Alex Hardman

Over the past couple years of energy market turbulence, pretty much everyone has come to acknowledge that the U.S. — and the rest of the world — will continue to require refineries and refined products for decades to come. It’s also likely, though, that U.S. refiners, like their European counterparts, will be required to do more to reduce the volumes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) generated during the process of breaking down crude oil and other feedstocks into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other valuable products. And, thanks to new federal incentives, it might even make sense for refineries to capture and sequester at least some of the CO₂ they can’t help but produce. In today’s RBN blog, we begin a series on refinery CO₂ emission fundamentals, the differing policies that are applied here in the U.S. and abroad, and how those policies might ultimately influence refining competitiveness.