Our Sustainability Journey

The integration of key ESG principles into our operations reduces risk and enhances long-term business resilience.

It is also an opportunity to improve processes, engage employees and spark innovation to drive new tools and technologies to support the achievement of our ESG specific goals. Most importantly, ESG aligns with our corporate value of doing the right thing. SECURE is committed to mitigating the impacts of climate change by reducing our own emissions and providing services that support our customers in transitioning to a lower carbon economy.

In this section, you'll find details on:

• ESG Awareness Training
• Sustainability Strategy & Roadmap
• Business Resiliency 
• ESG Integration
• Sustainability-related Risks and Opportunities

ESG Awareness Training

In Q4, SECURE launched ESG Awareness training for all employees to provide general awareness about ESG, how SECURE implements ESG principles and strategies and to engage employees in our ESG journey and embed an ESG mindset into our corporate culture. As part of the launch of ESG Awareness training, we also launched ESG ID opportunity, which is a process to submit employee-led ESG ideas. ESG IDs create an opportunity to capture new ideas and current
initiatives, so the organization can develop best practices and share them across the organization.

“Implementing ESG Awareness training company-wide is the first step in integrating ESG into our organization. If we have an opportunity to reduce our energy intensity or fuel consumption, or we worked with a local community, we want to know about it, to report on it and potentially build on it.”

Rhonda Rudnitski, VP ESG

Each idea is submitted, reviewed and vetted by the ESG team and sub-committees for evaluation. If it is a feasible opportunity, a project manager is assigned and a work group is created to investigate the opportunity. Although not every idea will be viable, we hold on to each idea in case market conditions change and old ideas provide new value. With ESG ID, there is an opportunity to report on all the initiatives because even small ideas matter as they add up to bigger, more impactful changes. SECURE benefits from sharing these stories so the whole company can learn from each other.

Sustainability Strategy

As a combined company, SECURE has an even greater focus on providing responsible environmental and waste management solutions to our customers. As a result, ESG principles are vital to our business and how we operate. In 2021, to formalize our commitment to ESG, short and long-term goals were created to achieve meaningful change on the path to a low emission future. Addressing climate change is important to SECURE, our customers and all our stakeholders. Our actions to decrease GHG emissions in our operations and for our customers will help mitigate the impacts of climate change.

ESG Integration

SECURE’s leadership is committed to integrating ESG metrics into our day-to-day operations and business strategies.

With the addition of a dedicated ESG leader and team, an engaged workforce committed to optimizing business processes and sharing business efficiencies, SECURE is well positioned to integrate ESG into our existing business structure, strategy and processes.

ESG Strategic Elements

1. Customers: Supporting our customers’ environmental and social priorities.
2. Investors: Ensuring our financial stakeholders understand how our ESG approach can also support their sustainable investments.
3. Operations: Driving operational efficiencies and business resilience through the implementation of ESG best practices that align with our core values.
4. Community: Ensuring our ESG initiatives enhance our social license to operate.
5. Reporting, Benchmarking and Materiality: Setting goals, monitoring progress, and communicating results internally and externally to demonstrate responsible governance and to be recognized as a leader in ESG practices.

Five Year ESG Strategy and Roadmap

Sustainability-related Risks and Opportunities

Sustainability elements and climate change have the potential to impact multiple aspects of SECURE’s business; it poses both risk and opportunity.

Including climate impacts in our business risk assessments and ESG materiality assessments enables us to prioritize
climate risk equally with other business risks and ensures that we implement strategies to mitigate our most material risks. As the science around climate change evolves, climate-related business risk and materiality assessments will be re-evaluated and prioritized to reflect emerging scientific understanding.

