BHP Invests $400 million in Climate Investment Program

Published

November 15, 2019

Ambitions

Responding to climate change is a priority governance and strategic issue for BHP, and the company has been taking action on climate change for decades. For example, in 1996, BHP acknowledged the scientific consensus on climate change and began reporting and setting targets to reduce operational emissions.
BHP’s most recent five-year target was set in 2017 to maintain total operational emissions in fiscal year 2022 at or below fiscal year 2017 levels. BHP has a long-term goal of net-zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions by mid-century, and it will be establishing a medium-term, science-based target for the decarbonization of BHP operations.
Both targets reflect the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The majority of BHP’s operational emissions come from diesel combustion, electricity generation, and fugitive emissions. Since the late 1990s, BHP has focused on investing in a range of low emissions technologies that can reduce emissions and improve energy efficiency, including renewables, electric vehicles, and green completions to reduce fugitive emissions from petroleum production.
In July 2019, BHP announced a five-year, $400 million Climate Investment Program to develop technologies to reduce emissions from its own operations as well as those generated from the use of its resources (Scope 3 emissions).

BHP established an internal price on carbon in 2004 and developed a range of tools, including scenario analysis, to help understand the physical and transition risks that climate change poses to BHP’s strategy and operations. In 2015, BHP released its Portfolio Analysis report, which describes the potential impacts of both an orderly and a more rapid transition to 2°C on demand for products and the profitability of the company.
In 2020, BHP will develop a new climate Portfolio Analysis report, evaluating the potential impacts of a broader range of scenarios and a transition to a well-below two degree scenario.