FUEL & FUEL CYCLE | LOW CARBON ENRICHMENT
Decarbonising nuclear fuel
Enrichment company Urenco has published its net zero strategy setting out its very ambitious plans for Scope 1,2 and 3 emissions reductions. Chris Pye tells NEI about the challenges and early successes in its bid to reduce emissions
IN THE RUN UP TO COP 28, Urenco published its first net zero transition plan revealing how it intends to reduce its carbon emissions. Under previously announced plans, Urenco has set out its ambition to cut Scope 1 and 2 emissions to zero by 2030 and by 2040 for its overall business.
Achieving that in less than two decades is a daunting
task and the company has now delivered a detailed plan that sets out where Urenco’s carbon emissions are in its business and how it is taking action to reduce them. With its commitment to reducing emissions in its direct
operations by 2030, it plans absolute reductions in carbon emissions of 90% by 2030 and a further 30% reduction in its scope 3 emissions by the same date. Urenco says it will also neutralise any residual scope 1 and 2 emissions, up to a maximum of 10%, when measured against a 2019 baseline. The company has already recruited net zero leads at all
sites and is focusing on planning and has set up working groups to tackle priority emissions areas. Chris Pye, NetZero programme manager at Urenco,
whose role covers the whole group with responsibilities for developing and executing the Net Zero programme, explained how the strategy will be executed to NEI: “This involves coordination across all four of the operating sites
that Urenco has and close coordination and liaison with our dedicated NetZero managers that we have for each of our sites. That is really key to help drive through some of the ambitious changes that we’re trying to make across our plants and sites.” Pye is keen to emphasis the efforts the company is
already expending to meet its net zero ambitions since the plan was first announced in 2022. “There’s been some real progress made to focus on
reducing and driving down our direct operational emissions at our sites. We’ve identified the key areas of emissions that we’ve got at our sites from a scope one perspective, recognising the challenges this has at the industrial operating sites,” he says, adding: “To make sure that we can make an effective change on these emissions we’ve developed an approach to identify and develop suitable Net Zero solutions. What this means at the moment is that we’ve utilised and mobilised a lot of internal resources.” Urenco has gathered subject matter experts who have a
detailed understanding of how the various operating sites work. Those experts have been split into three working groups to focus on specific emission areas. Pye continues: “The working groups focus on refrigeration
systems, on the use of natural gas across our whole group and also the fact that we rely on diesel fuel sources for
Above: Martijn Kolkman, Net Zero manager for Almelo with a solar PV installation at the site 18 | March 2024 |
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