Respons­ib­il­ity at Oilon

Oilon has an oblig­a­tion towards the future of the world and its inhab­it­ants. We con­stantly develop new solu­tions for util­iz­ing waste energy, renew­able energy sources, and low-​carbon and renew­able fuels. A third-​generation family busi­ness, we find it import­ant to pre­serve nature and enable a future worth living for future gen­er­a­tions.

As part of the drive towards a more sus­tain­able future, Oilon has joined the UN Global Compact, the world’s largest cor­por­ate sus­tain­ab­il­ity ini­ti­at­ive. We have pledged to align our strategies and oper­a­tions with the ten prin­ciples on human rights, labor, envir­on­ment, and anti-​corruption. As a global company, we are well-​positioned to promote the prin­ciples both through internal efforts and co-​operation. We offer a diverse work­place and uphold high ethical stand­ards in our busi­ness oper­a­tions. Our pro­cesses and occu­pa­tional safety and health efforts are reg­u­larly mon­itored and audited.

Moreover, we support each of the 17 UN sus­tain­able devel­op­ment goals. We have iden­ti­fied seven goals for which Oilon has the most to offer.

The core prin­ciples behind Oilon’s range of solu­tions are to improve energy effi­ciency, reduce cus­tom­ers’ need for energy, and promote the trans­ition towards cleaner energy sources. Com­bined heating and cooling, which is achieved with indus­trial heat pumps, rep­res­ents this ideal per­fectly: we extract heat from where it causes prob­lems and trans­fer it to another loc­a­tion where it is needed.

For example, cooling the servers in a data center gen­er­ates waste heat at a low tem­per­at­ure, which makes the energy dif­fi­cult to utilize. With heat pumps, this waste heat can be recovered and reused in space heating and domestic hot water heating or trans­ferred to a dis­trict heating network.

By using heat pumps for heating, com­mer­cial oper­at­ors, apart­ment build­ing owners, and house­holds can reduce their depend­ence on delivered energy and their energy expenses. Even alone, heat pump-​powered heat recov­ery vent­il­a­tion can gen­er­ate 40% savings in an apart­ment build­ing’s heating costs. Fur­ther­more, the energy required for the build­ing’s heating and domestic hot water system can be covered entirely with ground source heating. The solu­tion con­sumes only a quarter of the elec­tri­city used by direct elec­trical heating, helping house­holds with­stand even sharp fluc­tu­ations in elec­tri­city prices.

In com­bus­tion tech­no­logy, Oilon focuses espe­cially on the clean­est pos­sible com­bus­tion and the use of cleaner and renew­able fuels. In ten years, Oilon has managed to reduce the nitro­gen oxide emis­sions of our gas burners by 80–90 per cent. Our latest Ultra Low NOx burners achieve NOx emis­sion levels as low as 2.5 ppm (5 mg/Nm3) while main­tain­ing an excel­lent effi­ciency.

Oilon’s stand­ard burners are suit­able for firing renew­able fuels, such as biogas and renew­able diesel. Addi­tion­ally, Oilon has decades of exper­i­ence in firing pure hydro­gen and fuels with a high hydro­gen content. The world sees hydro­gen as a fuel of the future: it can be pro­duced with renew­able elec­tri­city, and hydro­gen com­bus­tion is com­pletely free of CO2 emis­sions.

Main­tain­ing prof­it­ab­il­ity is the basis and fun­da­mental require­ment of our respons­ib­il­ity. We seek rapid growth, 18 percent per year. Motiv­ated per­son­nel and sat­is­fied cus­tom­ers are the corner­stones of our busi­ness. We believe that we have the respons­ib­il­ity to create added value to our stake­hold­ers and the society.

Oilon has more than 400 employ­ees in offices and pro­duc­tion facil­it­ies around the globe. Our staff turnover is low. On average, our employ­ees stay with us for 9.6 years, and the longest careers have sur­passed 50 years in length. For Oilon, it is import­ant that employ­ees enjoy their work and feel safe and com­fort­able in their pos­i­tions. We main­tain the skills and know­ledge of our staff by arran­ging train­ing oppor­tun­it­ies and encour­aging our employ­ees to com­ple­ment their edu­ca­tion. Work rota­tion within the group provides new per­spect­ives and encour­ages team spirit.

Oilon alloc­ates more than 6 per cent of our turnover to product devel­op­ment. Around 20 per cent of our employ­ees work in R&D. With new tech­no­lo­gies, we help oper­at­ors in the man­u­fac­tur­ing industry and the energy sector make a gradual trans­ition to solu­tions which are based on renew­able elec­tri­city.

