Net Zero and Process Safety

Many companies in the energy and process industries have committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. In many cases they have adopted the target of ‘Net Zero by 2050’. The companies plan to reach this target by through a combination of emissions reductions and carbon capture and sequestration programs.

The effort required to meet this goal is, to say the least, formidable. If industrial managers are to meet the extraordinarily ambitious goals that they have set for themselves then they will need input from a wide range of professions. For example, the financial community has developed and and is implementing greenhouse gas emissions programs in many countries. In the United States the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has published a proposed Climate-Disclosure rule that, if implemented, will require companies to report on (1) their current greenhouse gas emissions, (2) their programs for reducing those emissions, and (3) an assessment of the financial risk to which they are exposed due to climate change.

This paper will discuss how the principles of process safety management can be applied in order to help achieve this goal. The process safety community, although small, has an opportunity — even a responsibility — to make a contribution to climate programs. Areas in which its expertise can be helpful include (1) understanding the nature of high consequence/deferred risks, (2) making systems resilient, rather than efficient, (3) identifying and risk-ranking hazards, (4) understanding which elements of the traditional process safety management programs from OSHA and other agencies best fit a Net Zero program, and (5) maybe most important of all, the critical importance of systems thinking..