OMV focuses on renewable energies

In the coming years, OMV Aktiengesellschaft, Central Europe's leading oil and gas group, will increasingly concentrate on renewable energy sources, OMV has announced on Friday.

For this purpose, OMV has established a separate company, the so-called “OMV Future Energy Fund" (www.omvfutureenergyfund.com). Acting as a separate company, the OMV Future Energy Fund will identify projects in the field of renewable energy within the OMV group, provide assistance with their implementation and financially support them with an amount of more than EUR 100 million, the company added in a press release. Ultimately, these activities will generate investments exceeding a total amount of EUR 500 million. With this new approach, OMV responds to the growing global challenges of an increasing energy demand, the finiteness of fossil fuel stocks and climate change. “In the coming years, the importance of renewable energy sources will continue to increase. With the OMV Future Energy Fund, it is our intention to facilitate the transformation from a pure oil and natural gas group into an energy group whose portfolio includes renewable energies. We are convinced that this will enable us to achieve a profitable integration of renewable energies - including biogas, geothermal energy and hydrogen - in the company's core businesses," OMV chief executive Wolfgang Ruttenstorfer said.

Priorities include:

Technologies from the field of renewable energies (example: production of biofuels, biogas, research projects on hydrogen);

Technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with the use of fossil energies (example: carbon capture & sequestration, zero emission power plants, prevention of gas flaring)

Technologies to increase energy efficiency.

Input from the international world of science
An advisory council has been appointed for the fund to act as a think tank and central decision-taking body in matters concerning financial support. The advisory council consists of four renowned international scientists as well as three representatives of OMV (one representative each for OMV Exploration & Production, Refineries & Marketing as well as Gas). The advisory council decides independently about project applications and the financial support granted for them. Renewable energy projects do not have to be initiated by OMV itself, third parties can also make proposals to the OMV Future Energy Fund. As the fund's general manager, Dorothea Sulzbacher is responsible for the management and co-ordination of projects as well as communication.