Environmental management and compliance

All Neste operations must comply with all applicable environmental regulatory requirements. The environmental permits specify the terms and conditions of operations, and our operations are responsible to comply with those terms and conditions.

All of our refineries and additionally all terminals and storages as well as service stations in Finland and Baltics have been certified in accordance with the requirements of the ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 standards. Besides the ISO management systems, environmental management at Neste involves several principles and guidelines. Our key policies and principles concerning environmental matters related to our own operations are Neste Sustainability Policy, Sustainability Principle and  Neste Environmental Management Principle (internal). 

Neste’s Environmental Management Principle was recently amended in order to improve compliance assurance and environmental performance in all our operations by increasing the level of ambition in environmental management. The amended Environmental Management Principle also takes into account the new requirements of EU’´s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). 

The Environmental Management Principle gives detailed minimum requirements for all Neste operations in the following areas:

• Environmental roles and responsibilities

• Environmental aspects and impacts

  • Including emissions to air, water, soil, and waste

  • Water withdrawal and discharge

• Environmental planning in investment projects and changes

• Environmental Risk Management

  • Environmentally critical operations identification

  • Environmentally critical systems and equipment

  • Soil and Groundwater Protection Program

  • Waste and hazardous waste handling and disposal

• Environmental complaints / concerns

• Compliance with Legislation and Regulations

• Management of certain substances of concern

• Performance measuring, monitoring and reporting

• Continuous improvement

Neste aims to continuously improve the environmental performance of its operations through regular internal centralized environmental compliance reporting, which is used to examine leaks and other environmental deviations that may have occurred (lagging indicators), as well as the availability of pollution prevention technology, process alerts and compliance critical projects (leading indicators).