Türkiye Petrol Rafinerileri : Tüpraş completed the first year in its carbon neutrality journey that it has embarked on to produce the energy of future

25 November 2022

Tüpraş, the leading industrial corporation of Türkiye, has left behind the first year in its Strategic Transformation journey. Aiming to reduce its emmissions by 27 percent until 2030 and transform into a carbon neutral company until 2050 as part of its plan announced in November 2021, Tüpraş uninterruptedly continues to meet Türkiye's energy needs and makes investments that contributes significantly to cabon commitments of the country.
As a part of its strategic plan, through which it aims to invest USD 10 billion until 2050, Tüpraş has invested USD 101 million in total in the first 9 months of its transformation, 53 million USD of which was allocated for sustainability. The company aims to invest USD 200 million in total by the end of this year, almost half of which would be dedicated to sustainability.

Tüpraş, which announced its Strategic Transformation Plan in 2021 with the objective to produce the energy of future for a sustainable Türkiye in line with its motto "Energy to the Future", completed its first year in its transformation journey. Announcing its targets to reduce emissions by 27 percent until 2030 and transform into a carbon neutral energy business until 2050 as part of its plan, Tüpraş aims to invest USD 200 million by the end of 2022, almost half of which would be allocated for sustainability.

Stating that Tüpraş continues to meet the energy needs of Türkiye uninterruptedly, İbrahim Yelmenoğlu, the CEO of Tüpraş, said that they also continue to swiftly implement their investment plans, which will contribute significantly to carbon commitments of the country thanks to the Strategic Transformation Plan that they announced a year ago. Highlighting that the United Nations Climate Change Conference that was recently organized in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt was very important for the world, which has not recovered from the pandemic yet and which is struggling with geopolitical tensions, Yelmenoğlu said, "Combating climate change, the main agenda item of 27^th Conference of the Parties (COP27) that Tüpraş also attended, is becoming more significant day by day. We continue to take firm steps forward with the support of national and international collaborations as a part of our Strategic Transformation Plan in order to fulfill our responsibilities with all our energy. We focus on increasing our energy efficiency as part of our sustainable refining operations thanks to our projects that lead us to our objective to be carbon neutral by 2050. We also invest in green hydrogen, zero carbon electricity and biofuels, our new core business areas, and we plan to maintain our current leading position also in low carbon energy markets of the future."

Stating that they aim to invest USD 200 million in total, almost half of which would be invested for sustainability, in 2022 while progressing towards their Strategic Transformation Plan objectives, Yelmenoğlu said, "We have made several investments, particularly the takeover of Entek's shares, which is an important step towards production of zero carbon electricity. Execution of a license agreement with Honeywell UOP for production of Sustainable Aviation Fuel, membership of Hydrogen Europe, the leading stakeholder organization of European hydrogen market, participation in Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and foundation of Tüpraş Enerji Girişimleri A.Ş. are some of these investments."

Headlines of a year in Strategic Transformation of Tüpraş

Reminding that Tüpraş became the only Turkish company to be included in Bloomberg's '50 Companies to Watch in 2022' list, Yelmenoğlu said, "While continuing to reinforce our position of being the largest industrial corporation of Türkiye, we are proud to lead clean energy transformation of our country" and went on to give information on the one year investments and milestones the company has realized.

"We will continue to take further steps in biofuels business line, which is a part of our strategic transformation plan, in the facility that we plan to establish under the license agreement that we signed with Honeywell UOP, one of the leading technology companies of the world, for using Ecofining™ technology in producing Sustainable Aviation Fuel. We launched our first work plan in our Izmir refinery. Our negotiations for collaboration in order to obtain bio-based waste raw materials that we need are also ongoing.

We have also completed a significant investment in 'Zero Carbon Electricity', one of four strategic business areas that our company would focus in future. We made a great move by taking over the shares of Entek, which is an affiliate of Koç Holding and Aygaz and which has a total capacity of 442 MW, composed of eight hydroelectricity, one wind and one natural gas conversion power plant. This takeover does not only make a strong contribution to production portfolio of our company in its strategic transformation journey, but also aims to accelerate clean energy future of our country. With the incorporation of Entek to Tüpraş, we have taken an important step in achieving our target to have 1 GW installed power by 2030 and 2.5 GW installed power by 2035 with zero carbon and we continue to move forward. The experience and expertise of Entek in the field of renewable energy and joining of its highly qualified human resources to the family of Tüpraş would create a great synergy in realizing not only our objective to produce zero carbon electricity, but also in implementing our strategic transformation plan. Entek made a preliminary license application to EMRA (Energy Market Regulatory Authority) for 1,004.5 MW additional capacity with 15 projects in total, 150 MW of which would be GES ad 854.5 MW would be RES, in addition to its current capacity together with the commitment to establish storage facilities in accordance with Regulation on Storage Operations in Electricity Market that was published last week. If these applications are accepted, we will be entitled to obtain preliminary license. Our Company moves towards its target to be an important player in future energy world by also adding storage facilities to its strong growth objectives in renewables. In the meantime, our investments in our refinery sites for production of zero carbon electricity continue, too. For this purpose, we signed the agreement for building a Solar Power Plant with 12.6 MW capacity, which is planned to be commissioned in June 2023 in Kırıkkale Refinery, in September and we completed our application for an additional capacity of 54.4 MW.

