The European Investment Bank (EIB) and Eni have signed a €500 million 15-year finance contract to support the conversion of Eni's Livorno refinery in Tuscany into a biorefinery. The agreement was signed today at Eni’s headquarters in San Donato Milanese by EIB Vice-President Gelsomina Vigliotti and Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi.

Eni's project involves the construction of new plants to produce hydrogenated biofuels at the Livorno refinery site, including a biogenic pre-treatment unit and a 500 000-tonne/year Ecofining™ plant.

Thanks to its proprietary Ecofining technology, Eni’s company dedicated to sustainable mobility, Enilive, produces HVO (hydrogenated vegetable oil) - a biofuel made from renewable raw materials[1] such as used cooking oil and agrifood waste. Pure HVO can now be used in approved engines and is distributed through existing infrastructure.

EIB Vice-President Gelsomina Vigliotti said: “The EIB financing is key to delivering a project of high environmental, technological and strategic value, helping to promote the decarbonisation of the transport sector. This is a concrete example of how industrial innovation can accelerate the path towards climate neutrality, while generating sustainable value for regions.”

Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi said: “The agreement with the EIB confirms Eni’s concrete and high-quality commitment in the transition towards increasingly decarbonized energy. It also underscores the validity of our approach, which is to invest and leverage all available and effective initiatives and technologies for reducing emissions. This virtuous approach is now leading us to convert a third refinery into a biorefinery in Italy, following the examples of Venice and Gela.”

The Livorno biorefinery will be able to treat different types of biogenic charges, mainly waste and residues of plant origin, to produce HVO diesel, HVO naphtha and bio-LPG.