Path to carbon dioxide emission-free heating

Coal

CO2 reduced by > 50%

Natural gas
CO2 less than 50%

CO2 reduced by > 50%

Hybrid
CO2 less than 25%

Renew­able elec­tri­city and fuel
CO2 reduced by > 50%

Sus­tain­able heating and cooling
CO2 less than 10%

Oper­at­ors can reduce their CO2 emis­sions by 50 percent simply by repla­cing coal (and other fuels that put a heavy burden on the envir­on­ment) with natural gas. During the trans­ition, Oilon offers heating and cooling solu­tions that sup­ple­ment com­bus­tion tech­no­logy by redu­cing energy needs. The final goal is to trans­ition to sus­tain­able heating and cooling pro­duced with renew­able elec­tri­city. The highest tem­per­at­ures required by indus­trial pro­cesses will be pro­duced using renew­able and the clean­est pos­sible fuels, such as hydro­gen pro­duced using wind power.

In the process industry, Oilon’s heat pump solu­tions have helped to achieve 89 per cent savings in CO2 emis­sions. Thanks to high energy savings, a heat pump solu­tion can pay itself back in less than two years. A typical coef­fi­cient of per­form­ance (COP) is 5–8 and can be as high as 10.

Oilon has an extens­ive exper­i­ence in firing demand­ing fuels pro­duced as byproducts of indus­trial pro­cesses. Renew­able pyro­lysis oil, which is derived from biomass, is a good example. Pyro­lysis oil is acidic and has a high solids content. Yet, it is an excel­lent fuel, provided that the mater­i­als and solu­tions used in the com­bus­tion system are selec­ted with care.

Digital solu­tions are an essen­tial part of Oilon’s product selec­tion. Oilon Selec­tion Tool helps you select and size your solu­tion exactly to the project’s process con­di­tions and require­ments. Our heat pumps have IoT options avail­able, allow­ing you to monitor and control your system’s oper­a­tion any time, any place.

Burners and heat pumps are part of crit­ical energy infra­struc­ture, which means that it is essen­tial to make our products as durable, reli­able, and safe as pos­sible. Oilon’s products meet strict quality stand­ards, and we have obtained all the neces­sary cer­ti­fic­ates and approvals required for oper­at­ing in major markets. We employ cer­ti­fied ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 quality systems in our pro­duc­tion and engin­eer­ing.

Cleaner energy pro­duc­tion can lead to radical improve­ment in living con­di­tions. In China, for example, Oilon has helped dis­trict heating cus­tom­ers to trans­ition from coal to natural gas, elim­in­at­ing nearly 100 per cent of the cus­tom­ers’ par­tic­u­late emis­sions and cutting nitro­gen oxide emis­sions to a frac­tion of the ori­ginal. The largest reduc­tion for a single project was achieved through a burner upgrade, res­ult­ing in a reduc­tion of around one million tonnes of CO2 per year.

Large prop­er­ties are typ­ic­ally cooled with water chillers. Tra­di­tion­ally, the con­dens­a­tion heat from the chillers has been simply dumped into the atmo­sphere. With Oilon heat pumps, waste heat from large build­ings such as hos­pit­als can be trans­ferred to a dis­trict heating network, allow­ing the prop­erty to serve the com­munity in another role: as an energy source. Overall, heat pumps are an excel­lent solu­tion for dis­trib­uted energy pro­duc­tion, improv­ing the flex­ib­il­ity of the entire energy network.

The European Com­mis­sion aims at increas­ing the recyc­ling rate of muni­cipal waste to 72 per cent by 2030. From a waste man­age­ment stand­point, it is usually a better choice to utilize the remainder of the waste in energy pro­duc­tion than to send it for final dis­posal at a land­fill. Oilon sup­plies load burners and start-​up burners for waste incin­er­a­tion plants. Addi­tion­ally, our burners are used at hazardous-​waste treat­ment facil­it­ies to destroy haz­ard­ous and envir­on­ment­ally dam­aging waste in an envir­on­ment­ally friendly way.

Oilon’s products are renowned for their high quality and dur­ab­il­ity. Almost all mater­i­als used in our products are recyc­lable. Our product devel­op­ment emphas­izes dur­ab­il­ity, ease of main­ten­ance, and usab­il­ity.

We offer extens­ive ser­vi­cing and main­ten­ance ser­vices through­out the product’s life cycle. For example, users can monitor their indus­trial heat pumps over a remote con­nec­tion. This speeds up troubleshoot­ing; often, equip­ment failure can be pre­ven­ted alto­gether by fixing the problem before­hand.

