SK Innovation has become the first in the oil refining industry to complete a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for its entire oil-petrochemical related products.

LCA is a method for quantifying the potential environmental impact that can occur throughout the entire process of a product’s life cycle.

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.

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.

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.”