Annual Report 2020
Annual Report 2020
With RINA’s experience in new energies and renewables combined with our breadth of competencies and research projects, we are in a pivotal position to help facilitate the world’s energy transition.
At the end of 2020, RINA combined its Mobility business
with Energy. This reflects the energy transition we are seeing throughout the
world, whereby power and oil & gas markets are converging as we look for
new carbon-free resources to power the world – and this includes the energy
required for transport, industry and domestic use. With a third of the world’s
energy consumed by the transport sector, its links to the energy market are
inevitably strong.
To achieve sustainable decarbonization we need more
carbon-free energy resources, an increase in efficiencies to consume less
energy, and a change in people’s habits. A key part of a smooth energy
transition is also related to low-carbon technologies in the field of carbon
capture and hydrogen. With RINA’s experience in new energies and renewables
combined with our breadth of competencies and research projects we are in a
pivotal position to help facilitate the world’s energy transition.
2020: A year like no other
The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented year that
challenged businesses throughout the world. Despite this, however, RINA's
Energy & Mobility performances showed resilience by meeting the revenues
and by exceeding the contribution margin targets.
The drop in oil markets in the second quarter was another
unprecedented event, as prices turned negative for the first time in history.
Clients in the sector responded by renegotiating project scopes, requesting
discounts, reducing levels of activities, and slowing new investment. However,
RINA had started the year with an exceptionally strong first quarter
in the
energy sector, which supported us
through the difficult months ahead.
With restrictions on travel, this accelerated our
ambitions in the use of remote, digital tools. We increased the use of
in-country resources, working with the support of global experts. Despite the
challenges of 2020, we opened a new office in Vietnam to support south east Asia
and completed the opening of our office in Spain.
Inspection and Field services were supported by the
adoption of digital solutions including RINA’s Smart Helmet, Inspection App and
Smart HSE devices. Although already part of our strategy before the pandemic,
these tools helped us support our customers and effect business continuity with
restricted travel and access to sites.
2020 Highlights
Resilience must be the key word for RINA in 2020. Our
swift transition to remote working happened without causing disruption to our
clients. Our team worked hard to ensure this smooth transition. Our growth in
renewable energy and environmental services was strong and we continue to
harness new technologies and position our business as a major player in
decarbonization. This report would not be complete without mention of the
successful $40M project in Libya, which included geotechnical and geophysical
surveys and required up to five vessels working offshore.
More than half of the
work for this was
completed in 2020 during a global
pandemic and with the
country at war.
For these reasons, RINA carried out a meticulous risk
assessment prior to the beginning of the activities and put in place a QHSE
procedure in order to allow workers on site to work safely.
In Inspection & Field activities, through the use of the smart
helmet we were able to provide the
benefits of dislocating at site one person only instead of a pool of
technicians while making the necessary competencies and expertise available
from remote, thus putting at risk, during the pandemic, less personnel
possible. The helmet allows also the presence of a single technician in
restricted/dangerous areas, the recording of the inspection performed and the
sharing in real time of the ongoing activities with multiple stakeholders. As a
virtuous example, Smart Helmets have been deployed for BP (5 helmets for a total 50 months/helmet of usage,
8000hours in 2020).
The Inspection App has been used massively for BP counting more than 450
inspection activities.
New services
Numerous new services and tools were made available in
2020 in line with our core aims of digitalization, sustainability and
decarbonization, including remote monitoring, inspection and assessment of
green projects.
In July we launched our new ‘Services
for Electrical Public Transportation’, a fully integrated consultation service serving all
players involved in the green mobility markets: energy providers,
municipalities and investment funds.
Smart
Technical Due Diligence is a remote digital service to perform
remote site surveys and support financial investment in the context of
Covid-19. Digital tools included Smart
Helmet, Inspection
App and Smart HSE devices
Digital mapping for territorial, environmental,
biodiversity sensitiveness for conventional and renewable energy plants
provides a multidisciplinary approach that matches scientific know-how and
digital mapping tools to meet clients’ sustainability goals.
Opportunities in 2020 and 2021
We remain in the grips of COVID-19, which inevitably
creates uncertainties going forward. However, governments of several EU
communities, China, USA and UK all declare their intent to invest in
decarbonization to restart their economies. This potential funding is
accelerating the energy transition as major businesses work to position
themselves to be in line for these funding programs.
For 2021, we will exploit our capacity to service
customers by joining competencies from mobility and energy. We will help
clients move to renewable resources and provide logistics and support for the
evaluation of new mobility fuels such as H2.
For inspection and field service, we will focus on large
projects and continued diversification. We are also in the process of adopting
Protocol Based Digital reporting. This will increase efficiency by
reducing the manual
intervention required
to generate and process inspection reports
and
help us add more value to data collected
to help our clients and contribute to
decisions on new product and service developments. We believe our Inspection
App and Smart Schedule will play a pivotal role for our clients in achieving
higher result in terms of sustainability and reduced carbon footprint. We see
our strength and experience in due diligence services supporting environmental,
social, sustainability and biodiversity as an area where we can play a big
role. We have long experience in supporting investors with evaluation of social
and environmental impact, but these topics are becoming more common and are
being increasingly scrutinised.
In mobility, we will strengthen our standing in the
sustainable and smart mobility markets and position ourselves close to
technological and geographic market trends, watching for signals and following
innovations to learn where, how and when this sector will be ready for big
investment.