ESG Report - Report - Page 23
STRATEGY
LOW-CARBON
ENVIRONMENT
SAFETY
COMMUNITY
PEOPLE
GOVERNANCE
Waste Management
Valero remains focused on reducing the generation of
wastes across air, water and solid streams. Reducing
at the source, reusing, recycling and repurposing of
materials are key components of our waste reduction
program.
Hazardous Waste –
97% of all refinery
In 2022, more than
hazardous and
17 million pounds of
exempted waste was
catalyst were recycled to
recycled in 2022.
recover precious metals.
Valero’s hazardous waste management program
includes regular waste reviews, risk assessments,
waste stream prioritization and formal personnel
training programs. Every operating site follows
specific expectations on the handling and recycling of
hazardous wastes as specified in CTEMS.
The Valero Houston Refinery was awarded the
2022 Valero Chairman's Environmental Award
for having no Environmental Scorecard events
for three of the last four years.
Spill Prevention – Valero is focused on reducing spills
across our operations to protect our people and the
environment, always with the goal of zero spills. Our
commitment to reducing environmental scorecard
incidents is a top priority and is strengthened by the
inclusion of this metric in the all-employee bonus. The
environmental scorecard incidents metric is weighted
to the intensity of incidents, with greater impact for
more significant events, including the severity of spills.
Renewable Energy and Efficiency Initiatives
In 2022, roughly 25% of our total refinery energy
consumption originated from renewable sources,
including:
Hydropower More than 99% of the electricity used
at our Quebec City refinery comes from renewable
sources – mainly hydropower, with small portions from
wind, biomass, nuclear and thermal.
Wind Power Adjacent to our McKee refinery in the
Texas Panhandle, our wind farm includes 33 wind
turbines with 50 megawatts of power generation
capacity.
Cogeneration Plants Our cogeneration plants
reduce our dependency on local power grids, which
are often more costly. Cogeneration is a highly efficient
and reliable way of producing electricity and thermal
energy or steam, with the steam recycled back into the
refining process for other uses. Valero has cogeneration
systems at refineries in Wilmington, Benicia, Port
Arthur and Pembroke.
expander at our Corpus Christi West refinery. In
all, our expanders are designed with the capacity
to annually displace more than 600,000 tons of
carbon dioxide that otherwise would be generated
by conventional power plants.
Heat Transfer Our refineries utilize heat
integration technology to improve energy
efficiency and reduce energy-related operating
expenses. Heat exchangers enable the transfer of
thermal energy from high temperature process
streams to lower temperature streams, decreasing
natural gas or refinery fuel gas needs for heating
and lowering utilities requirements for cooling.
Fuel Cells We are evaluating the use of
fuel cells at certain facilities. Fuel cells should
provide reliable power, reduce our dependency
on the local grid and free up capacity for other
community energy needs.
Expanders At six of our refineries, we have installed
“expanders” on processing units that generate power
from exhaust gases. We have the world’s largest
ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL AND GOVERNANCE REPORT •
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