Delivering progress, now and into the future

Innovation is critical to our net-zero ambitions. From leveraging licensing and partnerships to developing cutting-edge technologies, OMV is positioning itself at the forefront of the clean energy transition.

To supercharge our next phase of sustainable growth, we recently launched our new Innovation Strategy. It lays out how we will harness game-changing technologies to tackle the challenges of decarbonization and the circular economy. 

We sat down with Andreas Leitner, Senior Vice President of Innovation & Technology, to find out more. 
 

OMV’s new innovation strategy is based on 3 pillars. Please could you briefly outline them?

By 2050, we want to reach net zero. Sustainability is at the very core of our strategy, both to meet our climate commitments and as a driver for business growth. And I think it’s quite clear that innovation has to deliver a significant portion of our sustainability journey. 

So when you look at the innovation strategy, the three key pillars cover the full scope of our business. One is obviously technology in its broadest sense. Then, of course, intellectual property and licensing is a very important piece of that: we make sure whatever we invent, we own and can deploy. And the third, very important pillar is collaboration, because the transformation we go through is significant, and you can't do everything yourself. You need great partners along your value chain, in particular when you go into new industries like recycling or plastics.

People might not be aware of the link between licensing and innovation. Please can you talk us through it?

When companies drive innovation, they need to decide to keep the new technology for their own operations or share it with others in the industry. And licensing is a very important tool for the latter. It does two things. On the one hand, it allows you to grow a market for your technology faster than you can do on your own. But of course, it also allows you to generate an additional revenue stream, which not only can finance your own innovation activities, but can become a really significant income stream in its own right. 

You can do it in two ways. Either you license a technology or product as such, or you do venture-based licensing. That’s where the partnerships come in. You bring in your IP, your technology, in a new joint venture, and your partner brings in other elements, like feedstock or capital. This has become an important lever of our innovation strategy in recent years. Essentially, it allows us to develop a technology package that we can sell to others and grow specific markets together.

What are some of the most important technologies for OMV’s Innovation strategy? 

Our Innovation Strategy spans all three of our business divisions: chemicals, fuel and feedstock, and energy. So let’s look at them one by one. 

In our chemicals business, the circular economy is a major focus, particularly plastics recycling. Our proprietary chemical recycling technology, ReOil®,  converts end-of-life plastic into circular feedstock for the production of chemicals. ReOil helps to, divert large volumes of  plastics – even those unsuitable for mechanical recycling – away from incineration and landfill, giving them a second life. We aim to scale up this technology by improving plastic collection, sorting, and pre-treatment, working with partners like Interzero.
          

For fuels and feedstock, we are innovating to broaden and partially change the feedstocks we use. In the future, we aim to use more sustainable sources like bio-waste, plastic waste, and carbon dioxide in our refineries. These bring challenges for our current production facilities, but we are making strides. We are already producing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from used cooking oil, which requires purification and refinement. We are in the early stages of developing a technology to produce eSAF in the future. This is a really exciting innovation that could help airline customers decarbonize their operations.
          

In Energy, we are working on next-generation geothermal technology to deliver low-carbon, renewable heat. We are partnering with visionary start-ups and tech frontrunners like Eavor. Through the “deeep” joint venture, Wien Energie and OMV are working together to build deep geothermal plants with a planned capacity of up to 200 megawatts. 

This is just a snapshot of the exciting technologies driving our Innovation Strategy. 

How does OMV make sure it stays ahead of the curve in developing and deploying these exciting technologies?

The key is really that we don’t just talk about it. We also get things done. We put new technologies like the ones I just mentioned into practice and try to scale them wherever possible. By 2030, 40 to 50% of our capital expenditure (CAPEX) will be deployed for sustainable technologies, helping us to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions along scope one, two and three, eventually to zero by 2050. So putting sustainable innovation at the heart of our strategy, and backing it up with the necessary investment, enables us to deliver progress, now and into the future. 

Why are partnerships so important for innovation at OMV?

These transformative projects are too big to do alone. You’re unlikely to have enough people, enough competence, enough money, access to enough resources to allow breakthrough technologies to take off at the speed you require. This is why partnerships are so important. 

We collaborate with other companies in our value chain, universities, startups, accelerators and more. It’s really important for us to find good partners with the same understanding of how to do business and aiming for the same strategic goals as us.
 

What are some of the recent and ongoing partnerships that you’re particularly excited by?

One is the Austrian energy company Verbund. We participate in the Verbund Accelerator, which more innovative companies join every year. That helped us identify two startups we're now working with in the area of catalysis, which is very important for our Innovation Strategy. Then, of course, we have a joint venture with Wien Energie called Deeep, which will provide up to 200,000 households in Vienna with geothermal heat and decarbonize the city of Vienna significantly. 

Another really important area of collaboration is with industrial partners, to help scale up the new technologies we’re developing. A great example of this is our partnership with Interzero, a German-based waste company. We’re working together to develop Europe’s biggest sorting facility for chemical recycling. I think this is a great example where looking along the value chain for complementary skills and knowledge can make a real difference. 

How will this new innovation strategy enable OMV to accelerate its sustainable transformation? 

To decarbonize a large, complex industry like ours, we must drive more sustainable practices in diverse ways across the full breadth of our operations. Innovation helps us identify where the gaps are, explore how those gaps can be filled with next-generation technologies. Crucially, it also enables us to refine our existing processes, making them as efficient as possible so that we get the absolute maximum out of the energy and natural resources we use. Bringing these factors together will help us meet our strategic goals and deliver truly sustainable solutions to our customers.

But it’s not just about our own operations. By developing, refining and deploying sustainable technologies we’re demonstrating that they can make an impact at the industrial scale. If we lead the way, we want to show that sustainable innovation is not just critical to reduce emissions, but for continued economic growth.