Carbon offsets prices may rise 3,000% by 2029 under tighter rules. This statistic according to a recent Bloomberg article sheds light on a major challenge for leaders across industrial sectors, an increasingly stringent regulatory and investment environment that is making the need to meet Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reduction goals as important as achieving shareholder returns.
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) policies are not a new phenomenon. In fact, the divestment movement against companies doing business with apartheid South Africa started in the 1960s. This laid the groundwork for Congress to enact economic sanctions against the South African government. These sanctions build the pressure and ultimately change the country.
Today, ESG is most frequently aimed at compelling companies to take actions to mitigate climate change by limiting – even eliminating – GHG pollution. Many, if not most, oil and gas companies have ESG policies, ESG board committees, and annual ESG reports.
As Forbes reported in 2021, “Between Shell’s order from a Netherlands court to cut CO2 emissions by 45% in the next nine years and ExxonMobil and Chevron both facing mounting pressure from investors — including newly appointed climate activist board members in Exxon’s case — we’re seeing a clear, historic, and game-changing shift in how businesses are being held accountable for the impact they have on the environment.”
But the oil and gas industry, like many others, struggle to find, reduce and prevent carbon emission – noticeable on several scientific reports that often find that “oil and gas companies are failing to design, equip, and inform their Methane Leak Detection and Repair (LDAR) activities as necessary to achieve rapid and large-scale reductions in methane emissions from their operations,” and that the companies “have internal data showing that methane emission rates from the sector are likely significantly higher than official data reported to EPA would indicate.”
Why? Because of a carbon elephant in the room.
Few leaders appreciate the number of organizations that lack the technology and process for finding, fixing and preventing carbon emissions at the asset level. Without these capabilities, leaders lack the tangible data they need to translate carbon into financial risk, obligations, or returns.
Address the carbon elephant in room by investing in technology and processes that provide a unified view of production systems. This helps engineers and operators share visibility and contextual information of physical and virtual components – across the entire production process.
Addressing the carbon elephant with this capability builds collaboration between teams. This collaboration, when mixed with automation and artificial intelligence, centralizes the understanding of emission offenders and provides remediation steps.
Addressing the carbon elephant also helps leaders better understand operations. This includes a root-cause of why systems are failing, and how to remove bottlenecks in real-time, including actionable insights for control changes and automating operations.
Emission reduction mandates are here to stay. Learn more about how to remove the carbon elephant by following us on LinkedIn. And to have a discussion on how Kelvin helps you address your carbon reduction goals, contact us today.