SECURE’s Board of Director’s ESG Committee oversees and provides guidance on sustainability-related risks and opportunities. The ESG Committee has responsibility to oversee management’s processes to identify sustainability risks, mitigate or manage such risks and manage the Corporation’s sustainability performance. Certain topical climate change and
sustainability-related risks are identified below. For a comprehensive list of material risks, including additional regulatory risks and risks relating to climate-change, ESG and sustainability, please refer to SECURE’s Annual Information Form on SEDAR at sedar.com.

Risks

Climate-related Risks

SECURE has announced certain targets and ambitions relating to ESG and GHG emissions, specifically, a goal to achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. To achieve this goal, among others, and to respond to changing market demand,  SECURE may incur additional costs and invest in new technologies and innovation. It is possible that the return on these
investments may be less than what SECURE expects, which may have an adverse effect on its business, financial condition and reputation.

Transitional Risks

The demand for oil and gas and other liquid hydrocarbons could be reduced by fuel conservation measures, alternative fuel requirements, government subsidies promoting renewable energy sources, increasing consumer demand for alternatives to oil and natural gas, and technological advances in fuel economy and energy generation devices, including in energy storage that make renewable energy sources more competitive for energy generation or increase consumer preference for  alternatively fueled vehicles. SECURE cannot predict the effect of changing demand for oil and natural gas products and any major changes may materially and adversely affect the business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

Regulatory Risks

Governmental regulations and policies continue to focus considerable attention on the effects of GHG emissions in relation to the hydrocarbon industry and their potential role in climate change. Changes in environmental regulations, related to efficiency standards, the requirement for alternatively fueled vehicles or other government initiatives aimed at conserving energy or lowering GHG emissions, may adversely affect our results and financial condition going forward. Present and future regulations with respect to the control and taxation of GHG emissions in the jurisdictions in which SECURE operates could have a material impact on the nature of oil and natural gas operations of our customers, which may in turn impact our operations and financial condition.

Physical Risks

The most significant physical risk factors as a result of climate change that can impact our business include extreme weather events such as forest fires, drought, severe storms and flooding. These conditions may cause acute and chronic physical impacts on our operations and have the potential to cause business interruption and damage assets in both our own business and that of our customers, among other risks. 

“The digitization of processes and application of machine learning at SECURE are critical initiatives in supporting the journey to net-zero and are important technology solutions as we transition to a lower emission economy. I believe SECURE is positioned to revolutionize the way we run our business with enhanced services and solutions for our customers.”

-Marvin Wong, Vice President, Business Intelligence, Technology & Security

Opportunities

 With risks come opportunities. SECURE is committed to mitigating the impacts of climate change by reducing our own emissions and providing services that support our customers in transitioning to a lower carbon economy. SECURE sees many transformation and technology opportunities on the sustainability path, including:

Exploring Potential Carbon Sequestration Projects - SECURE is exploring the potential to develop a carbon capture and sequestration project in Western Canada to provide our customers with an opportunity to lower their carbon intensity and diversify our business to drive business resilience. SECURE’s expertise with disposal well operations and Midstream
Infrastructure aligns with what is required to successfully operate sequestration projects.

Optimizing Our Fleet - SECURE is currently monitoring and evaluating our heavy equipment and transport fleets to identify opportunities to reduce fuel consumption. In addition, we are exploring the use of alternative fuels for use in both fleet trucks and heavy equipment.

Industry and Service Diversification - SECURE strives to drive continuous improvement and diversify our business by seeking new opportunities that complement our existing service offerings and further assist our customers in meeting their climate action plans. Many of SECURE’s Environmental Solutions business segment’s services diversify the organization’s
participation with the oil and gas industry and into other sectors including mining, infrastructure and municipal projects.

Carbon Credits - SECURE intends to determine if opportunities exist to claim carbon credits for some of the environmental services that we provide.

Sustainable Governance

The Board’s ESG Committee continues to actively participate in the oversight of SECURE’s matters, including advancing the integration of ESG within the organization and overseeing the implementation of SECURE’s ESG strategy. Management reports to the Board on SECURE’s sustainability performance on a quarterly basis.