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Climate Change

Our Impacts

Climate change is an issue of strategic and operational importance to all Enbridge businesses, regardless of where they are located.

As one of North America's major energy delivery companies, Enbridge operates and has equity and operational control in an extensive network of pipelines and facilities to transport oil, refined oil products and natural gas to a wide variety of commercial, industrial and residential customers.

Our North American network and interests include natural gas gathering, processing, transmission, and local distribution pipelines that move natural gas from production fields located in Canada and the United States to distribution systems, gas storage facilities, and ultimately to customers in both countries. Liquids pipelines transport oil and other liquid hydrocarbons across the continent. Each of these different types of pipelines and facilities has a unique mix of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission sources, characteristics and emission reduction methodologies available.

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Enbridge's Climate Change Policy

Enbridge recognizes that there is growing evidence that climate change is a critical global issue. We also acknowledge that dealing with climate change is a shared responsibility with implications for citizens, governments and business. Enbridge is committed to being part of a collaborative solution: our climate change strategy focuses on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from existing operations, designing new facilities with a view to reducing emissions and on developing new renewable and alternative energy sources. This is in keeping with our overall commitment to protecting the environment, while enhancing our position as one of North America's leading sustainable energy delivery companies.

Actions undertaken in the past have contributed to addressing the climate change challenge through verifiable GHG reductions. Enbridge recognizes that meaningful GHG reductions will require governments to collaborate with industry and the consuming public to establish clear, realistic GHG emission objectives, and policies and regulations that will be effective in achieving them.

Enbridge believes that government must encourage GHG mitigation policies and regulations across all sectors of the economy, and involve both energy consumers and energy producers. Government policies must be tailored to our energy intensive and export-based economy, and must enable us to remain competitive while making meaningful reductions in GHG emissions. Policies should establish a defined price for CO2 emissions and compliance options should focus on promoting both near-term reductions and the advancement of technology for larger future reductions over time.

Enbridge is prepared to work with all levels of government and key associations to encourage the energy industry to be a proactive participant in the development and implementation of climate change solutions.

Our approach has been to:

Build the Foundation

  • Develop and implement an enterprise-wide plan including an internal GHG reporting system that ensures we understand the sources, types and magnitude of all GHG emissions within our operations.
  • Identify, implement, and monitor the success of GHG reduction within our operations.

Lead by Example

  • Set GHG performance improvement targets and publicly report on our progress in achieving these targets.
  • Invest in alternative and renewable energy sources to assist our business and our customers in reducing GHGs.
  • Look for opportunities to educate the public and our employees about climate change and what we are doing about it.

Work with Others

  • Collaborate with key industry associations and non-government organizations to assist governments in establishing clear, economically sound rules to reduce GHGs and to conduct research and deploy new GHG reduction technologies where appropriate.
  • Share information on current and emerging "best-available technologies economically achievable" and partner with key stakeholders to ensure governments are aware of, and understand, these technologies.

Our Action Plan

Board CSR Committee

The CSR Committee of Enbridge's Board of Directors has specific oversight responsibility for all climate-change-related activities and the development of a carbon management strategy for the corporation. This Board Committee is supported by Enbridge’s senior management Corporate Leadership Team, as well as our Climate Change Sub-Committee.

Climate Change Sub-Committee (CCSC)

The CCSC meets monthly and provides a technical focus for the corporation that supports all climate-change-related activities across the enterprise. The CCSC reviews business and environmental risks associated with climate change and identifies policies and actions to mitigate this risk. The CCSC comprises representatives from our business units in Canada, the United States and Colombia, with others being informally invited to participate and advise as required. This committee also oversees the development of consistent internal methodologies for GHG inventories and reporting, and approves the reporting protocols to be used. Currently, the CCSC is overseeing an external audit of our Canadian GHG emissions data as well as preparing our CSA Canadian GHG Challenge Registry Report.

