Enhancing energy security and affordability
While this report centers on our performance and progress in 2021, we are keenly focused on events in the first half of 2022 which are further reshaping the debate around energy security, affordability and reliability.
It is clear that we are in an energy crisis, which is being caused by an inflection point in energy markets. Among other things, the devastating war in Ukraine has resurfaced questions about where— and from whom—we get our critical energy supplies. Energy security has now been elevated alongside affordability, reliability and sustainability. The war has strained already tight supply and demand balances, pushing up the cost of energy globally, with few shielded from the impacts, particularly the most vulnerable in our society.
Forecasts show that demand for energy will continue to increase as populations grow and developing nations raise their standards of living. Combined with heightened emphasis on energy security, we face the need for even more energy, and importantly, greater diversity and reliability of supply across conventional and renewable sources.
North American energy should be the top choice of global consumers. As an ESG leader with abundant, low-cost and efficient energy supply, well-developed regulatory and legal frameworks, and a deeply integrated infrastructure network, North America is well-positioned to get energy to where it is needed.
Advancing a net-zero future
Achieving global and North American climate goals has never been more important.
At Enbridge, we set and met emissions reduction targets in the past and we continue to lead our sector with new targets grounded in science and aligned with goals of the Paris Agreement. We have a focused plan—fully embedded in our operations and capital allocation framework—for achieving the targets and for ensuring resiliency through the transition. To hold ourselves accountable, we’ve linked incentive pay for the executives and all employees to our ESG goals. We’ve further integrated our targets into the business with $3 billion in sustainable finance—including the first sustainability-linked loan and bond in our sector.
Given the nature of our business, our planning process places significant emphasis on understanding changes in energy systems and evaluating trends to help inform our approach. As part of that process, we routinely assess business fundamentals under a variety of scenarios which allow us to monitor and react to the pace of the transition. In this year’s report, we test the resilience of our businesses with a 1.5 C scenario analysis. We believe the world is moving toward a cleaner energy future and Enbridge is well-positioned to play a key role in the energy transition—supporting the energy needs of people and maintaining a disciplined and deliberate approach to strategic and financial planning. Our ongoing push to modernize our existing footprint to provide safe, reliable and lower-emission services will extend the life of our core businesses while low-carbon opportunities continue to emerge and scale.
It is early days, but we’re making strong progress against our ESG goals—our emissions intensity is down 27% since 2018 and absolute emissions are down as well. In this report, we’ve outlined how we’re reducing emissions, from improving efficiency to powering our pipelines with solar energy, as well as the investments we’re making in hydrogen blending, renewable natural gas and carbon capture. We also illustrate where we see future progress on the road to net zero.