Climate-related impacts, risks and opportunities
Galp identifies, assesses, and manages its climate-related impacts, risks and opportunities through complementary methodologies and tools, including double materiality assessment and Company-wide and project-specific risk assessments, which account for emissions and the impact of carbon prices.
To address the risks and opportunities associated with the transition to a low-carbon economy, Galp actively monitors political, technological, market and legal developments, and reputational risks within the sector and integrates these insights into the analysis of the current portfolio and business cases for new investments.
Climate change mitigation at Galp
The current volatility in energy markets and geopolitical instability have posed significant challenges associated with unpredictable market dynamics and uncertain macroeconomic scenarios. While Galp continues to be invested in long-term sustainable value creation and decarbonisation, this requires a progressive and pragmatic approach, balancing continuous investments in low-carbon solutions with the need to maintain secure and affordable energy supplies, in line with strategy execution.
Therefore, Galp is maturing its energy transition plan, considering as well the ongoing evolution of its portfolio following the recent potentially transformative Mopane discovery in Namibia and the lower execution of renewables projects. The Company will continue to follow market demand and regulatory developments in the energy transition space, while ensuring a disciplined execution of new projects and key investments. Galp estimates to publish its energy transition plan upon maturing its portfolio assessment, ensuring alignment with disclosure requirements.
As part of its progress towards a lower carbon energy system, the Company aims to ensure the resilience of its portfolio by being involved on the development of projects to reduce the carbon intensity of its activities and progressively reduce emissions from its energy supply operations, whilst increasing the integration of renewable energies.
Galp's upstream projects have a carbon intensity close to 50% lower than the industry average (based on the comparison with data provided by the International Association of Oil&Gas Producers), and the company continues to focus on ensuring the resiliency and high efficiency of its future developments.
On the downstream industrial side, Galp has been progressively reducing its activities’ carbon footprint and continues to be actively involved in the development of initiatives that will allow to further reduce emissions and increase the production of energy products with lower carbon intensity . A clear example of that are the large scale projects currently being built in Sines, our key industrial site, including the first 100 MW electrolysers for renewable hydrogen production and an 270 ktpa capacity advanced biofuels unit, capable of producing low carbon fuels for road, aviation and maritime transport. Additionally, further investments in operational energy efficiency and electrification are planned to take place at Sines.
Moreover, Galp has been developing a significant renewable power generation capacity, which plays a crucial role in supporting the development of other lower carbon businesses across the group.
Investment criteria and ESG integration
The Company's investment criteria promote investments in value-accretive opportunities and projects that align with Galp’s strategy, ESG standards, and regulations. This ensures that projects are resilient, deliver favourable returns, and adhere to the Company's risk appetite, strategic objectives and sustainability guidelines and policies.
Each material project undergoes an evaluation, including alignment with the EU’s Sustainable Investment Taxonomy and an ESG risk analysis, incorporating the impact of GHG emissions and other ESG risks into the forecast of the project’s Free Cash Flow.
Integrating carbon pricing in investment approval
Galp recognises that internalising the costs of GHG emissions, such as through an internal carbon price, is a powerful mechanism for evaluating climate-related sustainability and incentivising investments in lower-carbon solutions. By incorporating a global carbon price into the evaluation of new projects and modifications to existing ones, where such mechanisms are applicable, and analysing the impact of related emissions within its decarbonisation metrics, Galp ensures that low carbon intensity projects are prioritised when investment criteria are met.
The carbon pricing assumptions adopted by Galp are aligned with external long-term energy transition scenarios, reflecting current legislative frameworks and proactively anticipating future regulatory developments.
Climate risk assessment
Galp has worked continuously to improve its processes for identifying and quantifying the climate-related risks and opportunities it faces. The Company will reassess climate-related risks to gain deeper insights into the resilience of its current and potential assets, as well as its strategy. It will consider different climate scenarios, including credible net zero and high emissions scenarios, quantifying the financial impacts of the main identified risks.
Previous assessments of physical climate risks have indicated that the Organisation has relatively low exposure to chronic physical risks. The most significant acute physical risks identified were extreme wind and rainfall events. Although with low impact, these events do have the potential to damage facilities and equipment, disrupt port accessibility due to changes in swell patterns, interrupt operations and logistics chains, and compromise the supply of raw materials.