank’s Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 initiative and the company aims at 50% routine flaring reduction by 2025.Tupras, Turkey
In April 2019 Tupras received two awards in Industrial Energy Efficiency Competition for its energy saving projects. In the frames of the first project Tupras upgraded and replaced furnaces and other equipment at the Izmir refinery’s crude unit. As Tupras’ website says, the revamp resulted in saving about 299,000 Gcal of heat and 97 kilo tonnes of CO2 emissions reduction annually. The second project involved Izmit refinery’s Process Units Energy Roadmap, and allowed to save about 192,500 Gcal and 44 kilo tonnes CO2 emissions through the FCC unit revamp and hydrocracking unit upgrade.
Regina Chislova and Ferenc Horvath, Executive Vice President of Downstream, at MOL Group HQ
Gazprom, Russia
This case is an example of a complex energy efficiency optimization project: recently Gazprom announced their results in Energy Saving and Energy Efficiency Programme which includes more than 2,800 measures to cut energy consumption through the whole value chain. In 2018 the company saved 2.95 billion cubic meters of natural gas, 364.25 million kWh of electricity, and 235,860 Gcal of heat. All these cuts allowed Gazprom to save about $190 mln.
Preem, Sweden
Though energy efficiency question addresses each player of the market, not all the companies can afford complex and all-around projects. One of such examples is Preem which carried out an energy audit in 2012, looking for the ways to cut down energy consumption at its refinery. In the result, they replaced four of their old heat exchangers with one modern and more efficient one, and by that lessened CO2 emissions by 14,600 tonnes annually. The company estimates energy cuts at $2.2 million per year.
These examples show different approaches and different solutions to the energy efficiency problem. The companies operate in varied conditions, at varied scales and with varied budget, production schemes and business processes. So while building the energy efficiency strategy it is valuable to exchange experience and to learn about already existing projects.
Article by: Regina Chislova, Project director of PRC Europe
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