56 Woodside Petroleum Ltd|Annual Report 2018
ENVIRONMENT
Climate change
In multiple scenarios, the demand for natural gas is expected to
increase as a vital component of a clean energy future due to
its benefits over other energy sources:
+Gas is the cleanest burning hydrocarbon.
+Switching from coal to gas-fired power can significantly
reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
+ Gas improves air quality, by displacing higher emissions
energy sources.1
+ Gas is easy to transport.
+ Gas is an ideal, reliable partner for renewable energies.
We have a goal to improve our energy eciency and we are
also developing new opportunities for LNG to displace higher-
emission fuels, including in trucks, trains and ships.
In 2018, we released our Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP)
submission.
Woodside is resilient as a business in a lower carbon future.
This is supported through three themes:
+ Create value: We create value through prudent application
of our investment framework, innovating to develop new
opportunities and building new markets.
+ Protect value: We protect our existing investments by
focusing on a competitive cost of supply, designing and
reviewing our assets to withstand extreme environmental
conditions and testing the resilience of our portfolio
against a range of scenarios, including ‘2 degrees Celsius’
climate-related scenarios.
+ Our contribution: We are improving our energy eciency,
supplying aordable and clean energy, and supporting
policies that deliver carbon abatement at lowest cost and
enhanced competitiveness.
For more information refer to the sustainability section of
Woodside’s website.
Environmental performance
We recognise that strong environmental performance is
essential to our success and continued growth. Our approach
is based on robust risk management underpinned by sound
science, strong partnerships with local researchers and
transparency of our environmental knowledge
Energy efficiency improvement
We intensified eorts to improve our energy eciency in
2018, achieving a 3.4% improvement in operated asset energy
eciency against baseline.2
Three years into our five-year eciency improvement plan,
we are on track to meet our target of 5% energy eciency
improvement against baseline by 2020.
Our improved performance in 2018 was achieved through
delivery of targeted improvement projects at KGP and Pluto
LNG, combined with hgh reliability and reduced flaring across
our operated assets.
Scientific partnerships
In 2018, we recognised our 25-year partnership with the
Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and 20-year
partnership with the Western Australian Museum.
These partnerships have significantly contributed to
understanding Western Australia’s rich marine biodiversity
and iconic ecosystems.
Woodside is taking action on climate change and we are motivated to play a key role in a clean energy future.
1. http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/
2. Baseline performance is measured relative to product energy eciency prior to 2016.