In this insightful interview, Andreas Leitner, Senior Vice President Innovation & Technology at OMV, explains how we drive innovation to create a sustainable future.

To achieve our goal of climate neutrality, we need innovation. By using licenses and partnerships and developing innovative technologies ourselves, we are positioning OMV as a pioneer of the energy transition.

In order to grow sustainably even faster in the future, we recently presented our new innovation strategy. It describes how we will use groundbreaking technologies to meet the challenges of decarbonization and the circular economy.

We spoke to Andreas Leitner, Senior Vice President Innovation & Technology, about this.

OMV's new innovation strategy is based on three pillars. Can you briefly outline these?  

Our goal is to be climate-neutral by 2050. That's why our strategy is all about sustainability: firstly, we want to meet our climate protection commitments and secondly, we want to achieve sustainable company growth. And I believe that we can only achieve these goals with more innovation.

When we look at the innovation strategy, it becomes clear that the three pillars cover the entire spectrum of our company. The first relates to technology in the broadest sense. The second concerns intellectual property and licensing - to ensure that we own the rights to our inventions and can exploit them. And the third, very important pillar is cooperation with others. Because we are facing huge changes in our industry and we cannot handle everything alone; we need reliable partners along the value chain - especially in new business areas such as the recycling and plastics industries.

Many people may not be aware of the connection between licensing and innovation. Can you explain it to us?

When companies create innovations, they have to decide whether to keep a new technology for themselves or share it with other companies in the industry. For the latter, licensing is a very important tool. It serves two purposes: first, it helps to create a market for the new technology more quickly, and second, it creates an additional source of revenue that can not only finance further innovation, but ideally also improve long-term cash flow. 

There are two options: either we license a technology or a product alone as a company, or we opt for risk-based licensing. This is where partnerships come into play. We bring our intellectual property or an innovative technology into a new joint venture, and the partner takes over the procurement of raw materials or capital, for example. The latter has proven to be an important lever in recent years: we can develop technology packages that we sell to others in order to then jointly develop certain markets.  

Which technologies are particularly important for OMV's innovation strategy?

Our innovation strategy covers all three business areas: Chemicals, Fuels & Feedstock and Energy. Let's look at each of them individually.

One focus of our chemical business is the circular economy, especially plastics recycling. With our patented recycling technology ReOil®,  we convert used plastics into recyclable raw materials for chemical production. ReOil helps to save large quantities of plastics - even those that are not suitable for mechanical recycling - from landfilling or incineration and give them a second life. We want to further develop this promising technology, improve the methods for collecting, sorting and pre-treating plastics and work with partners such as Interzero .

In Fuels & Feedstock, we are working on using additional and in some cases completely different raw materials. In the future, we want to use more sustainable raw materials such as biowaste, plastic waste and captured carbon dioxide in our refineries. Converting our production facilities to this is a big challenge, but we are making good progress. We already produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from used cooking oil, which needs to be cleaned and refined. We are at an early stage of developing a technology that will enable us 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 the next generation of geothermal technologies to supply our customers with low-carbon, renewable heat and energy. We work with visionary start-ups and leading technology companies such as Eavor . As part of the joint venture "deeep", Wien Energie and OMV are working together on the construction of deep geothermal plants with a planned output of up to 200 megawatts.

And that’s just a snapshot of the many groundbreaking technologies that bring our innovation strategy to life.

How does OMV manage to stay one step ahead in the development and use of these technologies?

The key is that we don't just talk, we act. We use the technologies mentioned in practice and try to scale them as far and as quickly as possible. By 2030, 40 to 50% of our capital expenditure (CAPEX) will go into sustainable technologies. They will all help us reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in Scopes 1, 2 and 3 and reduce them to zero by 2050. By strategically focusing on sustainable innovations and investing in them accordingly, we make progress possible - now and in the future. 

Why are partnerships so important for innovation at OMV? 

These truly transformative projects are too big to do alone. Bringing breakthrough technologies to market at the speed required requires a certain number of people, sufficient skills, financial means and access to resources. Partnerships make all this possible and are therefore so important.  

We work with other companies along our value chain, with universities, start-ups, business accelerators and many others. We attach great importance to finding good partners who have the same business understanding and pursue similar strategic goals as we do. 

Which partnerships do you consider particularly promising?

One of them is with the Austrian energy company Verbund. We are part of the Verbund Accelerator, a network that grows every year with more innovative companies. Through this network, we found two start-ups with whom we are now working in the field of catalysis - an important aspect of our innovation strategy. And then of course there is our joint venture deeep with Wien Energie, which will supply 200,000 Viennese households with geothermal energy and bring the city significant emissions savings.

In addition, we work with various industry partners to scale the new technologies we develop. One example of this is our cooperation with the German waste disposal company Interzero. Together we are developing the largest sorting plant for chemical recycling in Europe . I think this shows very well how it pays off to look for complementary skills and focal points along the value chain. 

How can OMV accelerate sustainable change with this new innovation strategy?  

To decarbonize an industry as large and diverse as ours, we need to operate sustainably to a much greater extent than before - in all areas. Innovations help us find out where we can go further and which breakthrough technologies can help us close feasibility gaps. At the same time, they help us improve our existing processes and make them as efficient as possible so that we get the absolute maximum out of the resources and energy we use. Both together will help us achieve our strategic goals and offer our customers truly sustainable solutions. 

But it's not just about our own operations. By developing, improving and deploying sustainable technologies, we show that they can be applied on an industrial scale. We want to be a pioneer and prove that sustainable innovations are crucial not only for reducing emissions, but also for sustainable economic growth.

KeyFacts Energy: OMV Austria country profile