Case Studies. Advancing Operational Excellence in the Power & Utilities Industry

Transcription

1 Case Studies Advancing Operational Excellence in the Power & Utilities Industry

2 Power & Utilities Industry Excellence Award Winner Duke Energy Duke Energy s e-trac System Achieves Strategic EHS Compliance and Safety Incident Management Goals Duke Energy, which is poised to become the largest utility in the United States 1, is widely recognized as a leader in addressing a broad array of environmental, health and safety (EHS) compliance and sustainability challenges. One major step in delivering on the company s strategic vision for EHS management excellence began in 2007 when Duke Energy identified four objectives as key to its success: 1) unify people, strategies, processes and systems; 2) optimize operations by focusing on safety, simplicity, accountability and costs; 3) achieve compliance with policies, regulations and legislation; and 4) invest wisely in infrastructure and systems in an efficient and environmentally sound manner. 2 Duke Energy s EHS management team used these four objectives as criteria for selecting the enterprise-level software platform for an important new information system e-trac, the Electronic-Toolkit for Regulatory Assurance and Compliance. EHS data was previously managed through manual processes and more than 60 disparate legacy systems. The result was a high volume of disjointed EHS data and processes that made compliance more challenging. The e-trac team conducted an extensive search before making its selection. We chose Sphera Essential Suite because we were looking for one integrated, centralized platform that could meet as many of our core business needs as possible, said Giorgina Franklin, EHS Manager for Data Analysis and Reporting at Duke Energy. The Sphera solution provided us with the capabilities we needed to retire roughly two-thirds of our old spreadsheets, home-grown systems and one-off tools. Best of all, our IT team was no longer required to support all those different systems. Duke Energy s implementation of the unified Sphera platform for e- TRAC began in 2008 with Essential Air, Essential Compliance Manager and Essential Task Manager modules, which are designed to work seamlessly together to drive compliance with environmental regulations such as Title V of the U.S. Clean Air Act. The company s EHS team was seeking to track regulatory requirements, maintain accurate emissions inventories and verify compliance with permit limits (or plan for permit changes). They went on to implement additional modules in order to Challenge Strategic compliance and sustainability goals: Unify people, strategies, processes, systems Optimize operations by focusing on safety, simplicity, accountability and costs Achieve compliance with policies, regulations and legislation Invest wisely in infrastructure and systems in an efficient, environmentally sound manner Solution Environmental Performance Incident Management Compliance Manager Task Manager Air Water Waste Chemical Inventory MSDS Manager Audit Results Performance Replaced 60+ legacy systems with a unified, integrated enterprise software platform Established interoperability with supply chain systems EAM, PeopleSoft, Maximo, etc. Chemical inventory: 1 million+ records with site-specific lists for 6,700+ storage locations Consolidated four MSDS systems into one to handle 35,000+ sheets, 50,000+ materials Assured compliance e.g. the ability to generate a site specific Hazardous Chemical List while saving time and effort previously required to manage various systems Delivered EHS compliance information required for annual Sustainability Report

3 Duke Energy: EHS Compliance Efficiency, Safety Performance centrally manage compliance with water, waste and auditing regulations. The vast scope of the e-trac project is evident in a quick sample of benchmark achievements: Compliance 250 hourly checks for potential deviations, each with automatic notifications Tasking 35,000+ tasks processed for 32 task groups at 800+ production units Waste Over 600 waste profiles on file and all manifests for shipments are tracked Duke Energy also replaced four Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) systems and automated its chemical inventory management work processes with the integrated Sphera software platform. Essential Chemical Inventory and Essential MSDS Manager are important modules for us due to all the interfaces we have with the data. They have the potential of being utilized by everyone across the enterprise. We currently have over 35,000 MSDS sheets with more than 50,000 materials listed in the system. There are over 5,000 chemical fact sheets for our nuclear plants alone. All in all, we probably have a million plus inventory records. We can now produce site-specific hazardous chemical lists for more than 6,700 locations. reported Franklin. Another factor in streamlining management of high-volume data has been Duke Energy s implementation of interfaces between the Sphera platform and supply chain systems including -EAM, PeopleSoft, Maximo and others so chemical inventory data can flow automatically and continuously from one to the other rather than being imported manually. One of Duke Energy s highest priorities is to assure the health and safety of its employees and its goals extend well beyond regulatory compliance in support of higher standards of corporate responsibility and best practices. In 2009, Duke employees achieved their lowest Total Incident Case Rate in company history. 3 Duke actively champions safety. Our goal is zero injuries and illnesses, said Franklin. We want our employees to return home in the same condition that they came to work. With Essential Suite, we can have the tools to assist us in being more proactive regarding safety. We track all safety incidents and potential incidents in the Sphera system, Franklin continued. We have performance goals based upon OSHA-recordable injuries and illnesses. We slice and dice the data every way you could imagine looking at what happened and why; how to prevent injuries; how to predict future incidents; what trends are developing and more. Every business unit and site within Duke Energy is interested in seeing their monthly incident report to see how they re doing and we help them do it. We record information down to an individual level so employees are aware of their own personal safety metrics. In the past, safety and environmental incident data was tracked in various separate systems, file cabinets, and/or document systems. With the centralized approach of Essential Incident, we have saved a lot of time and effort that was previously required to manage various systems, said Franklin. If we have a permit exceedance or spill, we can enter it today as an environmental incident. The integration of our investigation results and corrective action tracking is probably the biggest efficiency gain for us. With Essential Suite, we have more complete information and documentation -- all in one place, easy to find for compliance and operational improvements. The compliance information that Duke Energy s EHS team collects and manages with e-trac pays additional dividends when shared with other key groups inside the company. We are helping deliver on a company-wide commitment of responsibility and good governance. It s an important part of how we define ourselves, Franklin concluded. Our team provides the EHS information for Duke Energy s annual sustainability report which outlines the highlights and challenges of our efforts to become a more sustainable company. With Sphera Essential Suite, we have more complete information and documentation all in one place, easy to find for compliance and operational improvements. - Giorgina Franklin, EHS Manager Duke Energy 1 Duke Energy News Release January 10, Duke Energy 2007 Sustainability Report-Letter from the Chairman, page 2 3 Number of recordable incidents per 100 employees (based on OSHA criteria) Duke Energy Sustainability Report, p. 30

