Saudi Arabia – Aramco established a $1.5 billion Sustainability Fund to make investments in technology that could aid in a secure and inclusive energy transition.
The fund intends to invest in both the creation of new low-carbon fuels as well as technology that support the company’s publicly stated goal of achieving net-zero operational assets by the year 2050. The first areas of attention will be on hydrogen, ammonia, synthetic fuels, energy efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions, nature-based climate solutions, digital sustainability, and carbon capture and storage. The fund will focus on international investments.
Additionally, Aramco Trading Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Aramco, took part in the Public Investment Fund’s first voluntary carbon credit auction (PIF). This comes after Aramco and PIF signed a Memorandum of Understanding earlier this year to collaborate on a regional voluntary carbon market that will debut in Saudi Arabia in 2023.
Emissions reduction
By 2050, Aramco hopes to have net-zero Scope 1 and Scope 2 GHG emissions across all of its wholly-owned, operated properties. When compared to the forecast for business as usual, the company’s interim targets, which it announced in June, are expected to cut or mitigate net Scope 1 and Scope 2 GHG emissions across its wholly-owned operated assets by more than 50 million metric tons of CO2e annually.
The company is also expanding its blue ammonia and hydrogen businesses with the goal of producing up to 11 million metric tons of blue ammonia annually by 2030, which has the potential to significantly aid in the reduction of emissions in challenging to decarbonize industries like heavy-duty transportation, heating, and industrial applications.
As part of its efforts to promote the Circular Carbon Economy framework, which sees CO2 emissions minimized, reused, recycled, and eliminated, the company is also looking into ways to cut GHG emissions along the full value chain of its products.
