■ For the first time in the oil refining industry, SK Innovation completed the LCA on all products and semi-products related to the oil-petrochemical production process

■ The company secured an internal database by measuring environmental impact in order to respond to clients’ demands and actively utilize it for carbon reduction

■ Lee Seong-jun, Head of the SK Innovation Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, said, “We will strive to support SK Innovation and its subsidiaries in establishing their green business portfolio”

SK Innovation has become the first in the oil refining industry to complete a Life Cycle Assessment (hereafter, LCA) for its entire oil-petrochemical related products. The company aims to strengthen its response to domestic and international clients who are increasingly focused on ESG evaluation standards, and plans to utilize the findings for process improvement data.

On September 1, SK Innovation announced that the company’s Institute of Environmental Science and Technology has successfully completed the industry’s first comprehensive LCA, which measures the environmental impact across all stages of a product’s life cycle. LCA quantifies a variety of environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas emissions of the entire production process, from resource input to the production of finished goods, in accordance with international standards. SK Innovation launched an LCA unit under its Institute of Environmental Science and Technology in January 2022 to review not only products and supply chains within the SK Innovation subsidiaries but also the environmental impacts of new businesses.

(*)LCA (Life Cycle Assessment): It is a method for quantifying the potential environmental impact that can occur throughout the entire process of a product’s life cycle.

The subjects for the LCA were about 470 oil-petrochemical related products and semi-products (including gasoline, diesel, ethylene, para-xylene, etc.) produced by SK Innovation’s subsidiaries, including SK Energy, SK Enmove, SK Geo Centric, and SK Incheon Petrochem. Key environmental impact indicators, such as carbon emissions, acidification, resource consumption, and ozone depletion, were measured to evaluate the environmental loads. Moreover, the company also secured a company-wide environmental impact assessment database that includes these LCA results.

SK Innovation is expanding its LCA to its overseas business sites with plans to actively respond to clients’ demands for environmental information to support both current and future businesses in reviewing their environmental impact by using the assessment results. The company also aims to secure the capabilities to evaluate social impact in order to contribute to carbon reduction and the creation of an ESG ecosystem.

To ensure greater reliability, the company is in the process of having its results verified by third-party organizations. After the completion of the LCA, the objectivity and transparency of the LCA processes and results conducted by the SK Innovation Institute of Environmental Science and Technology will be continuously verified under the supervision of respective operation departments and various verification organizations, including global certification agencies, such as DNV and etc.

Lee Seong-jun, head of the SK Innovation Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, said, “As the industry’s first company linking oil-petrochemical processes and deriving the LCA results based on actual production data, we have secured a foundation that we can now objectively review environmental impacts and contribute to reducing carbon emissions. The institute will expand its capability to assess social impact and actively support SK Innovation and its subsidiaries in establishing their green business portfolio.”