Identify, adapt and respond to risks from future sustainability and decarbonisation policies and technologies

2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the National Chemical Emergency Centre (NCEC) and is the point where we are half-way through our journey to achieve the targets set out by the Paris Agreement in 2015. We could not have foreseen the risks, and opportunities than what we see now as we ramp up the significant levels of activity needed to complete our decarbonisation journeys, create and bring to market safe and sustainable chemicals, become more digitally linked and try to keep pace with the risks and opportunities the fourth industrial revolution is creating. 

Our moderator, Jon Gibbard, Global Practice Director Energy Decarbonisation and Chemical Risk at Ricardo,  opened the session with a simple question: what’s keeping you up at night, and what are we, or what can we, do about it? Our panel’s responses throughout the discussion were singular in voice regardless of the challenge – collaboration and communication are key to successfully overcoming the risks. Addressing these challenges will require strong collaboration across the sector; no one organisation will be able to address and respond to all the potential impacts of new technologies or find answers to the wider ‘safe and sustainable’ agenda.  

Only constant is change
The speed of progress in some technologies is rapid – for example increasing battery density, higher energy output, and advances in hydrogen storage meaning larger volumes being stored and transported, creating ever increasing risks. With this constant evolution our approach must adapt and change also. Our panel suggested that by engaging with people throughout their organisations and harnessing diversity of thought, companies can succeed with ‘outside the box’ thinking which will help identify new risks and subsequent hazards, or linked interdependences or wider impacts. Practically, the activity of scenario analysis from a risk perspective and ‘double materiality’ assessments in the ESG world will help uncover organisational risk at the executive level. Ensuring these activities bring insight from up and down our organisations – as well as the wider value chain - is essential. 

It was agreed that we cannot rely on regulations to keep up with the rate of change – policy has often been reactive post incident and so we must enlist other tools. Where regulations don’t exist, litigation action will become more common and may help to create or update existing policy at a faster rate. This will help hold companies to account and encourage industry to retain their conscience and make the best decision from the information available. Clearly this creates risk to the ongoing sustainability of organisations who are not proactively managing their approach with impacts to reputation, financing and investor relations. Gathering insight and foresight takes time and so we must slow down, challenging our current norms of rapid commercialisation to avoid inadvertent problems in the future. Learning from experience isn’t good enough as it increases the chances of hazard and risk while we remain ignorant of the challenges ahead of us. The panel summarised this ethos as ‘the law of my daughter’: no longer should the conversation be about hazard vs risk but about what impacts we are leaving future generations with – an excellent reminder to us all.

We must adapt
A new energy system won’t look the same as the current ones, with tiers of operators producing energy from lots of different sources, in an integrated and distributed grid, and storing energy in different ways. From a hazard and risk perspective, operators and response teams will need to adapt to a decentralised energy system with varied fuels and storage systems. The chemical sector is well positioned to share its expertise on energy storage fuels like Ammonia and Methanol, and new hyper-growth sectors like Hydrogen. The supporting infrastructure will require investment and responsibility for assets and associated risks, therefore large industrial users or producers should not assume the Fire & Rescue Services have the capability to respond to a large-scale incident – industry will need to work with first responders to ensure they are prepared for the worst.

We must also consider the cyber security issues from a newly networked environment, investing to ensure failsafe systems are able to contend with any potential threats. By working collaboratively in risk mitigation and management, all parties can be informed and prepared for an incident thereby increasing organisational resilience and building communities that can help and support – the panacea here is the creative tension between interested parties seeking the deepest level of insight, leading us to the level of resilience required for the future of the industry.

Building the community of the future requires us to bring the right people together – people who have diverse views, opinions, and backgrounds; thinkers, dreamers, pessimists, optimists – to look at all the potential implications. These stakeholders’ and communities can influence policy and drive practical change. 

EU legislation will continue to ensure businesses move towards ‘sustainability by design’ with more companies exploring the full lifecycle of a product and the impact of the wider value chain, demonstrating that reputation and the impact of a business is measured in many ways beyond the fiscal. The changes in the regulatory controls will impact product design and accessibility, issues which span the entire supply chain and require collaboration to solve. Key to this are common reporting formats to provide data and insight to inform product adaptations that are safe and sustainable. 

Lifecycle assessments can inform sensible and sustainable decision making, and collaboration with value chain partners. 

Collaboration is the key
Changes to support wider collaboration are already on their way with the introduction of digital product passports on the horizon – making product data more accessible. The increased accessibility will generate more awareness, diversity of thought and potential for discussion around key issues which will continue to support product and policy designers, helping to drive forward the changes required. 

The global economy continues to change at a considerable pace, and it is now time to adjust and fully embrace sustainability in business strategies. We must think ‘outside the box’ and challenge ‘normal’ solutions where negative impacts may be realised further down the line. 

Ricardo can help. 
With expertise in chemical risk management, compliance and environmental chemistry and toxicology in combination with our services of lifecycle assessments, Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions measurement, ESG and organisational sustainability, Ricardo’s experts can support your business on the path to net zero and a safe and sustainable future. This includes support with double materiality, TCFD and chemical safety training.

Get in touch to speak with our chemical sector experts on how we can help you.

Author: Jonathan Gibbard (Connect with him on LinkedIn)