On the other hand, we established Tüpraş Enerji Girişimleri A.Ş. "Tüpraş Ventures", a 100% affiliate of Tüpraş, in September 2022 for purposes of investing in domestic and international technology investments in the fields of smart information technologies, green energy, energy efficiency, environment and recycling, waste management, and robotic solution technologies, particularly in prioritized areas, such as bio-based products, green hydrogen, zero carbon electricity and carbon management.

Our works to establish a demonstration facility until 2025, which is our first target in the field of green hydrogen, continue uninterruptedly. Investments both for energy efficiency and production of new products with high added value continue at full speed. Based on all these actions, we have accomplished concrete and significant business moves in a short period."

"We are changing for a sustainable world"

Yelmenoğlu said, "We have started to share various new data on sustainability with the public. We place significant emphasis on transparency and aim to improve ourselves more. We achieved 22% development in average in our ratings in indices, such as FTSE4Good, MSCI ESG Rating, BİST SE (Refinitiv), Sustainalytics and Vigeo Eiris, Bloomberg GEI as a result of our efforts in sustainability in 2021. On the other hand, we have taken our place among the global companies supporting the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) in 2022 and we now have the opportunity to transparently transfer comprehensive recommendations on more effective and conscious management of climate risks. We are transforming to produce the energy of future and we are changing for a sustainable world in our journey that we have embarked on staying true to our motto of 'Energy to the Future' and we take strength from our deep-rooted experience of more than 60 years. Stating that they will continue to take robust steps in the field of "Sustainable Refining", an important business segment in the journey towards Carbon Neutral by 2050, Yelmenoğlu said, "We are doing our best to diversify our portfolio".

"We are preparing for 2030 vision with Future Fit, a Human Resources project"

"We take a more holistic approach for our organization and define new roles and competencies that we will need in future with 'Future Fit', our Human Resources project, and we are implementing several programs for our colleagues that will enable them gain new skills in order to be prepared for these roles" said Yelmenoğlu and added, "We can claim that 'Future Fit' project is a major start for cultural transformation that support our objective to be "A Sustainable, Competitive and Ready-for-Future Tüpraş" by 2030, which is also included in our Strategic Transformation Plan. We also consider our Project as a dynamic work list that will carry us to the future with continuous improvement and platform organizations that feed it. We perform studies for the works of today and tomorrow by entrepreneurship, innovation, open innovation, and start-up integration. We also continue to develop collaborations by experiencing innovative technologies of domestic and international initiatives in our refineries."

"We target half of all new recruits to be women as of 2022"

Highlighting that they have not only focused on economic growth, but also on creating a benefit in the area of social impact while transforming for a sustainable world and the energy of future, Yelmenoğlu said, "We have started our journey by saying 'Our Endless Energy for Equality" and at the core of all our processes lie an inclusive, fair and safe working environment which is respectful to human rights. As a firm believer that professions do not have gender, our company employs woman technicians and operators as a pioneering practice in our industry. Woman operators and technicians joined us for the first time in Batman 3 years ago and then in our Izmit, Kırıkkale and Izmir refineries. We have always had woman engineers in the refineries, but employment of woman colleagues working in shifts on site was a pioneering and exemplary practice both for our industry and our company. We are very happy and proud to take this brave step in this field of operation, which has always been thought to be male dominant. We aim to have one of each two recruitments to be a woman as of 2022. On the other hand 53 percent of our talent pool is composed of our women colleagues. We aim to increase the ratio of women, which is currently 24 percent in Engineering, R&D, Innovation, Service Design, and Information Technologies, to 40 percent in the next 5 years. We also formed the Committee of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) last year in our company and published our DEI Policy. Our Committee continues on its works to extend and reinforce our operations in this area. I would like to state happily that we are included to Social Gender Equality Index of Bloomberg thanks to all our efforts so far."

Tüpraş shared its commitments to reach out 100 thousand female students in 5 years with its "Women in Technology and Innovation Program" in line with "Generation Equality Forum of UN Women in 2022.

Stating that they have developed Women in Technology and Innovation Program in order to make a contribution to the global commitments of Koç Holding under Generation Equality Forum of UN Women, Yelmenoğlu told that they have committed to reach out 100 thousand female students in total in5 years, 90 thousand of which are in secondary schools and 10 thousand in universities, through different training projects that they are going to carry out.

Tüpraş aims to reveal the potentials of female students in the fields of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and facilitate their access to the ecosystem of technology and innovation with its "Women in Technology and Innovation Program". The Company has taken the first step of this program with "Innovation in Young Minds and Woman Entrepreneurship Trainings" in collaboration with Batman University. The training program aims to promote the culture of entrepreneurship in universities and facilitate the access of young people, particularly female students, to the ecosystem of technology and innovation. Tüpraş intends to extend the program in the coming years by collaborating with the universities in Kocaeli, Kırıkkale, Istanbul and Izmir, in which the company operates.