We are committed to responsibly managing our environmental impacts. Building collaborative connections is key to our approach. This includes working across internal functional teams and with our suppliers to identify opportunities to improve performance, as well as fostering relationships with community organizations to support the conservation and restoration of local ecosystems. Our commitment to environmental stewardship is supported by our Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE) Policy and by our comprehensive environmental management system (EMS), which is aligned with the ISO 14001 EMS standard. Our commitment includes the proactive identification and management of environmental risks and opportunities across the life cycle of our operations, as well as appropriate engagement with internal and external stakeholders on environmental issues.
Environment
- Our responsibility
- Environment
Biodiversity
We strive to minimize our impacts on biodiversity. The construction of our LNG terminals and natural gas pipelines is the most impactful phase for ecosystems. To help avoid adverse impacts, we have chosen previously disturbed brownfield sites for the locations of our liquefaction facilities, and we endeavor to colocate our pipeline facilities adjacent to existing pipelines to the maximum extent practicable. We apply intensive assessment, avoidance and mitigation measures to reduce any potential negative impacts on local ecosystems and voluntarily support biodiversity protection projects near our areas of operation. We communicate regularly with landowners and community members on our efforts to avoid and minimize adverse land impacts. Our approach, which applies a well-defined biodiversity mitigation hierarchy, is applied across the life cycle of our operations and includes pre-project assessments, impact management, and land and ecosystem restoration.
Water, effluents and waste
Our operations pose limited risks of hydrocarbon spills in comparison with most traditional fossil fuel energy companies. Effluents from our operations primarily relate to our sanitary wastewater treatment systems, stormwater runoff and the use of a reverse osmosis process to treat water provided to us by local utilities. These pose only a limited risk to the environment, given the nature of the potential contaminants in the effluents.
All our liquefaction sites have Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plans and National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) wastewater management procedures. We submit monthly discharge monitoring reports to our regulators and perform effluent discharge assessments, including after significant rain events.
Water management
Cheniere strives to avoid or minimize adverse environmental impacts associated with water use, including impacts related to water quality and quantity of water used. Our Environmental Water Quality and Use Standard outlines our management requirements for the water and effluents at all company-owned and operated facilities, including construction sites. We carefully manage any wastewater generated by our operations that contains small amounts of potentially hazardous pollutants.
Waste management
Each facility develops, follows and regularly updates waste management plans that include carefully labeling, managing and disposing of hazardous and nonhazardous waste at permitted treatment, storage and disposal facilities. We develop waste minimization plans, which are required by regulatory agencies and are reviewed every year to help us identify and reduce the quantity and toxicity of the waste and increase recycling when economically feasible.
Air quality
Natural gas significantly reduces sources of localized air pollution: When compared to coal on a life cycle basis, natural gas produces 82% less nitrogen oxide (NOx), 99% less sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nearly 100% less mercury emissions when used in combined cycle power plants. This helps our LNG customers meet their environmental goals to reduce air pollution and improve public health.
Our operations generate criteria air pollutant emissions, including NOx, sulfur oxides (SOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter (PM). The natural-gas-powered turbines that run our Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi LNG liquefaction processes are the primary source of these emissions; smaller amounts are emitted through our pipeline operations and at turbine compressor stations (small volumes of natural gas condensate extracted from the natural gas feed are exported from the liquefaction trains into third-party pipelines). We actively work to limit our criteria emissions and impacts on local air quality. We also support local air quality monitoring and awareness programs.
We report emissions data to applicable regulatory agencies in accordance with regulatory requirements. We conduct emissions testing for required equipment at our LNG facilities and compressor stations for certain criteria air pollutants to validate compliance with our permitted emissions limits. We perform leak-detection surveys and repair at our LNG terminals and compressor stations on a quarterly to annual basis. We also perform focused air compliance audits and other assurance projects to further monitor our performance in complying with relevant environmental obligations.
As outlined in our HSE Policy, Cheniere is committed to conducting business in a safe and environmentally responsible manner. This commitment is operationalized into our daily work through environmental standards and an EMS, both of which are integrated into the Cheniere Integrated Management System (CIMS). As outlined in these standards, our executive leadership team oversees and has accountability for environmental issues. Our Board of Directors reviews these issues regularly and receives updates on a selection of environmental performance metrics quarterly. Our policies, standards, EMS and other expectations are communicated to employees internally through annual environmental training, orientations and regular operational management meetings.
Executive management and Board oversight
As outlined in these standards, our executive leadership team oversees and has accountability for environmental issues. Our Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer is accountable for internal compliance with this policy.
To maximize the rigor of our management approach, we have implemented a cross-functional and collaborative executive management team for environmental risk and performance oversight. The Vice President of Environmental and Regulatory Projects is responsible for overseeing our environmental performance and for the execution of our business strategy in a way that is consistent with our HSE Policy, as well as our vision and core values. The Vice President of Health, Safety and Environmental manages HSE compliance and risk across the business. Our Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer oversees HSE management, biodiversity and land impacts, air quality, effluents and waste.
Our Board of Directors reviews these issues regularly and receives updates on a selection of environmental performance metrics quarterly.
Environmental management system
Our EMS, which is aligned with the ISO 14001 environmental management system standard, supports the implementation of our HSE Policy. The EMS outlines roles, responsibilities and accountability for environmental management; corporate- and site-level standards for managing environmental issues; our procedures for regular environmental risk and aspects assessments; processes for developing corrective actions to stimulate continuous improvement; and our internal training and communication requirements.
We conduct annual reviews of environmental impacts, risks and opportunities associated with our operations and we develop relevant follow-up actions to eliminate, avoid or mitigate impacts. This assessment feeds into larger enterprise-wide compliance and risk assessments. We follow protocols to include stakeholder views in our assessments and communicate with them on environmental issues, including through our site environmental impact assessments, community impact and risk assessments, and messaging systems designed to inform local residents about our operations.
We assess compliance with environmental management standards and processes through regular assurance assessments and audits. Assurance targets are determined annually using a risk-based approach and can include both internal and third-party assessments. We prioritize and track corrective actions through completion, and lessons learned are shared across the wider organization.
Our EMS applies to contractors, contingent and temporary workers, and consultants working on our sites, as well as our own employees. We also require suppliers to undergo a prequalification process that establishes our expectations for compliance with applicable labor and HSE laws and standards, including human-rights-related standards.
Looking forward, we will continue to enhance implementation of our EMS through the development of expanded key performance indicators and goals. We have also transitioned our EMS into the CIMS, an enterprise-wide system for coordinating the development and implementation of standards and procedures focused on improving consistency and effectiveness of our management approaches, improving accountability and fostering continuous improvement.
We are using the power of connection to influence change from the ground up. In 2022, we formed employee-led, internal Sustainability Committees — cross-functional teams at each liquefaction site that help to identify local environmental risks, opportunities and impacts and to single out locally impactful sustainability projects.