Strong corporate governance and commitment to the highest ethical standards are essential to our success as an organization. We continue to build our robust governance and ethical frameworks, as well as our approach to human rights, political engagement and responsible value chain management.
Governance
- Our responsibility
- Governance
Business ethics and compliance
Compliance with applicable laws and regulations and applying the highest ethical standards underpins all that we do. We regularly evaluate and update our compliance and ethics policies to help ensure we are adequately addressing risks and providing appropriate guidance for our employees and business partners.
The Cheniere Code of Conduct and Business Ethics (Code of Conduct) and Anti-Corruption and Economic Sanctions Policy outline our standards with respect to ethical behavior, accurate reporting, compliance with applicable laws and regulations, reporting of violations and accountability. We follow a robust anti-corruption due diligence process and closely monitor compliance with the process, which is independently audited on an annual basis. We require all employees to participate in Code of Conduct and anti-corruption training annually. Employees, suppliers, customers and other third parties can confidentially report concerns or ask questions through our dedicated hotline.
Political engagement
Our political engagement efforts are aligned with our mission: to provide clean, secure and affordable energy to the world. These efforts include participating in industry associations, lobbying and contributions through the Cheniere Energy, Inc. Political Action Committee (Cheniere PAC) or direct contributions as permitted by law. We take a proactive role in encouraging regulations that make our industry safer and cleaner, and create a level playing field with all operators domestically and internationally.
Responsible supply chain
We believe that working with suppliers and contractors who comply with and support our safety, environmental, human rights and other operational standards is critical to the overall success of our business. We undertake comprehensive contractor pre-hire screening and monitor performance on an ongoing basis. This includes screening and monitoring safety, anticorruption and fair labor practices. Similarly, we work to ensure our suppliers of goods and services and our partners across the supply chain, including shipping counterparties, uphold our performance expectations.
We are committed to the responsible and proactive management of our ESG impacts, risks and opportunities. This includes a strategic focus on supporting the global energy transition and delivering value to all our stakeholders. These efforts are supported by regular stakeholder engagement to maintain the responsiveness of our approach, as well as close collaboration with our suppliers and customers.
The Board of Directors provides oversight to Cheniere’s sustainability considerations including the management of relevant ESG issues. The governance and nominating committee of our Board is responsible for reviewing the company’s climate and sustainability strategies and policies.
Executive-level managers oversee our major ESG focus areas and brief the Board on these topics regularly. In 2021, the Board received updates from executive level management on climate, including risks and opportunities; environmental management; human capital; safety; community; governance; and Cheniere’s broader sustainability performance.
To help embed a culture of sustainability throughout our organization, we have a cross-functional corporate responsibility program comprising of leaders and subject matter experts covering a range of business units to help integrate our approach across the company (read more in the Detailed Disclosures Appendix).
Our commitment to the responsible management of our ESG impacts, risks and opportunities is enshrined in our policies, including: our Health, Safety and Environmental Policy, our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, our Discrimination and Harassment Policy, our Equal Employment Opportunity Policy and our Supplier Code of Business Conduct.
In 2021, 17% of annual performance compensation scorecard for all employees is tied to ESG metrics (increasing to 30% in 2022).
CIMS sets a common foundation of standards, procedures and guidelines across functional areas to help us achieve world class performance in line with our vision to provide clean, secure and affordable energy to the world. CIMS is designed to streamline the way we work, provide consistency in executing our strategy, and establish ownership and accountability by integrating expectations and management systems across our Operations, Health, Safety and Environmental, Corporate Environmental, and Engineering & Construction organizations across key elements that underpin our business. Specifically, CIMS provides expectations for the following 12 elements:
- Leadership
- Risk
- Facility design and construction
- Information management
- Safety and compliance
- Facility operations and integrity
- Quality
- Stakeholders
- Environment and sustainability
- Critical events
- Governance
We believe that working with suppliers and contractors who comply with and support our safety, environmental, human rights and other operational standards is critical to the overall success of our business. We undertake comprehensive contractor pre-hire screening and monitor performance on an ongoing basis. This includes screening and monitoring safety, anticorruption and fair labor practices. Similarly, we work to ensure our suppliers of goods and services and our partners across the supply chain, including shipping counterparties, uphold our performance expectations.
We apply robust quality assurance procedures to assess, monitor and enforce stringent compliance standards that our commercial counterparts must comply with in order to do business with us. Depending on the type of work conducted, this may include the assessment of safety management and performance, drug and alcohol screening, anti-bribery and corruption compliance, mitigation of data protection and privacy risks, and security and background checks. In 2021, we completed the implementation of a new supplier management system. This supports the application of enhanced supplier sourcing, screening and pre-qualification processes; ongoing supplier monitoring; compliance tracking and reporting; and annual supplier evaluation.
In addition, we require suppliers to undergo a prequalification process to establish our expectations for compliance with applicable labor, health, safety and environmental laws and standards, including human rights-related standards. Suppliers are required to review and confirm that they understand and agree to comply with our Supplier Code of Business Conduct, which addresses a range of ethics, compliance, health and safety and regulatory issues. Under the Supplier Code of Business Conduct, suppliers are required to review and acknowledge our Health, Safety and Environmental Policy. In 2021, we updated our Supplier Code of Business Conduct to include enhanced requirements for anti-bribery and anticorruption, human rights standards, labor rights and environmental performance. We also extended these requirements to suppliers’ subcontractors.
Once suppliers and contractors have been onboarded, we continue to perform comprehensive due diligence processes to identify and monitor potential supply disruption, applicable regulatory, trade and sanctions requirements, and ethics and compliance risks, including individual worker compliance with safety training and other requirements. In 2021, we expanded and automated our daily monitoring of key performance metrics, including those relating to safety performance and regulatory compliance.