KENYA – Oil and gas company Eni and Kenya’s Ministry of Petroleum and Mining have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to promote the decarbonization process.
The MoU will tackle climate change through new industrial models of a fully integrated circular economy along the whole biofuel production value chain.
They will jointly conduct feasibility studies to develop waste and residue collection as well as agricultural projects, with the purpose of establishing a wide range of feedstock sources that do not compete with food cycles, to be transformed into biofuels and bio-products that might contribute to feed Eni’s bio-refineries in Gela and Venice, Italy.
They will also convert the Mombasa refinery into a bio-refinery, as well as the construction of a new plant for second-generation bio-ethanol from waste biomass, leveraging on Enitechnologies Ecofining e Proesa.
The agricultural development project focuses on the development of sustainable oil crop cultivations, low ILUC (indirect land-use change) feedstock such as cover crops, castor in degraded lands, croton trees in agroforestry systems and other agro-industrial co-products.
This initiative will contribute to diversifying Kenya’s energy mix and supporting the overall de-carbonization process, while also decreasing the country’s dependence on imports of petroleum products.
Other benefits include developing sustainable agricultural activities and circular economy, producing power from renewable sources, fostering the economic competitiveness of the local industry and creating new jobs.
The agreement contributes to the objectives of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The projects also contribute to the implementation of the Kenya Bioenergy Strategy, Updated Nationally Determined Contribution, Kenya’s National Development Plans, including Kenya Vision 2030.
With these initiatives, Eni will fulfill its commitment towards the decarbonization process and with the Company’s target to become palm-oil free by 2023 and to double bio-refineries capacity to around 2 million tons by 2024.
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