Baker Hughes Corporate Sustainability Report 2023: Our Approach to Sustainability
Our sustainability strategy aligns with our Company’s growth and financial goals which extend beyond bottom-line considerations. Being a sustainable company means doing business in a way that allows us to be successful today while ensuring future growth. Sustainability is fundamental to our Company’s purpose. We operate responsibly to minimize environmental impact and maximize social benefits by by enabling affordable, sustainable and secure energy production for people and the planet. Our vision is to be a sustainable pioneer within the energy and industrial sectors, thus positioning Baker Hughes as the energy technology company of choice.
Sustainability strategy implementation
Baker Hughes’ sustainability strategy underpins our commercial strategy and serves as our roadmap to embed People, Planet and Principles into our business. Our sustainability programs focus on reducing risk and meeting business objectives, setting parameters that guide us as we align with stakeholder priorities. Our People, Planet and Principles focus, formalized in our publicly disclosed framework, is the playbook that empowers employees at all levels to drive sustainable change. With a “top-down” and “bottom-up” approach, fueled by shared purpose and Baker Hughes’ maturity in sustainability, our people are measurably driving the shift from aspiration to action—from promises to delivery. We are strengthening our skills, experience and desire to enable Baker Hughes and our customers to thrive in a low-carbon world.
Across our global workforce, we are driving a culture shift, embedding sustainable behaviors and spotlighting the opportunities born out of stakeholder priorities and emerging regulatory requirements.
Our people can intentionally activate change. Our strategy deployment efforts in 2023 focused on operationalizing 20+ working groups with defined cross-functional and business segment subject matter experts to provide leadership, governance, tools and resources to execute the 30 strategic outcomes outcomes on page 20. We established formalized training modules to ensure consistent process and progress.
Our communities of practice are designed to enable cross-company information sharing and support more effective collaboration to drive sustainable solutions. We continued to expand our existing communities of practice with significant growth in 2023 for our Carbon Out network, which focused on identifying and executing emission reduction projects across our locations globally. Read more about our Carbon Out program on p 18.
“To lead effective change, we must build a coalition, create consensus and facilitate dialogue and productive challenge.”
- Baker Hughes Change Management Playbook
More than...
20+ working groups
30 strategic outcomes
Communities of practice
Also, in 2023, we formally launched our Sustainability Capabilities workstream. This project used company-specific insights and market-based research to identify roles and skills needed for our businesses to meet our goals and those of our customers. This effort drove enterprise alignment on supporting and adjacent capabilities, building a strong foundation for our organization to continue progressing and differentiating capabilities through our talent processes, operating models, communities and infrastructure.
We engaged employees through voluntary project teams to expand knowledge sharing and action initiatives. Our change management, communications and sustainability teams collaborated to conduct stakeholder analysis. These teams helped to implement strategic action planning and best practices. As a result, employee awareness increased and engagement grew.
In 2023, we formalized three new communities of practice:
- Water Management and Biodiversity
- Waste, Circularity and Sustainable Supply Chain
- Policy and Funding
All in. Carbon Out.
Our Carbon Out program is how we empower our employees to operate sustainably, with a continued focus to provide our customers with sustainable solutions. Through this program, our people actively participate in reducing our operational and value chain emissions. With sustainable practices and employee-driven solutions, we are able to drive carbon emissions down in our operations. This engagement program provides tools, a framework, funding and resources to engage Baker Hughes employees in systematically reducing operational emissions.
Business Need: Our global Carbon Out program is the way our Company takes carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 e) of our operations. Every employee has a role to play in making us more sustainable. Becoming a sustainable energy technology company requires a transformation across many parts of the organization, including our culture. All employees, despite their roles, can learn how to work and live more sustainably.
Since its launch in 2021, Carbon Out has engaged and enabled employees and leaders across Baker Hughes with the knowledge, training and resources to systematically reduce our CO2 e emissions. Our employees are empowered to identify emissions reduction solutions and projects, which are then reviewed and approved to ensure timely, efficient and cost-effective implementation. We offer learning opportunities and resource groups. This ensures team members have the knowledge and skills to embed sustainable practices in their daily work.
Business Impact: As a global program with over 550 projects to be implemented or implementation commenced, our employees and Carbon Out leaders have demonstrated commitment to our net-zero goal by identifying and executing projects in 2022 and 2023. Employees can consult with their HSE representative, facility team, or Carbon Out leader to share their ideas.
In 2023, our Carbon Out program expanded in breadth and depth of impact with over 500 employees that are Carbon Out leaders across both business segments. These employees represent multiple corporate disciplines, such as HSE, supply chain, sourcing, real estate, f ield service engineers and finance. The goal of our champion network is to build and execute a pipeline of projects that enable us to achieve CO2 e emissions reduction throughout our operations and value chain.
Through Carbon Out, our employees were provided with educational materials on sustainability which equipped them with the right knowledge and skill set to identify qualifying projects. Participants of our core leadership training programs - ASPIRE, CULTIVATE and IMPACT - were engaged in the Carbon Out program to grow sustainability skill sets.
Over 500 employees are Carbon Out leaders. Carbon Out gives every person the pathway to identify key projects or initiatives, going All in as climate champions to take Carbon Out.
We have utilized crowdsourced ideas and employee-driven initiatives across the Company to help build a pipeline of new CO2 e emissions reduction projects for review, consideration and funding. Consistent engagement and awareness campaigns in the last year have increased our focus on sustainability in our operations and contributed to a mindset shift among our employees to adopt more sustainable practices in their day-to-day lives. We believe this transformation is foundational to being a sustainable business.
Energy conservation at United Arab Emirates (UAE) facilities
Training our employees in the processes of emission reduction is a huge part of our Carbon Out program. Our UAE HSE team and the real estate facilities team actively conducted Carbon Out training for UAE HSE and facility team members, empowering them to identify opportunities to eliminate energy waste.
One opportunity identified through this training was emissions reductions through minimization of compressed air leaks. A team in Dubai implemented a system to detect compressed air leaks and optimize compressors, reducing energy consumption. Knowledge and best practices have been shared across the region to further expand our energy reduction efforts.
