Trinity Streamlines Air Quality and ESG Reporting for Multi-State Natural Gas Operations

A Natural Gas Company Partners with Trinity for Scale and Insight on ESG

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Environmental ConsultingEnvironmental Consulting

Industry

Oil & Gas

Location

United States

In a decade-long strategic relationship that began with a simple regulatory newsletter, a natural gas company and Trinity Consultants are now partnering to tackle the complexities and opportunities of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting on a massive scale.

Trinity began strategizing with the client and their midstream operations to digitize their environmental compliance and reporting processes to reduce manual labor, potential for errors, and the cost of outside consulting. The work was a natural extension that evolved from Trinity’s support of the client’s environmental program involving regulatory updates, air quality permitting, compliance support, regulatory reporting, and FERC filings.

Four years later, environmental compliance and reporting obligations loomed over the growing organization that today operates as an integrated energy company with over $6 billion in U.S. assets across upstream, midstream, and downstream markets. Seeking to emerge as a responsible leader in the sustainable energy market, the client’s management team established benchmarks and targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions. So, Trinity recommended expanding their environmental compliance solution to help the client’s midstream companies establish a more strategic ESG performance tracking program using the existing digital foundation.

Challenge

Prior to establishing and digitizing the client’s ESG reporting system for the midstream companies, the company was heavily reliant on consultants to piece together compulsory reports for EPA GHG reporting, voluntary ESG disclosures, and corporate reporting. Metrics varied by business unit, geography, and report type. There was a growing need for a more efficient, centralized system for collecting data and calculating and reporting emissions across the growing company footprint. Meanwhile, manual spreadsheets remained their primary administrative tool. With the company gearing up for a myriad of climate-related initiatives and emerging regulations, Trinity saw the need to automate these processes and recommended an immediate transition to digital processing for the midstream companies.

Solution

Trinity facilitated workshops with key environmental, operations, engineering, and IT stakeholders to establish agreement on project strategy, goals, scope, timeline, budget, metrics, and responsibilities. The partners deemed that a comprehensive environmental management platform was needed to anchor the plan. After assembling a shortlist of potential software providers and attending product demonstrations, the partners selected an EHS management platform.

This software was then configured to meet the client’s specific regulatory, permitting, and ESG reporting requirements across the firm’s multi-state, multi-regulatory network. Trinity also digitized many of the client’s mission-critical, compliance management tasks to support various environmental field assessments and inspections. After all applicable data was securely transferred to the cloud, integrated into the system, and system testing was completed, then optimization and training followed.

Services Performed

By closely partnering with their long-time client, Trinity’s team was able to configure an EHS management platform solution, digitize compliance management tasks, and train stakeholders on platform usage and reporting.

Result

The initial system build successfully launched with a focus on air emissions calculations and air quality compliance to meet regulatory requirements. Since then, Trinity has continued to provide:

  • Automation and integration tools and regulatory reporting support
  • Seamless onboarding of dozens of the client’s newly acquired/constructed facilities
  • Streamlined permitting management
  • More than 30 automated data checks to support quality assurance
  • A tracking system for cultivating and vetting new ideas

Meanwhile, the client can process millions of data points and calculations for more frequent, monthly reporting instead of limited annual reporting. This visibility has simplified compliance and provides valuable, frequent tracking of key environmental performance indicators. Automations now make responding to inquiries and inspections less stressful, and the client’s staff can focus on pursuing greenhouse gas goals while many competitors are still mired in manual number-crunching.

Dozens

Clients seamlessly onboarded

30

Automated data checks