THE ESG ISSUE
ESG: Irritating Officemate or Trusted Business Partner? By Andy Knapp, Energy Workforce & Technology Council
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SG is not right around the corner, and we are not preparing for its arrival.
ESG is here to stay, and many questions remain. Do I — and my company — really understand our roles in ESG? Are we integrating ESG into our operations or is it fodder for the next annual or sustainability report? What do we really consider material data for our company? What are the metrics and goals we are using? Are we committed to ESG as part of our leadership message and is the rest of the organization embracing it? The frustration with ESG is real, well founded, and you are not alone. ESG can sound like the colleague who sets a meeting agenda with 25 items to be covered in 30 minutes. Or the one who sends texts during a meeting and only looks up at the end to say they disagree with the decisions made and that another meeting is needed. Or worse yet, the person who always has “one more thing” as everyone at the table thought you had accomplished what you set out to do. You know these people. Council membership now exceeds 600 organizations, each with its own ESG knowledge level and plan. Some have recently begun their ESG “journey” while others 20
Well Servicing Magazine/July 2021
have integrated ESG into their operations and are executing on ESG stretch goals. There is no silver bullet for ESG success, and the Council has broken down its ESG activities into five strategic categories, where member companies can find and access the resources they need. First, the Council is an ESG policy resource and advocate on behalf of its members and an education resource for our sector. Every day, we all receive an avalanche of ESG information from government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), investor entities, ratings organizations, thought leaders and everyone in between. The Council takes these mountains of information and crafts them into actionable recommendations on whether the Council should engage on behalf of members. At the most basic level, we are committed to educating because we cannot assume policy makers, the media and other third parties have any idea how things work or do not work in the business world. A great example is the recent U.S. Security and Exchange Commission request for information on climate disclosure, where we submitted a comment letter that educates policymakers on potential impacts of expanded climate disclosure to our members. We recognize and value that we work in a
