Energy Recovery’s ESG Priorities
Our ESG program is driven by our business strategy and stakeholder feedback, which was a key element in our 2020 materiality assessment. We engaged a wide segment of our stakeholders including internal leaders, investors, our Board of Directors, and a diverse cross section of our employees to determine 14 key ESG-related topics on which to focus our program. Four of those topics were deemed the most material to delivering long-term value to our stakeholders.
These four topics have become the cornerstone of our ESG program, and we have created goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) for each topic. Several of these KPIs are ongoing and will require our continued attention to ensure that we remain on track year after year. Others have targeted deadlines and deliverables; as those are achieved, we will look for opportunities to create new goals and KPIs in their place so that our program continues to evolve. ESG-related goals also accounted for 5% of our executive staff’s management by objectives (MBOs) for 2021 and 2022, providing staff with a personal stake in the success of our ESG program.
Employees
Goal: Develop workforce to deliver sustainable, diversified growth
Goal: Protect the lives and livelihoods of our employees by providing a safe and healthy workplace
As we diversify and grow into a multi-industry company, a focus on the talent and culture that brought us this far is critical. We recognize that our human resource strategies and processes must evolve to support this growth.
Retention targets will hold us accountable for ensuring that our recruitment, training, and overall employee engagement strategies are meeting the needs and expectations of our employees. Additionally, to further integrate sustainability and ESG into our company, we are committed to providing orientation on these topics to all employees.
It has always been our objective to provide our employees with a safe and healthy work environment. With the growth our company has experienced, and the future growth we anticipate, it is ever more important that we continue to focus on safety. To this end, we reviewed our safety program and identified key focal points on which we can build. Our focus is on developing and implementing consistent procedures and processes to identify issues, investigate them, and eliminate the possibility of recurrence, as well as preventing new ones from happening.
Environmental & Climate Change Risks
Goal: Report climate-related risk strategy and management aligned with TCFD by end of 2024
Goal: Certification to ISO 14001 Environmental Management Standard by end of 2022
Energy Recovery is committed to making continued progress on our climate-change related disclosures, as well enhancing our internal management of environmental risks.
The Task Force on Climate-related Disclosure (TCFD) recommendations provide a structured approach to evaluating and communicating the potential impact climate change may have on our company. We believe alignment with this framework represents the best path for Energy Recovery to make progress in our climate-change risk management strategy over the next few years. Furthermore, the TCFD aligns with and complements our current disclosure approach under SASB and GRI.
Additionally, we have committed to International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 certification of our Environmental Management System as another critical component to successful management of our environmental and climate change risks.
Innovation & Opportunity
Goal: Double emissions reductions from our products by end of 2025 vs. 2019 baseline
Developing technologies that drive efficiencies and reduce emissions for our customers is at the heart of Energy Recovery’s value proposition and sustainability strategy.
We have set an ambitious goal to double this impact by 2025 through the growth of our core desalination business, as well as through the introduction of new pressure exchanger-based products in other industries.
Products
Goal: Deliver products and solutions customers can trust
Trust and reliability have long been synonymous with our PX Pressure Exchanger, the desalination industry’s leading energy recovery device.
We have a track of record of minimal to zero financial impact from warranty events and legal proceedings related to product incidents.
As we expand our product offerings, particularly to new industries, we recognize this introduces unknown risk and potential increase in these metrics. Because we are committed to maintaining the highest quality standards, we have set a target to maintain warranty costs below 1% of product revenue. This target ensures we stay within the top quartile of reliability and performance for our industry, according to benchmark data from the American Productivity & Quality Center.
*Progress as of September 2022