Carbon handprint

For companies, carbon handprint is a measure (in mass, e.g. tons, of CO2 equivalent) of how much greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions a company can help its customers to achieve through its products and services when compared to a baseline product or service. The bigger the handprint, the better.

We are committed to help our customers reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 million tons CO2 e annually by 2030. We aim to achieve our target with the portfolio of renewable, lower-emission and circular solutions for road transportation, aviation, and marine uses, as well as for the plastics and chemicals industries.

Growing our capacity for renewable and circular products is a key driver towards our carbon handprint target. Through our strategic investments, our production capacity of renewable and circular solutions will expand significantly in the coming years. At the same time, we need to ensure that our renewable and circular products have as low GHG emissions across their life cycle as possible. Read more about minimizing our emissions across our value chain in the carbon footprint section.

After the completion of our Singapore refinery expansion and the ongoing ramp-up of our joint operation, the Martinez Renewables refinery, we expect the use phase emission of sold products to continue decreasing. Further reductions are enabled by our Rotterdam expansion, which is expected to start operations in 2026, as well as increased share of co-processing of renewable raw materials at our Porvoo refinery.

Carbon handprint for products and services

For products and services, carbon handprint refers to the difference between the GHG emissions caused over the lifecycle of a product compared to a baseline product. Our renewable and circular products have significantly lower GHG emissions over the life cycle compared to fossil alternatives, which helps our customers reduce their GHG emissions and reach their climate targets.

We calculate the GHG emissions of our products over their entire life cycle: from the production of their raw materials to the end use of the final product. For renewable fuels, the life cycle ends in the use phase, and for other (non-fuel) products such as renewable feedstock for new polymers and chemicals, the life cycle ends in the end-of-life treatment and potential recycling. Neste’s renewable products, such as Neste MY Renewable Diesel, Neste MY Sustainable Aviation Fuel, as well as Neste RE, our renewable feedstock for polymers and chemicals production, have significantly lower GHG emissions over the life cycle compared to similar fossil alternatives, which helps our customers reduce their GHG emissions and reach their climate targets. When calculating Neste’s handprint, we compare the life cycle emissions of our renewable products to the fossil comparator emission values as defined in the relevant regulation (e.g. EU RED II, LCFS) to evaluate the achieved GHG reductions for our customers.

With the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Lappeenranta University of Technology, our team has since 2016 been developing the world’s first science-based method for handprint calculation and communication. It helps to calculate the beneficial environmental and climate impacts of products and services over their life cycles, offering both scientific and practical guidelines.