Our indus­trial heat pumps and burners are con­trolled by advanced auto­ma­tion systems. Thanks to our products’ extens­ive capa­city range, Oilon systems produce only as much energy as is needed. In burners, having a wide capa­city range reduces the number of starts and stops required, which can reduce fuel con­sump­tion by more than 10 per cent.

In the long term, ground source heating is the most eco­nom­ic­ally sus­tain­able and envir­on­ment­ally friendly heating solu­tion for build­ings. Com­pared to direct elec­trical heating, a ground source heating system will typ­ic­ally reduce a prop­erty’s heating costs by 65–75 per cent. Our house­hold heat pumps feature extens­ive mon­it­or­ing and schedul­ing func­tions, allow­ing users to influ­ence their energy con­sump­tion dir­ectly and in a meas­ur­able way. In addi­tion, homeown­ers can connect a ground source cooling solu­tion to the heat pump’s ground cir­cu­la­tion, achiev­ing a COP as high as 20–30.

Oilon is com­mit­ted to the Science Based Targets ini­ti­at­ive (SBTi). The goal for this ini­ti­at­ive is to limit global tem­per­at­ure increase to 1.5 °C in accord­ance with the Paris Agree­ment. By 2030, Oilon intends to reduce both our own direct and indir­ect green­house gas emis­sions by at least 46 per cent. Our emis­sions in 2019 serve as the bench­mark.

The primary means of reach­ing our emis­sion reduc­tion targets include using ground source heating in pro­duc­tion facil­it­ies, util­iz­ing solar power in pro­duc­tion, and invest­ing in upgrades that reduce the energy con­sump­tion of our prop­er­ties. We pursue these goals act­ively – right now, we are ahead of sched­ule.

Most of our pro­duc­tion facil­it­ies already utilize ground source heating and in 2022, our factory in Lahti will trans­ition to carbon-​neutral dis­trict heating. Since 2017, Oilon’s factory in Wuxi, China has had a solar power plant that provides energy for pro­duc­tion machines. Two years later, a 110-kWp power plant was installed in our facil­ity in Lahti, Finland. This plant covers around 6–7 per cent of the factory’s power con­sump­tion. The rest of the elec­tri­city used at our Finnish facil­it­ies has been EPD-​certified hydro­elec­tric power since 2020. Addi­tion­ally, we con­stantly monitor the use of our vehicle feet, and busi­ness travel is gov­erned by strict cri­teria.

Oilon engages in active co-​operation with cus­tom­ers, author­it­ies, and other stake­hold­ers. For example, devel­op­ing heat pump tech­no­logy and solu­tions requires tight co-​operation with cus­tom­ers. There are many renew­able fuels that have been intro­duced in the market only recently, which means that shared devel­op­ment pro­jects with fuel man­u­fac­tur­ers provide valu­able inform­a­tion for both parties.

One of the key goals in Oilon’s com­mu­nic­a­tions is to increase our stake­hold­ers’ envir­on­mental aware­ness and under­stand­ing of solu­tions that promote climate action. The tech­nical cap­ab­il­it­ies of heat pumps increase at such a high rate that it’s hard to keep up with all the new ways of improv­ing energy effi­ciency and redu­cing CO2 emis­sions – espe­cially in indus­trial pro­cesses and energy pro­duc­tion. A key com­pon­ent of this com­mu­nic­a­tion effort is the product train­ing provided for pro­fes­sion­als in the energy sector. Oilon is also engaged in asso­ci­ation work that aims at pro­mot­ing wide-​spread adop­tion of envir­on­ment­ally friendly energy tech­no­logy.

In 2022, Oilon joined the Science Based Targets ini­ti­at­ive, placing Oilon among 3,000 pion­eer­ing com­pan­ies. More spe­cific­ally, Oilon joined the ranks of the 1,000 organ­iz­a­tions whose goals are in line with the ini­ti­at­ive’s most ambi­tious 1.5 °C target for redu­cing their emis­sion levels. Oilon’s pledge covers Green­house Gas Pro­tocol’s scope 1 and scope 2 emis­sions: redu­cing direct emis­sions from our own oper­a­tions and indir­ect emis­sions from the gen­er­a­tion of pur­chased energy.

In addi­tion to SBTi, Oilon has joined the ABB Energy Effi­ciency Move­ment. Par­ti­cipants form an inter­na­tional eco­sys­tem, leading the way and serving as an example in the fight against climate change. ABB launched the inter­na­tional ini­ti­at­ive to promote activ­it­ies which reduce CO2 emis­sions. By pub­licly com­mit­ting to climate work, par­ti­cipants raise aware­ness of climate change and encour­age others to act.