The Role of Carbon Emission Reduction Companies 

It’s becoming increasingly popular for businesses to publicly disclose carbon emissions data, and those that aren’t showing any progression in finding carbon offset programs are facing financial and production burdens.

Highwood Emissions Management, a management solutions company, is committed to providing companies, especially in the oil and gas industry, with effective strategies to help them reduce their carbon emissions. 

In our latest 5x5 series interview, Jessica Shumlich, CEO and co-founder of Highwood Emissions Management, sat down with Rachel Gregory, Digital Host at The Global Energy Show, to discuss how her company works with organizations to help reduce and cut carbon emissions. 

Global Energy Show - Jessica Shumlich, CEO & Co-Founder of Highwood Emissions Management

How Highwood Emissions Management Helps Companies Reduce Carbon Emissions

Rachel: What is Highwood Emissions Management? What is it that you do and how do you work with organizations to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions? 

Jessica: We work with industries, governments and innovators around the world to look at the most effective emissions management strategies. We have an amazing team that looks at data analytics and knowledge to optimize emissions management solutions.

How Oil & Gas Companies Can Make the Shift to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Rachel: What are some of the gaps between oil and gas companies within this space, and what are some actions that businesses can take if they don't know where to start? 

Jessica: When we work with companies in the upstream, midstream or downstream oil and gas market, we see that emissions management and an emissions reduction plan need to be mandated from the top level and embedded into the organization. These mandates should be with target setting for emissions reduction activities, allocating capital budgets, and many other things. After that occurs, it's time for the oil and gas companies to understand their emissions and what type of projects and initiatives can result in carbon reduction. 

If you look at it from the ground level on the oil and gas side, the biggest gap is really understanding what equipment exists, where emissions are coming from, and what the most cost-effective ways are to reduce those emissions.

Truthfully, businesses might not realize that there are cost-effective ways to reduce emissions. And when stacked against other projects, especially with the current funding available here in Canada, they might actually compete for those capital dollars.

Breaking Down Voluntary Initiatives For Responsibly Sourced Oil and Gas

Rachel: Can you tell us more about the voluntary initiatives available to companies in the oil and gas industry to take credit for responsibly-sourced gas? 

Jessica: So, Ohio Emissions just recently published a report called voluntary emissions reduction initiatives for responsibly-sourced oil and gas. In that report, we broke down voluntary initiatives into four categories: 

1. Certifications hold participants to standards, and they have explicit declarations of achievement. 

2. Commitments look to the future, and they look at what the goals are and look for companies to pledge to those goals. 

3. Guidelines might be a set of frameworks, standards, and principles that are followed.

4. ESG ratings look at the organization's current state, usually based on self-reported performance questionnaires.
   
   

These are not exhaustive in themselves, and there's probably overlap. But what we do is we just try to provide a framework for the different initiatives that exist.

Rachel: What are some key findings from the report? 

Jessica: The majority of the initiatives are non-prescriptive, allowing flexibility for the companies to look at what their greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategies are. We also find an opportunity for the administrating organizations to really communicate what the value is of these voluntary initiatives. So that helps companies really understand why it's important to do voluntary disclosures or ESG reporting or any of the items that we find in the voluntary initiative space.

Why Transparency is Important For Greenhouse Gas Reporting

Rachel: Why do you think transparent reporting on greenhouse gas emissions is more and more important to companies and their investors?  

Jessica: I think there are a few opportunities here. There's a monetary opportunity here for companies to potentially take advantage of responsibly sourced gas. We've seen companies take advantage of this by actually getting a premium for their product based on their certification. 

There's also another important aspect of this, which is the license to operate and license to grow. And that includes getting access to capital funding, which will be a benefit of these disclosures. So we've seen organizations such as Climate Action 100, where two-thirds of the investors and two-thirds of the capital that exist in this world are signatories to Climate Action 100. They say that voluntary or public disclosures of emissions data will be important. Otherwise, investment dollars will not go to those organizations.

Bluntly, you must publicly disclose; otherwise, you will not get an investment. And I think that's a trend that we're starting to see now and will be more and more into the future.

How Carbon Emission Reduction Companies Help Oil & Gas Companies Decrease Carbon Emissions

If large companies, especially in the oil and gas sector, don't find renewable energy resources or ways to increase their energy efficiency, they may lose valuable investments. Highwood’s management solutions for companies like yours are game changing. They can help you set science-based targets through the best carbon offset programs for your business.

If you're interested in learning more about how you can contribute to reducing energy consumption from the people actively changing the game in North America's energy industry, register for the next Global Energy Show today.