CHE 598 Seminar: SK Innovation’s Journey from Carbon to Green
About the event
SPEAKER: Kevin SH Cho, VP of Global Open Innovation and President of SK Innovation Outpost
BIOGRAPHY:
Kevin SH Cho is a VP of Global Open Innovation at SK Innovation in South Korea and President of SK Innovation Outpost Corporation in San Francisco. He received his Master’s Degree from University of Toronto and has been working in the Energy and Petrochemical Industry for more than 20 years. He has begun his professional career as a researcher in SK but gradually shifted his role to business development and then advanced to Open Innovation where he specialized in designing technical collaborations with strategic partners in the form of consortium, joint R&D, licensing, and etc. For the past decades, he has created technology collaboration opportunities and business portfolios in the field of aromatic production catalyst/process, lube base oil production catalyst, bio-chemicals, plastic recycling, and next generation battery. His current activities, among other things, include designing value-up initiatives in area such as Municipal Solid Waste to Fuel, Advanced Nuclear Reactors and more.
ABSTRACT:
SK Innovation is the first and largest energy company in South Korea with annual revenue of $58.8 billion in 2023. It owns major eight subsidiaries for refining (SK energy and SK incheon petrochem), chemical (SK geo centric), lubricants (SK enmove), electronic materials (SK ie technology), battery (SK On), trading (SK Trading International), and exploration and production (SK Earthon). During its operation of more than 60 years, it has supplied about more than 1.1 billion tons of petroleum goods, specifically land, ocean and air fuel which is equivalent to the amount of transportation energy that can run South Korea for 26 years. Also, it has produced more than 160 million tons of petrochemicals including ethylene, propylene, BTX which equivalent to the raw material that can serve the entire South Korean petrochemical industry for more than 6 years. However, in the course of achieving such recognized achievements, it has also generated unwanted amount of carbon emissions. In order to be more sustainable, responsible and environmentally friendly, it has changed its vision to become Green Energy & Materials company. In this seminar, I will discuss about major directions on our Carbon to Green strategy and examples of current activities related to our efforts on green transformation including its open innovation approaches in SK innovation outpost.