THE ESG ISSUE
Building Sustainable Operations in the Energy Industry By Marie Merle Caekebeke, Schlumberger
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ach company contributing to the exploration and production value chain plays a role in achieving sustainable operations. This means adopting a triple bottom line approach to evaluate the social, environmental, and financial impact of key decisions in the aim of creating greater business value while, at the same time, positively contributing to communities and the planet. With addressing climate change at the forefront of many discussions across our stakeholders, let us take a deep dive into what supporting Sustainable Development Goal 13 Climate Action looks like — from setting ambitious, measurable goals; to holding yourself accountable by embedding sustainability objectives and ambitions throughout a company’s operations; to empowering local teams to what is locally relevant; all while increasing transparency in reporting ESG performance.
ADDRESSING CLIMATE CHANGE: In Our Operations
Contributing to SDG 13 means learning to better manage our respective environmental footprint, including emissions, throughout the life cycle of planning decisions, such as properly managing purchased goods and services, logistics, facilities, operations and, ultimately, technology and services sold to customers. Taking this comprehensive approach supports a transformational change aimed at reducing our industry’s footprint. This requires being resilient and adaptable, mitigating emissions and climate-related risks, identifying and capturing climate opportunities, and embedding a focus on emissions within your corporate strategy. Measurable, realistic goals pointing to long-term results while incorporating interim targets along the way holds companies accountable so they can truly make progress in this space. Publicly stating these goals and sharing defined metrics and the progress made demonstrates a company’s strong commitment to act. Schlumberger takes a whole value chain approach to reviewing our direct and indirect emissions, setting both long-term and interim targets as part of our approach. To start, we set a near-term target of reducing 30% of our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2025 (2019 baseline). To build a medium-term target with tangible deliverables, in 2019 Schlumberger became the first company 22
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in upstream E&P services to commit to setting a science-based target in emissions reduction. As part of this commitment, we broadened the breadth of our greenhouse gas inventory, with particular focus on Scope 3. This included technology use-phase emissions, in line with criteria defined by the Science Based Targets initiative and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Including Scope 3 emissions in our assessment enables Schlumberger to better quantify the impact of our technology during the use-phase and highlight any impact reducing opportunities to help our customers reduce their footprint in addition to ours. In support of these efforts, our Scope 1 and 2 emissions reduction target was incorporated into the 2020 annual cash incentive opportunity for our CEO and other members of senior management. To assess possible financial risks associated with climate change, key frameworks like the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) are a great place to start. These frameworks can help companies identify and mitigate climate-related risks while capitalizing on climate-related opportunities to benefit both the planet and communities around the world. This might include assessing a company’s operations for both acute and chronic physical climate risks, as well as those associated with the energy transition; and identifying opportunities such as applying technologies with a reduced environmental impact or expanding beyond oil and gas.
ADDRESSING CLIMATE CHANGE: In Customer Operations
Service companies tend to have a much smaller fuel and power consumption footprint than operators with large midstream and downstream operations—resulting in our sector having a strong opportunity to influence environmental performance well beyond our own footprint. The products and services we provide can help our customers meet their environmental priorities. To lessen the use-phase emissions of our technology and support our customers in addressing their environmental priorities, Schlumberger currently offers a broad technology portfolio of more than 100 solutions with attributes that tie to the six environmental SDGs. Our technologies include environmental impact reducing options aimed at: consuming fewer resources including energy, water, raw materials, and physical footprint; gen-
