At Baker Hughes, sustainability means operating in a principled way to minimize environmental impact and maximize social benefits by providing affordable, sustainable, and secure energy for people and the planet. We do this for ourselves and our customers.
Even in the wake of a global energy security crisis, ongoing geopolitical conflict, and shifting markets we remained deeply committed to operating in a responsible and sustainable way. Across our business, sustainability has been a key lever, transforming the performance of our Company and our industry.
Assessing our key strategic priorities
We conducted a detailed materiality assessment – an important listening exercise from our internal and external stakeholders – to strategically align on key priorities with highest business impact and stakeholder importance, to guide our sustainability strategy while mitigating potential risk. This biennial assessment helped to inform our strategic priorities while providing an opportunity for deep engagement with 50+ key internal stakeholders.
Our work was foundational in developing strategic priorities that support our commercial strategy through more sustainable operations.
Turning risks into opportunities
With climate change as an increasing risk to our Company and the world, we worked to identify physical and transition risks to our Company throughout our value chain. In 2022, we expanded our quantitative climate change scenarios and incorporated this analysis into our mid- and long-range-planning. In addition, our innovative portfolio of technologies and solutions in carbon abatement, along with clean power generation, energy efficiency and electrification, offer us a key competitive advantage in a climate constrained world.
All In. Carbon Out.
Launched in 2021, Carbon Out is a company-wide initiative to take carbon dioxide equivalent emissions (CO2e) out of our operations and meet our pledge to achieve net zero by 2050. This program – which provides tools, a framework, funding, and resources – has empowered our people to systematically contribute to reducing our CO2e emissions and focus on more sustainable operations.
In 2022, we expanded our internal Carbon Out network to focus on identifying and funding projects that will reduce our CO2e emissions. These projects are key to achieving our carbon reduction commitments and reducing our environmental impact throughout our entire business. We continued to advance our understanding of our value chain emissions and set an internal scope 3 emissions reduction goal.
Transparency and quality of data
As one of the first companies to make a public net-zero commitment, it is crucial for Baker Hughes to model leadership in sustainability performance. We continuously improved how we track, measure, govern, control, and report our sustainability performance data. We expanded the reach of our data controllership consistent with the best accounting practices. In addition, we expanded the third-party assurance of our sustainability metrics, which included reasonable assurance of all scope 1 and 2 CO2e emissions and limited assurance of our scope 3 CO2e emissions, waste, and human capital metrics.
Progress powered by our people
Getting to a lower carbon state as a society is perhaps the existential challenge of our time, and we believe that it will be driven by our people. Throughout this report, you will read about how our employees continue to live through our values to be more sustainable - whether to support diversity and inclusion, taking carbon out of our operations, or volunteering for environmental causes.
The efforts of our employees have not gone unrecognized, as the Company and individuals received numerous industry recognitions and sustainability awards in 2022.
In the spirit of inclusion, one achievement I am particularly proud of this year is making this sustainability report easier to access by readers of all abilities. We have been intentional about putting people first and ensuring no one is left behind. Through the use of visual aids, special colors, designs, and closed captioning for any linked audio-visual content, this report will be accessible to those hard of hearing, deaf, or visually impaired.
We trust you will find this year’s report informative and easy to follow. If you have questions or comments about our reporting or our approach to sustainability, I encourage you to reach out to me or a member of our leadership team.