Enviance Blog

Do you know your Environmental Compliance Vulnerabilities?

If you are visiting our blog, you are probably well aware of the existing and ever changing environmental regulations companies from all sizes and verticals need to comply with nowadays. You are probably also aware that many companies are still failing to understand the importance in determining their environmental impact to their corporate value and cost to operations. Left uncalculated and ignored, these risks place a company in jeopardy of extreme financial loss and devaluation.

To help you better understand your environmental compliance vulnerabilities and the level of risk associated with your environmental regulatory non-compliance we have put together an online assessment tool.  Please take a few minutes to answer our survey and determine if the systems you have in place meet your needs, or identify where you may have an opportunity to reduce your environmental compliance exposure.

Check our Environmental Compliance Risk Assessment Tool here!

What natural gas and petroleum facilities need to know about subpart W regulations

Back in 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandated greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting, putting approximately 13,000 industrial facilities (representing 85% of GHG emissions in the U.S.) on the hook to monitor and report their annual emissions.  

Initially, these regulations did not include petroleum and natural gas requirements, until the EPA issued the subpart W rule in November 2010. Subpart W requires petroleum and natural gas facilities that emit 25,000 metric tons or more of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per year to report annual methane (CH4) and CO2 emissions.

Of the 13,000 reporting facilities, 2,800 will need to report on the subpart W rule, a complex set of regulations that would require a significant amount of effort to be put forth by the petroleum and natural gas industries. Fortunately, the initial reporting deadline for subpart W may be extended to September 30, 2012 if recently proposed revisions are adopted. This would give facilities the opportunity to get their monitoring and reporting strategies in place in the meantime. 

To outline best practices on how the eight key petroleum and natural gas industries affected by this directive can keep compliant with subpart W, Greg Gasperecz, Enviance’s vice president of Environmental, Health and Safety, recently dissected the new rules in an educational webinar.

In this presentation, Greg shares his insights on subpart W, giving a full background and overview of mandate, and addressing the changes/updates that have occurred since promulgation. He also discusses compliance strategies and tips for reporting, including real-world examples to help shape strategies within organizations.  

Watch the Webinar here.

 

Sincerely,

The Enviance team

 

PG&E reduces reporting efforts by 80% with Enviance

If you live on the West Coast, chances are you’re one of 15 million people that rely on PG&E for their gas and electric needs. You have gas in your home thanks to a portion of the 6,214 miles of steel pipelines PG&E maintains, and electricity is delivered from one of their three power plants which churn out 6,800 megawatts (MW) of power.

What you probably don’t realize, from an outsider’s perspective, is the massive amount of stress a company experiences when managing all of that energy, gas, data and infrastructure, to get you the energy resources you need.

Linus Farias, senior environmental engineer at PG&E, recently illustrated some of the key environmental compliance issues his company faces during a webinar with Enviance.

Farias and his team, like many other utilities in the United States, are mandated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to report once a year on their GHG emissions. Additionally, under Assembly Bill 32 they must report, on an ongoing basis, their emissions associated with electricity generation, retail electricity generation, and other areas. PG&E goes a step further, by also voluntarily reporting their emissions to The Climate Registry, Carbon Disclosure Project and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

When PG&E began searching for a solution to handle their Green House Gas (GHG) compliance needs, they realized they would need a single repository of data, a solution that could be implemented quickly and had the ability to track changes, identify reductions and forecast their GHG emissions.

The solution that met all PG&E’s criteria was deployed within a few months, and the use of cloud-based features helped decrease their initial reporting level of effort by 80% during their first AB32 mandatory report after implementation.

PG&E’s high ease-of-use solution, and ability to provide access to emissions information in the system across the entire organization in real time, placed PG&E in the best possible situation to better serve their customers while mitigating their effect on the environment.

Watch the Webinar here.

 

Sincerely,

The Enviance team

It's Back to School Week at Enviance! Our 5 hottest Educational Resources!

 

With the start of a new school year upon us, what better time to talk about Education? Throughout the years, we have maintained an ongoing effort to produce educational resources in topics relevant to the Environmental, Health and Safety (EH&S) community to help disseminate best practices and contribute to Industry growth. We have received a tremendous response from clients, partners and friends that have been relying on our resources to keep up to date with the latest Industry trends.

If you haven’t been an avid reader of our selection of White Papers and don’t know where to start, worry not! We put together a list of our Top 5 White Papers to share with you this week!

Ever wanted to know what your peers and even competitors are reading to keep informed? Follow our links below and learn more about what is helping them effectively and efficiently manage EH&S requirements.

TOP 1 RESOURCE: THE EMISSIONS TRIFECTA: Combining Title V, Air Emissions Inventory and GHG Reporting

The Emissions Trifecta White Paper is our most popular white paper of all time. It discusses how streamlining emissions data (Title V, Air Emissions Inventory and GHG) into one comprehensive, centralized system that has been designed to capture and report the data required for a variety of different regulatory environmental programs saves companies time, money and personnel.

TOP 2 RESOURCE: SUPPLY CHAIN ENVIRONMENTALISM: Using Environmental ERP to Manage Environmental Impact for Competitive Advantage and Profit

This white paper introduces a new approach to managing the supply chain which defines Supply Chain Environmentalism as the enhancement of competitiveness through either cost reduction or product differentiation, or both, achieved by reduction of environmental impacts (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, etc.) in the supply chain.

TOP 3 RESOURCE: THE BIG PICTURE: A Method to Compare Facilities' Environmental Performance

The Method to Compare Facilities Environmental Performance white paper explains how you can compare facilities' environmental performance by using environmental compliance and sustainability data, such as emissions and water in a summary mode to produce "smart scores". 

TOP 4 RESOURCE: The Value of Public Perception: Transforming Environmental Efforts From Compliance-Driven to Risk Management

Many companies fail to understand that their environmental footprint creates risk to their business that's on par with losing their largest customer. The need for the role of environmental management to transform from simply meeting compliance requirements to pervasive risk management has become more evident in recent years.

TOP 5 RESOURCE: CASE STUDY WEBINAR: Streamlining Compliance by Automating Data Collection and Inspections with System Integration and Mobile Technology

Find out how a real company facing real environmental compliance challenges was able to efficiently overcome them by designing and implementing new processes and systems.

In this webinar, you 'll learn how one company went from needing 8 Environmental Managers about 6 days a month to input data to requiring only 4 to 6 hours of review time a month instead of data entry work. See how this company captured environmental field data faster, responded quickly to environmental incidents with workflow processes and saved time and money in personnel and violation fines.