4 Power & Utilities Industry Excellence Award Winner Santee Cooper Santee Cooper Empowers Proactive Compliance Strategy and Continuously Improves Environmental Performance Established during the 1930 s New Deal, Santee Cooper is South Carolina s largest power producer. This state-owned electric and water utility serves more than 2 million commercial and residential customers across 46 counties. As part of its mission to be the state s leading resource for improving the quality of life for the people of South Carolina the company is also strongly committed to protecting the region s natural environment. Its leadership is fully invested in assuring regulatory compliance and continuous improvement of environmental performance. In 2011, Santee Cooper took a major step forward in delivering on that promise by launching an enterprise-wide Environmental Management Information System (EMIS). The new EMIS is now helping the company address growing external and internal pressures ranging from stricter regulations to employee retirements. As the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has tightened regulations on power plants and other industrial activities, Santee Cooper has faced increasing air, water and waste requirements. An EMIS would enable its environmental managers to move away from complex manual processes towards a streamlined system based on the EPA s Plan, Do, Check, Act model. We had a large number of paper forms, spreadsheets and databases across the company, and wanted a central database where our employees could go for consistent and accurate environmental information, says Brian Holmes, director of the Santee Cooper s Environmental Management System. Our reporting needs had increased and there were more regulations in the pipeline with final rulings coming. We needed an EMIS to manage the current requirements more efficiently and deal proactively with the next generation of environmental demands. Santee Cooper s selection committee had chosen Sphera Essential Suite part of the Sphera Environmental Performance Solution -- as the backbone of their new EMIS. As it came online, the company s environmental managers gradually phased out many of the manual processes that involved more than 270 checklists and forms, 115 spreadsheets and two databases. The team standardized metrics, Challenge Maintain compliance with expanding federal, state and local regulations and permits Improve environmental performance by eliminating manual processes involving 270+ checklists/forms, 115 spreadsheets, etc. Reduce risk of non-compliance due to changes in organization and/or employee retirements Solution Air & GHG Emissions Waste Management Water Usage and Discharge Task Management Results Created one unified, centralized Environmental Management Information System for 180+ users Integrated EMIS with multiple complementary systems for process data collection, business intelligence modeling, and tasking Eliminated or partially replaced 43% of legacy checklists, forms and reports as redundant or unnecessary Managed more than 5,000 compliance tasks over 2 years Eliminated delays in retrieving environmental checklists/forms Mitigated risk of non-compliance through proactive tasking and employee transition management