Public Reporting

We have publicly reported GHG emissions from our Canadian operations since 1995 and use internationally recognized GHG reporting protocols developed by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

To provide a clearer picture of our global carbon footprint and following the guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative, Enbridge has decided to report GHG data only for entities for which it has operational control over daily activities, including internal CSR policies and procedures. As a result, starting with this CSR Report, we are expanding our public GHG reporting to include our sponsored investments in the United States. As we do not have operational control of either CLH in Spain or OCENSA in Colombia, we are no longer publicly reporting emissions data from CLH, which is a deviation from the 2006 CSR Report, and we are not reporting OCENSA’s data. However, we will continue to track their data internally.

The CCSC will continue to work across all enterprise-wide business units to clarify the assumptions being used to calculate our GHG emissions and to ensure the most appropriate calculation methodologies are being used.

Reporting To Regulators

In Canada, while there is at present no regulation limiting GHG emissions, we submit our data to the Canadian federal government’s (Environment Canada’s) mandatory GHG reporting program, as well as to the National Pollutant Release Inventory for all other pollutants.

Our United States operations are not currently subject to any GHG regulatory regime. However, we actively participate in the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) voluntary Natural Gas STAR Program and report our activities to them. The Company has also voluntarily signed on as an International Partner to the EPA's Natural Gas Star Program.

Reporting To Stakeholders

In Canada, we report annually to the Canadian Standards Association’s Canadian GHG Challenge Registry. Our reports from all major Canadian business units are publicly available on the Registry’s website. Our 2006 update report gained a "Silver Champion Level Reporter" rating status.

Our Targets

Direct emissions come from sources that are owned or controlled by the Company and can include emissions from stationary combustion equipment, vehicle operation, as well as vented and fugitive emissions from piping and associated equipment.

Indirect emissions are the GHG emissions associated with purchased electricity and other activities where the emission sources are not owned or controlled by the Company.

Stationary combustion emissions occur when fuels, predominantly natural gas, are burned as an energy source in the Company’s operations.

Transportation emissions include the emissions from the operation of Company-owned transportation equipment. Emissions from the use of employee-owned vehicles for Company activities are counted as an indirect emissions source.

Vented emissions are releases to the atmosphere by design or operational practice. The most common sources of these emissions are gas-operated devices that use natural gas as the supply medium, equipment blowdowns and purging activities in the Company’s natural gas distribution operations.

Fugitive emissions include unintentional leaks from piping and associated equipment components and releases from third-party damages to the pipeline system.

The base year for our targets is 1990, when Enbridge consisted of only five Canadian-based companies that emitted 377,000 tonnes of direct carbon dioxideequivalent (CO2e) emissions (without adjustments). Another 899,000 tonnes of indirect emissions were a result of electricity consumed by Enbridge facilities and operations.

In 2005, Enbridge achieved its corporate target to reduce its Canadian direct GHG emissions by 15 per cent below 1990 levels. We actually achieved an 18-per-cent reduction.

Our new interim target, set by the CCSC, is to reduce our Canadian direct GHG emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010. Given the expansion of our company’s operations globally over the past few years, we are reviewing our GHG target setting process as we continue to develop our broader corporate carbon management strategy. Once we have completed a full inventory of our emitting assets in the United States, and in conjunction with the development of our carbon management strategy, we will be able to set a reduction target encompassing all businesses over which we have operational control.

As part of this broader carbon management strategy, Enbridge has initiated a third-party independent audit of the GHG emissions data from our Canadian operations. We have selected a recognized third-party consulting company to conduct this audit and the results of this review will be used in part to help guide the Company in developing a more robust internal data management system, as well as improve the quality of data being reported. These results will be reported in 2008.

A separate audit of GHG data of Enbridge Gas Distribution and our other Canadian gas distribution assets is under way under the auspices of the Canadian Energy Partnership for Environmental Innovation as part of a Canada-wide audit program. We anticipate that the findings from this audit will not materially alter the data submitted for this business unit, as we are building on a previous similar audit of our 2000 data.

 

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