New agreement pushes Neste ahead of schedule on 100% renewable power in Finland

Photo: Neste Corp.

Finland-based renewable diesel producer Neste Corp. has signed its first renewable hydropower purchase agreement with Vattenfall, one of Europe’s largest producers and retailers of electricity and heat. Deliveries of renewable power from Vattenfall’s Nordic hydropower plants will start in January.

Neste has committed to 100 percent renewable electricity use globally by 2023. The company has already increased use of wind power at its Porvoo refinery in Finland. With the new hydropower agreement, Neste says it will achieve its renewable electricity target in Finland a year ahead of schedule—in 2022 instead of 2023. Furthermore, use of renewable electricity comprises about 75 percent of power consumption at its manufacturing facility in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Markku Korvenranta, an executive with Neste, says the company will continue to work toward carbon neutrality. “We aim to make the Porvoo refinery the most sustainable refinery in Europe by 2030 and reach carbon neutral production by 2035,” Korvenranta said. “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.”

The total annual volume of the hydropower agreement with Vattenfall is 800 GWh of renewable electricity purchased with guarantees of origin, which corresponds to roughly 67 percent of the electricity consumption at Neste’s sites in Porvoo and Naantali.