Sustainability and coal seam gas – Part two

By Paul Locke*

Here is an excerpt from the current edition of SKM's achieve magazine.

To read the first part of this report click here.

In regard to upfront investment in CSG, failure to recognise and address the potential environmental and social impacts may undermine the success of individual projects and possibly even the industry as a whole.

Sustainability – a sound investment in risk management
Capital expenditure (capex) on CSG projects will be significant because of the amount of infrastructure required to undertake gas extraction over large geographic areas. As such, minimising capex is critical. However, efforts to minimise these costs should not come at the expense of environmental or social considerations.
Large capital and infrastructure projects do not always pay sufficient attention to the risks associated with the external environmental and social impacts. Indeed, there are many examples of projects that have gone awry as a result of a hostile community reaction.
Proper project planning and an evaluation of risks will assist companies to justify appropriate investments in sustainable design and other forms of community investment. Ultimately, this should result in lower lifecycle costs and improved financial returns.

Developing more sustainable projects
Sustainability in large capital projects requires good design that is focused on achieving the right objectives. It requires environmental and social issues to be systematically integrated as central considerations to be addressed through project planning and design. However, this is more easily said than done.
True integration requires a number of key elements:
. A project proponent with a corporate commitment to sustainability. The proponent’s project manager requires clear incentives to deliver on corporate sustainability commitments through project planning, design and execution
. Where consulting engineers are involved, they need:
- A corporate commitment to sustainability
- A project manager who understands the importance of sustainability and is willing to push their team to deliver more sustainable outcomes - A project team that is open to new ideas and prepared to push beyond “business-as-usual” practice
- An appropriately trained and skilled sustainability champion within the project team to drive the sustainability agenda and provide analytical support.
With these elements in place, it is possible to develop a more complete set of constraints around which to formulate project objectives and identify and implement practical initiatives for achieving those objectives.
All sustainability initiatives need to be commercially sound. As such, initiatives should be rigorously evaluated using tailored tools to ensure that they are the best fit for the project - economically, environmentally and socially.
By systematically and rigorously considering environmental and social issues as a critical component of project planning, companies can reduce their risk of an adverse community reaction to their project and improve their prospects of delivering product to market on-time and on-budget.

* Paul Locke is one of SKM’s sustainability practitioners. He has worked with mining, gas and transport sector clients to improve environmental and social performance through project design.
For more information visit: www.skmconsulting.com

To read the first part of this report click here.