ORLEN has signed an agreement with 13 other energy companies and organizations to launch the Baltic Energy Initiative, a coalition of 14 partners from nine countries across Northern and Central Europe.
The signatories come from Poland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Norway. Alongside ORLEN, the group includes Eesti Energia, Enefit, Fortum, KN Energies, DNV Energy Systems, Topsoe, Siemens Energy, Adven, Steady Energy, P2X Solutions, Latvenergo, Gasgrid Finland and Orsted.
What the group will work on
The initiative's priorities include offshore wind, tighter links between the LNG and bioLNG markets, a regional hydrogen market, carbon capture and storage, and nuclear power including small modular reactors, compact reactors built from factory-made modules instead of being assembled piece by piece on site. The partners plan to pool expertise, share experience and develop cross-border projects, and to seek funding together from European Union programs and other international sources.
Ireneusz Fafara, ORLEN's chief executive and president of the Management Board, said the sector's challenges are "too great to be addressed by individual countries or companies acting alone." He said the group will work to shape the direction of transition projects rather than simply take part in them.
Infrastructure protection and a common voice
The partners will share experience on critical infrastructure protection, cyber security, emergency preparedness, and responses to physical and hybrid threats. They plan to jointly assess projects that could make energy infrastructure more resilient and to look at financing for that work.
The initiative is also meant to give the region's energy sector a stronger, unified voice in discussions with European institutions on regulation, investment and support mechanisms for strategic projects.
For ORLEN, the areas of focus track its own expansion: offshore wind, LNG, hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, and nuclear power.
