An op-ed, short for “opposite the editorial page”, is a written prose piece, which expresses the opinion of an author usually not affiliated with the publication’s editorial board.
Deidra Garyk. Submitted
Editor’s note: Like or hate it, believe it’s a passing fad or the wave of the future. ESG came out of nowhere about four years ago and now is at the forefront of concern for almost every larger business in the energy sector, and beyond. But it turns out it’s even bigger than that.
Deidra Garyk lives and breaths ESG in her daily work as manager of ESG and sustainability for a major oilfield services company. She’s also a leading voice for the energy sector in Western Canada. This deep dive into ESG comes in two parts – the first lays out what ESG is, and the second part is how it will specifically impact the energy sector.
The world is in the middle of an energy disruption. There is a shift in consumer preferences towards low carbon, low emissions energy sources. Canada’s oil and gas companies have an opportunity to lead the energy future using decades of technical know-how, innovation, and ingenuity to meet these changing demands.
Consumers, investors, and regulators have embraced environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure as a means to understand what companies are doing to meet their expectations, and this is causing disruption in all sectors and industries.
Disruption is not always bad. Voluntary ESG disclosure requirements called on the oil and gas industry to look for ways to reduce polluting emissions and environmental degradation. These requirements also ask companies to scrutinize their community impacts and share their governance structures. The oil and gas industry has answered with most companies offering detailed reports that are available to the public.
If every company and industry is judged equally and fairly, Canadian oil and gas has an opportunity to showcase that it is being a good corporate citizen and is working to improve its already stringently regulated environmental and safety practices.
WHAT IS ESG?
ESG, or Environmental, Social, and Governance, is a tool to disclose non-financial metrics to stakeholders, and is led by the financial sector.
ESG is a difficult concept to define in a simple way. In part, that is because it is intentionally complex, but also because it is all-encompassing – ESG is everything and everything is ESG, these days.
The acronym is sometimes used interchangeably with the broader term “sustainability,” or by the now outdated term “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR), although many companies have replaced their CSR report with an ESG report.
Companies focus on publicly disclosing their material risks and opportunities, particularly those that would impact an investor’s decision making and assist in their due diligence.
Some examples of topics included in an ESG disclosure are:
Environmental – how a company acts as an environmental steward. It measures how sustainably a company is operating, and includes:
- climate change management, mitigation, and adaptation
- greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
- resource depletion, including water
- biodiversity
-
- waste water treatment
- waste and pollution
- deforestation
Social – how a company treat employees, customers & communities. It is sort of like the soft skills of a company, and includes:
- working conditions, including slavery and child labour usage
- impact on local communities, including indigenous communities
- health and safety
- human rights in the supply chain
- employee relations and diversity, including pay equity
-
- product safety
Governance – how a company governs itself. Topics in this category help the public measure how ethical the company is, and includes:
- executive pay
- bribery and corruption
- political lobbying and donations
- board diversity and structure
-
- tax strategy and accounting practices
- cybersecurity
- executives’ handling of reported misconduct or discrimination
- shareholder voting policies
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THE ESG EVOLUTION – EVER INCREASING REGULATIONS
Starting in the 1970’s, there was a focus on shareholder value, but that limited vision has become outdated. Some consumers and investors are embracing Stakeholder Theory, which is broader and focuses on a business’s impact on its stakeholders, not only the financial impacts to shareholders.
The concept of “stakeholder capitalism” is often associated with the World Economic Forum as it has been promoted and popularized by its leader Klaus Schwab.
“Stakeholders” are a nebulously defined group, which can morph and change. They are anyone who interacts with or is impacted by the company. The term even includes the planet as a stakeholder whose health, its proponents argue, should be at the centre of all decisions.
The duties placed on companies under stakeholder capitalism are not limited to publicly traded companies that have to report their results. This theory extends the obligations for responsible business practices to private companies too. It is why ESG disclosure requirements impact all businesses, regardless of size or corporate status.
ESG is driven primarily by the financial community. Institutional investors, like BlackRock and Vanguard that hold ownership in many publicly traded companies and manage large pension funds, have been actively involved in influencing ESG disclosure requirements globally. They participate in international gatherings such as the World Economic Forum Davos summits and United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) events, where their trillion-dollar asset portfolios give them clout and influence.
