Interview with Fernando Guerra Perez, Product Stewardship Technician at Moeve, and Jasmin Hengstler, Senior Consultant at Sphera.
In this interview, Moeve shares its experience of collaborating with Sphera to achieve the company’s sustainability goals.
Moeve (formerly CEPSA) is a global energy company headquartered in Madrid, Spain, committed to driving the energy transition and decarbonization through sustainable solutions such as green hydrogen, renewable fuels, sustainable chemicals, and ultrafast electric charge.
Since 2023, Moeve has been working with Sphera’s Sustainability Consultants to perform a life cycle assessment (LCA) study of refinery products and develop an LCA refinery model in Sphera’s LCA for Experts (LCA FE) software using Sphera’s Managed LCA Content (MLC) database.
1. What motivated you to start this project?
Moeve is committed to climate actions that accelerate the energy transition to a low-carbon economy. For Moeve to meet its sustainability and decarbonization goals, we depend on reliable, validated product as the foundation of everything we do. We have seen increased demand from stakeholders, customers and the public for product carbon footprints (PCFs), life cycle assessments (LCAs), and environmental product declarations (EPDs) of our products.
2. What was the aim of the project?
Initially, we wanted to conduct a comparative LCA study of selected fossil and circular refinery products from two sites operated by Moeve. For full transparency and reliability, we conducted the study according to ISO standards 14040/14044 and carried out a critical review with a panel of external, independent experts according to ISO 14071.
We then wanted to develop a model that could grow with us. We needed something flexible enough to handle any of our energy parks—whether we’re looking at traditional fossil feedstocks, co-processing of bio- and circular feedstocks, various products or plugging in technologies like carbon capture and storage (CCS). It’s all about giving our team the internal “know-how” to run these LCAs and PCFs ourselves, so we can make faster, smarter decisions independently.
3. Why did you choose Sphera?
Moeve had already built a long-lasting relationship with Sphera’s experts, having worked on sustainability topics around chemical products. We chose Sphera because they had a winning track record with us. When you combine their deep LCA and sector expertise with the fact that they already understood our other business units, it was a no-brainer. Sphera gives us a level of consistency across the organization that we need. All of these aspects gave us the confidence to hit the ground running.
4. What challenges did you face, and how did Sphera’s solutions help?
Energy parks are inherently complex systems, and LCA is a complex topic where data collection and validation are absolutely crucial for quality results. Because of their deep expertise in LCA data requirements, LCA standards and guidelines like Together for Sustainability (TfS), Sphera’s experts were able to guide us through the most challenging aspects of the project. They helped us navigate technical hurdles like multi-functionality, complex allocation methods and the co-processing of bio and circular feedstocks using the mass balance approach. By leveraging their LCA FE software and the MLC database, we were able to build a model that met all our expectations. Beyond the technical build, their continuous training sessions were vital, ensuring our team truly understands the methodology and is prepared to work with the model independently in the future.
5. What were the most valuable insights you gained from the project?
What’s been great about this LCA work is how it helps us talk to our stakeholders. The model itself is incredibly powerful; we can calculate reliable results for our products, identify hotspots, and perform scenario analyses that show us exactly which levers have decarbonization potential. It’s become a core part of our decision-making process.
6. What are the next steps?
This is a long-term commitment for Moeve. Now we’re working to certify Moeve’s LCA methodology and adapt our LCA model to specific relevant industry standards. At the same time, we’re digging deeper into the life cycles of our feedstocks, whether they’re traditional, bio, or circular, to build an effective decarbonization roadmap. It’s about total transparency from the supply chain all the way to the final product.
