Integrated approach of environmental issues in industrial complex treated as complicated operated machine

Refining, petrochemical and energy industry are examples of influence on all environment components. Uncontrolled imposing new stricter burdens and legal requirements may cause the lack of expected results in reducing their impact on the environment. Moreover, effects may be counterproductive. Simultaneously, companies have to balance between legislative challenges, social expectations and technical possibilities, paying special attention on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), sustainability and biodiversity. During the Fifth Refinery Forum in Brussels, representatives of the European Commission admitted that legislation laid down within the European Union in the years 2000-2012 lowered the competitiveness of European refining industry. This status is proven by the analysis of refining industry prepared by The Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, and Joint Research Centre [1]. Weakening demand for fuels, lack of opportunities for increasing the capacity of European refineries (permanent shutdowns) and shale revolution cause a number of challenges including environmental. Therefore, it is necessary to take into account all factors mentioned above, and an integrated approach to environmental and climate protection in the face of changing legal regulations becomes crucial. This article proposes a new integrated, model approach to all issues connected with environmental protection in refining, petrochemical and energy complexes. In simple words, such complexes require maintenance shutdowns, repairs, overhauls. In addition, in the process various forms of energy is used and converted, so we can talk about the “exploitation of high thermodynamic machine”.