ESG is no longer only talked about at closed door summits among the unelected elites, though. Governments and regulators are embracing it. The leader has been the European Union, which has brought into law some of the world’s most stringent reporting requirements ahead of other jurisdictions.
With ever-increasing reporting demands, everything from pension funds and venture capital firms to insurance companies and banks have to disclose sustainability risks and how they’re managing them. This started with the European Union’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation and has expanded with new disclosure rules that will increase the number of companies mandated to report from around 12,000 to over 50,000 under the Corporate Sustainable Reporting Directive (CSRD).
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Europe, including the UK, has generally taken the lead on ESG and sustainability disclosure requirements, and they keep upping the ante for other jurisdictions to follow. On November 22, 2022, the EU Parliament adopted legislation requiring large companies – greater than 249 employees – to have gender balance on their boards. The law requires that the underrepresented sex must make up 40 percent of non-executive director positions or 33 percent of all director positions by mid-2026 – a mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) target.
According to the EU’s own publicly available information, only 30.6 percent of EU board membership is made up of women. How companies are to meet the requirements is not clear. Nor is it clear what the consequences will be if they cannot find a sufficient number of qualified women.
Japan is also concerned about gender inequality. Starting in June 2023, Japanese companies with greater than 300 employees must report their gender pay gap information on their websites and explain why it exists.
Government-imposed disclosure obligations have not stayed across the pond. Governments and regulators in Canada and the United States are also working on requirements.
In May 2023, Canada enacted Bill S-211, an Act to enact the Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act and to amend the Customs Tariff. This Act requires companies to report annually, beginning on or before May 31, 2024, to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness about what they are doing to ensure their supply chain does not use modern slave labour. The punishment for non-compliance is hefty, including summary conviction and a fine up to $250,000.
Beginning in 2024, the Canadian federal government will require that banks and insurance companies disclose climate-related risks and exposures, including that of their clients.
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The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), the body that governs Canadian federally regulated financial institutions and pension plans, has established guidelines for assessing and reporting climate risks and exposures. This includes the exposure of real estate properties that are powered or heated by fossil fuels, which is claimed may have a lower value than those powered by renewables. The desired outcome is that the financial institution will take steps to mitigate climate risks.
In response, Canadian banks have set their own emissions reduction targets for financed emissions – each around 30 percent by 2030 – for their energy portfolios, burdening oil and gas companies with an obligation to disclose sustainability and climate data.
If companies cannot meet the target, the consequences are not clear. It could be that the bank or insurance provider will discontinue their services or that the cost of obtaining their services will be untenably high. This information has not been disclosed publicly yet and asking people who work in these industries only yields vague, mumbled answers. Imprecise responses indicates that these targets may be arbitrary rather than well-thought out and scientifically based with a degree of achievability.
If banks and insurance companies require corporations to meet certain climate-related targets, it is not unreasonable to speculate that eventually Canadians could see a requirement for a personal ESG rating or score to borrow money or obtain insurance. Australian banks are already offering interest rate discounts under the Clean Energy Home Loan if certain environmental ratings are met.
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Amendments to Canada’s Competition Act are in front of Parliament to strengthen rules to limit greenwashing claims by businesses. The changes will require environmental, climate, and ecological claims to be backed up with studies and records to prove their “greenness”.
In March 2022, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) unveiled a 490-page tome of proposed climate disclosure rules. The final requirements were set to be released in the fall of 2023, but it is reported that the SEC had to comb through 60 thousand comments received during the consultation period and are preparing for lawsuits pushing back against jurisdictional overreach. As a result, the rules have not been released as of December 2023.
A hodge podge of unique jurisdictional disclosure requirements means that ESG data is not consistent or comparable globally, making it somewhat ineffective for investors to use when making decisions.
As a result, at the behest of G20 leaders, the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation created a global baseline of disclosure obligations, requiring companies to document their sustainability information and resilience to climate risks and opportunities.
The finalized rules were released on June 26, 2023 for consideration and adoption by regulators around the globe.
