Image: Total Media
Total, the French multinational oil and gas company, announced on Thursday that it plans to convert its Grandpuits refinery into a recycling and biofuels plant. The company’s decision shows logical, if perhaps opportunistic, steps to support carbon reduction goals.
The Paris-based company decided to shutter the relatively small plant after a second leak in the Ill-de-France crude supply pipeline forced it to run at reduced capacity. Repairs to an aging pipeline made little sense with EU goals to cut carbon, leading to the 500 million euro conversion plan, Total said.
The Grandpuits refinery will stop processing crude oil in the first quarter of 2021 and halt storage of oil products in late 2023. The site, along with a nearby territory, will instead host three innovative industrial projects. This will include a bio-refinery slated to start in 2024 which will process animal fats, used cooking oil, and vegetable oils to produce renewable diesel, contributing to French aims to have at least 5% of aviation fuels sustainable by 2030.
Secondly, a venture between Total and Corbion will start to producing PLA, a bioplastic, from sugar instead of oil, in 2024. PLA is used in film wrap and rigid packaging. The plant will be the first of its kind in Europe, Total said.
The third project will be a plastics recycling venture between Total 60% and Plastic Energy that will use “chemical recycling” technology to convert plastic wastes into a liquid called TACOIL through a pyrolysis melting process. This TACOIL will then be used as feedstock for the production of polymers with identical properties to virgin polymers.
Total will additionally build two solar plants along with the projects. It seeks to complete the transition without layoffs, and with providing employees early retirements and internal mobility. The French oil producer will continue to supply the region with oil products from other upgraded and modernized refineries.
The projects are real next-generation energy projects focused on innovation and sustainability aims. The expenditure does not look that large, for a company used to multi-billion euro projects. And the plans may be candidates for special project financing and/or subsidy as the EU tabs budget funds to support green goals. Job retention will also, no doubt, play well politically even as the company phases out old infrastructure.
The operations with bioplastics creation and recycling are both forward-looking and show a serious commitment to green goals. The oil industry has increasingly pinned its hopes on growing petrochemical markets amid falling oil demand and increasingly strict government regulations to combat the effects of climate change. That Total is already seeking green options in plastics shows that the trend of oil companies turning to alternative products – and alternative sources of revenue – is well underway.