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Sustainability at GAIL

Sustainability at Gail

GAIL’s Approach to Sustainability

GAIL, being India’s top gas distributor, is dedicated towards advancing the country’s energy sector in a sustainable way, by incorporating sustainability in its operations and decision making. For us, sustainability, is a method of creating long-term value by examining our company’s operations in terms of the environment’s ecological, economic and social elements.

To ensure the company’s long-term viability and to help us maintain our overall leadership position, we have developed a sustainability roadmap that will assist us in ensuring that our impact on the environment and society is either neutral or positive. Our sustainability roadmap has been carefully crafted based on our stakeholder requirements, nation’s strategy for clean and accessible energy and the rising demand for natural gas in our country. It is our endeavour to develop proactive and transparent sustainability strategies through identification of new opportunities arising out of the nation’s decarbonization ambitions.

Sustainability Policy

GAIL’s Sustainability Policy guides us in our pursuit of sustainable business excellence while assisting us in staying on track with our sustainability obligations while also defining short- and long- term goals and targets for enhancing our triple bottom line performance. Being cognizant of our role as a responsible corporate citizen, we have institutionalized sustainability into our business practices through development and implementation of various programs and initiatives.

Our sustainability policy can be accessed from the Sustainability section on GAIL’s website https://www.gailonline.com/SBPolicy.html.

Sustainability Governance

At GAIL, we believe that strong governance structure, formed on the pillars of integrity, ethics, respect, safety, innovation and stakeholder’s welfare enables us to grow in a sustainable manner and fulfil our mission of “enhancing quality of life through green energy and beyond.” Our strong governance structure along with our sustainability policy enable us integrating environmental and social accountability into the core of our growth strategy.

GAIL has a three-member Sustainable Development Committee (SDC) on its Board of Directors. As of 31st March 2022, the committee, is chaired by the GAIL’s Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) and comprises of Director (Projects), Director (Business Development), as members. The role of committee includes deliberation on the organization’s sustainability agenda as well as examines the company’s climate change strategy, emergency response on strategy and HSE performance. The SDC also guide us on how to implement sustainability strategy across the business, manage goal setting, reporting processes, strengthen relations with external stakeholders and ensure the overall accountability across the organization. Our sustainability governance aims to ensure group’s commitments to different stakeholder groups, including customers, consumers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, decision- makers and representatives of the community. The SDC met four times in FY 2021-22. The SDC is informed by the Sustainable Development Steering Committee (SDSC), which backs up the Sustainability Policy directives and is responsible for carrying out the company’s sustainability goals as well as risk and performance management.

Sustainable Development Steering Committee

At GAIL, the Sustainable Development Steering Committee (SDSC), is a multidisciplinary committee comprises of the departmental heads (HoDs) of multiple departments including HoDs of C&P, HR, SD, F&A, Risk, CSR, CC, CST, Mktg-PC, Mktg-Gas and HSE. The SDSC is tasked with assisting the Sustainable Development Committee (SDC) in fulfilling its responsibilities, which include forming the strategy, operational model and reporting frameworks concerning sustainability and climate change.

The committee also ensures compliance with the policy through direct supervision of all sustainability initiatives and responsible for executing the company’s sustainability goals as well as risk and performance management. We are extremely concerned about the environmental impact of our operations and managing the same take precedence. Efforts are constantly made to reduce or neutralize the impact of greenhouse gases and to achieve zero waste disposal.

Various units at the organization are actively assessing the risk posed by climate change. We have separate groups that coordinate risk management throughout the firm. While HSE is coordinating for all risks pertaining to environmental and safety issues, the CSR group is coordinating for all risks pertaining to social impact related issues. These groups ensure that all existing and anticipated environmental, economic and social risks are addressed. The risks are recognized, evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively, analysed and effectively managed by implementing mitigation plans.

Sustainability Activities

At GAIL, we recognize our role in establishing India’s energy security in line with nation’s decarbonization strategies and our commitment towards meeting India’s ever growing clean energy demand. To achieve this, we are in process diversifying our supply chain as well as building a portfolio of clean energy sources. As a testament of our sustainability efforts, we were amongst the 10 Indian companies to be highlighted at the United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP26) 2021, as a part of UN Global Compact – Accenture CEO Study on Sustainability.

During FY 2021-22, we initiated and executed several projects and programmes across multiple sites as part of our Annual Sustainability Workplan in order to realize our sustainable growth vision:

  • We have set a target to achieve Net-Zero (scope 1 and scope 2) status by 2040, while reducing our scope 3 emission by 35% (from baseline year of 2020-2021) by 2040.
  • GAIL has awarded the contract to set up the 10 MW, Green Hydrogen project based on PEM technology that will produce 4.3 tonnes of green hydrogen per day of 99.99% purity, which will be mixed in natural gas for supply to industries.
  • In the field of CBG, GAIL has signed investment agreements with 04 numbers of start-ups working in the area of Compressed Bio-Gas (CBG) sector for a financial commitment of INR 7 crore. Furthermore, we are also in process of constructing our first CBG facility with a 5 TPD capacity, in collaboration with Ranchi Municipal Corporation and has entered into a 22-year concession deal for the supply of municipal solid waste (MSW) and related infrastructure for the construction of the plant.
  • GAIL has implemented a pilot project for fixing CO2 (1TPD) using microalgae in an open raceway ponds at Pata petrochemical complex in association with Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research (CIMFER), Dhanbad.

Monitoring of Sustainability Projects

Dashboards

Understanding the importance of real-time monitoring for efficient management of resources, we have developed number of dashboards using our in-house capabilities. These dashboards enable us to conduct real- time monitoring of various significant energy users (SEUs), such as Gas Turbines, Heavy Duty Steam Turbines, Centrifugal Compressors, Gas Cracking Furnaces, Boilers, Heat Recovery Steam Generators (HRSGs), other process heaters, Extruder units.

Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Community Member

Being a founding member of GRI South Asia Consortium since 2013, GAIL has been engaging with the GRI in various aspects to make its sustainability reporting practices more relevant and transparent.

GreenCo Assessment of the sites

As part of our efforts to reduce our energy consumption, we are constantly implementing various energy efficiency initiatives across our sites. To further streamline these efforts, GAIL has commenced the process of implementing the GreenCo Rating across its several sites.

GreenCo Rating implementation gives firms with leadership and direction on how to make their products, services and processes more environmentally friendly by evaluating the enterprises on the environmental friendliness of their activities using a life cycle approach. During FY 2021-22, GAIL’s Pata plant achieved the distinction of becoming the first GAIL unit to be awarded the “GreenCo Gold” rating by CII Sohrabji Green Business Centre. Further, GAIL Gandhar unit and Vizag-Secunderabad LPG Pipeline (VSPL) received the “GreenCo Silver” rating.