If adopted by the Canadian Securities Administrators – a high probability occurrence – all publicly traded companies in Canada will be bound by the requirements. This will be onerous, time consuming, and costly; therefore, companies must get prepared.
The evolution of ESG continues, but it is unlikely to disappear completely.
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FIVE REQUIREMENTS COMPANIES MUST UNDERSTAND IN THE IFRS SUSTAINABILITY STANDARDs
To avoid the destruction of Canadian businesses and the mass sell-off to multinationals, companies would benefit from understanding five requirements in the IFRS Sustainability Standards.
- The focus is on climate. Companies must be prepared to explain their governance oversight of climate-related risks and opportunities, as well as their strategies to address them. They must also explain their risk management processes for dealing with climate-related risks.
- Scenario analysis, qualitative or computer climate modeling, is a requirement under the Standards. Finding a credible company to perform climate-related scenario analysis to identify potential risk areas will be costly and the results may not be accurate, offering little value to the company. Forecasting the future is just that – forecasting. Different inputs and assumptions yield different outcomes. Forecasting too far into the future generally yields worthless results.
- Companies must assess the resiliency of their supply chain’s ability to adapt to climate-related risks. This will require the transfer of a great deal of data up and down a company’s supply chain to ensure all risks are being considered and are accurately disclosed. If your company does not know its annual greenhouse gas emissions and its water usage, now is the time to start gathering that data.
- Verified data is the most valuable data. While the international body does not have jurisdiction to mandate audit requirements, regional regulators are encouraged to implement a verification obligation. Without it, it is difficult to have investor-grade disclosures as there opportunity for companies to misrepresent their data. However, audits will be costly and finding a qualified auditor to perform the work may prove to be a challenge. Since international sustainability auditing standards have not been finalized yet, training is not available and that will cause some delays for issuers while auditing firms hire and train enough staff to perform the work.
- Sustainability reports must be released at the same time and for the same time period as the financial statements. There is no leniency for delays.
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THE ANTI-ESG MOVEMENT – SHOULD COMPANIES ISSUE ESG DISCLOSURES?
As reporting requirements increase in number and become more rigid, there is an anti-ESG movement gaining traction, led by “red states” in the United States. Some states have introduced anti-ESG-style bills requiring a focus on financial return when investing public money.
The Republican officials leading the charge have had some success slowing down the ESG train. One of the more noteworthy is that several insurance companies left the United Nation’s Net-Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA), citing antitrust risk. The NZIA requires signatories commit to transitioning their insurance and reinsurance underwriting portfolios to net-zero GHG emissions by 2050.
The anti-ESG movement has some people proclaiming that companies should shun ESG disclosure altogether to fight back against what they see as a push towards a globalist future run by multi-nationals who are advancing a left-wing, social justice agenda.
It may not be that easy. Companies that are publicly run, meaning they are not privately held or State-Owned Enterprises and, therefore, trade on a stock exchange, must raise capital to continue growing and innovating to remain profitable. Hence these companies must appease the investment community, which is leading the demand for ESG reporting.
Additionally, pension funds and other large funds are dictating the requirements for companies to remain within the fund. “Fighting” ESG by refusing to issue disclosures could put a company in severe jeopardy by limiting the available investment pool.
However, some of the reporting requirements will be detrimentally burdensome, especially to small companies. Now is the time to become aware of the impending rules and their impacts, and to use that information to challenge regulatory bodies that are making impractical requirements for data collection and disclosure.
Next: In part 2, Garyk delves into specific reporting that will be required, from Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions to the fact that private companies won’t be able to duck this reporting.
Deidra Garyk has been working in the Canadian energy industry for almost 20 years. She is currently the Manager, ESG & Sustainability at an oilfield service company. Prior to that, she worked in roles of varying seniority at exploration and production companies in joint venture contracts where she was responsible for working collaboratively with stakeholders to negotiate access to pipelines, compressors, plants, and batteries.
Outside of her professional commitments, Deidra is an energy advocate and thought leader who researches, writes, and speaks about energy policy and advocacy to promote balanced, honest, fact-based conversations.
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