• Sustainability
• Power engineering and low-carbon strategy
• Increasing of energy efficiency

Increasing of energy efficiency

The energy efficiency is one of the main pillars of the power engineering of the Slovak Republic. The energy efficiency synergistically contributes to reduction of energy demands of the economy, contributes to improvement of the energy safety, and has also an impact on reduction of operation costs of the power companies, and last but not least savings of the primary energetic resources contribute to lessening of the impact of power engineering on environment.

Over the last 15 years, the energy demand of Slovakia has been declining. A significant progress in the energy demand reduction is witnessed by its development between 2000 and 2015, when Slovakia reduced its energy demand by 50.8 % according to Eurostat data. Between 2006 and 2012, the energy demand dropped by more than 27%, which stands for the highest reduction across EU-28 in said period. Among others, the positive development is also the result of successful restructuralization of industry, introduction of low-energy production processes in industry, and improvement of thermal and technical properties of buildings, and replacement of appliances with the more saving ones. Despite this fact, Slovakia has the seventh highest energy demand based on the fixed prices in the EU28. This is in particular caused by structure of the Slovak industry with high share of high-energy demand industry. The priority of Slovakia in the field of the energy efficiency is further reduction of the energy demand of the Slovak economy with an intention to reach the level of European average.

In its “Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (NECP)” for years 2001-2030, Slovakia has determined its national contribution (which shall de facto mean the goal of Slovakia) in the energy efficiency by 2030 to be 30.3%, wherein the sectors of industry and buildings will be the key for achieving of said goal.

Our company spends high amounts and effort to implement the measures that contribute to achieving of the determined goal of Slovakia in this field under the “low carbon strategy”, too.

Over the last five years there have been several important measures adopted in the company in an attempt to reduce the energy demand of the production, or increase energy efficiency of overhead heat distribution and contribute thereby to higher energy efficiency, e.g., “Nitric acid pre-heaters on pressure neutralizers”, “Use of nitrous gas heat for heating of return condensate in nitric acid production 2”, “Optimization of P12 steam distribution on C, D, k bridges”, “Recovery and optimization of P3 steam distribution on K, L bridges”, as well as “P3 steam distribution on Q1 and X1 bridges”, “Company heating recovery”, “Company public lighting reconstruction”. At present, “Installation of rotary reductions in Heat Plant and Urea 3” are in the pipeline, and they will exploit unused expansion steam work, which is now wasted by check valves in the reduction stations, for production of electricity. Forecasted annual amount of electricity produced in this way corresponds to about 5% of company’s consumption.

However, highlighted must be the most important one, which is construction of a new energy less demanding Ammonium 4 operation with respect to the former Ammonium 3 operation, of which ammonium production started in 2017. Each year, the operation brings significant savings of natural gas associated with reduced production of CO2.