Assessment highlights improved energy performance in refinery cogeneration, suggesting better synergy with environmental standards.
The most implemented standards worldwide for Energy Management Systems (EnMS) and Environmental Management Systems (EMS), ISO 50001 and ISO 14001 respectively, maintain a close correspondence due to the Harmonized Structure (HS) recently established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). However, achieving greater energy efficiency does not always align adequately with environmental issues, which is most evident in fossil fuel-based industries. Therefore, this work aims to propose a synergy based on coupling divergences between these standards and use it to evaluate technological changes in the cogeneration plant of an oil refinery, for better energy performance, environmental sustainability and the transition to renewable energy. The results show that the changes in technology increases electric efficiency from 14% to 45% and the rate of atmospheric emissions per unit of energy generated decreases by 17% on average. However, as fuel consumption doubles, the total emission rises by about 100%. This conflict between energy and environmental performance leads to an analysis of sustainability principles to better understand the relevance of the change in technology as an appropriate solution for the comprehensive improvement of the refinery’s energy and environmental performance and the gradual transition to renewable energy. The findings of this work shed light on how to deal with the fossil fuel-based industry in the global landscape of urgent sustainable development.
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Almanza et al. (2025) studied this question.
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