5 Santee Cooper Assures Compliance and Continuity calculations terminology and more within their new centralized system. It used to take a substantial amount of time and effort not continuously gathering information but waiting on people to provide the information you needed in a checklist or form, says Lauren Browne, General Engineer at Santee Cooper. Now information is available immediately. It s really streamlined the process for us. Santee Cooper s centralized EMIS gathers data from 15 generation sites and 37 waste storage areas across the company. Our employees, supervisors, and auditors now have a one-stop, comprehensive system to view when tasks were completed and verify any attached completion evidence, said Karen Baskerville, the IT Supervisor of Application Support. The direct integration of our EMIS with other systems has helped us achieve major efficiency gains by eliminating redundant data entry as well as improved data quality. One example of those new efficiencies is the fact that the EMIS helped us eliminate or partially replace 43 percent of our legacy environmental checklists, forms and reports because they were redundant or unnecessary, added Browne. Santee Cooper has integrated Sphera Essential Suite with a variety of complementary systems in order to automate and streamline the flow of raw process data directly into the company s EMIS. Air emissions, water discharge, waste generation, fuel consumption and other environmental data is imported from systems such as: CEMS - ESC StackVision ; LIMS - Labworks; and FMIS - Fuelworx.1 This equipment-level operational data is acquired and aggregated multiple times each day and then pulled into the EMIS where emissions calculations are processed monthly and annually. In addition, by integrating Essential Suite with Oracle s Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) within their EMIS, Santee Cooper s team can leverage aggregated environmental information into powerful data modeling and dashboard views for analysis and decision-making. We also have our EMIS linked with the company s Content Management System. Again, this saves time because employees, supervisors, and auditors can stop calling different stations to ask around for documentation. Now they can now go directly into the system and find what they need, Holmes explained. At the end of the day, we have built more than 3,200 integration data points into our EMIS so it s a very robust system. With the new EMIS, the team at Santee Cooper can take a more proactive approach to ensuring full compliance with applicable federal, state, and local environmental statutes, regulations and permits. The EMIS helps promote personal accountability by triggering automated alerts when compliance tasks are due or when data is approaching environmental limits. Task owners are linked directly to the information they need and their supervisors can verify when tasks are completed. Results to date suggest that the EMIS prompts are motivating employees to complete tasks earlier and reducing the risk of non-compliance. The EMIS assures everyone that compliance tasks are getting done and that the data is correct. - Brian Holmes, Director Santee Cooper Environmental Mgm t System Santee Cooper s environmental managers are also using the EMIS to proactively address another issue that is critical to their goal of continuously improving environmental performance operational adjustments due to organizational and personnel changes. Santee Cooper takes pride in being a great place to work but many of its employees are getting older and nearing retirement. Furthermore, like any well-run company, Santee Cooper must sometimes restructure its operations to maximize efficiency. Recently, the company started shutting down four coal-fired generating units, a process that required a good deal of change with roles, responsibilities, and people all being shifted between various stations and locations. We re transferring employees from one location to another and the EMIS seamlessly transfers the tasks as needed, said Baskerville. It makes the learning curve faster whenever somebody starts a new job because the information they need is right there and our processes are standardized across the company. In the past two years, the Environmental Management and Generation departments at Santee Cooper have used its EMIS to manage more than 5,000 compliance tasks. The EMIS assures everyone that compliance tasks are getting done and that the data is correct. The feedback from our corporate leadership has been very positive, Holmes concluded. In fact, our latest annual survey showed that 96 percent of our customers are satisfied with Santee Cooper s concern for the environment versus an 89 percent national average. I think the EMIS is playing a role in earning our company that vote of confidence. 1 CEMS = Continuous Emissions Management System; LIMS = Laboratory Information Management System; FMIS = Fuel Management Information System

6 Power & Utilities Industry Excellence Award Winner Eastern Municipal Water District Eastern Municipal Water District Proactively Expands EMIS to Maximize DMR Reporting Accuracy and Efficiency It wasn t gold but a more valuable resource that the county of Riverside, California sought back in The droughts of the late 1940 s were hard on the community and farms the situation was grave. Local leaders knew they needed access to the Colorado River Aqueduct and soon established the Eastern Municipal Water District (EMWD). This new agency negotiated an agreement with the Southern California Metropolitan Water District for the necessary access to their imported water supplies. Today, EMWD provides essential services to more than 758,000 people across 542-square-miles in Southern California. EMWD is responsible for providing drinking, recycle water and wastewater treatment to this community, this includes the production and beneficial reuse of approximately 42 million gallons per day of recycled water. EMWD must ensure compliance with hundreds of Federal, State, and local regulations, and EMWD is dedicated to go beyond full compliance with all health, safety and environmental regulations. One of its top priorities is the generation of Discharge Monitoring Reports (DMR) that it must submit to California Regional Water Quality Control Boards used to document permit compliance. Like any Public Owned Treatment Works (POTW), EMWD must collect wastewater samples, conduct chemical and/or biological tests of the samples, and submit reports to regulatory agencies to maintain its waste discharge permits. In 2011, EMWD proactively expanded its Environmental Management Information System (EMIS) in order to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of its DMR reporting. The agency had successfully used Sphera Essential Suite software part of the Sphera Environmental Performance Solution since 2006 to track hundreds of compliance tasks and deadlines throughout its operations. Now EMWD moved ahead with deployment of another Essential Suite module that is specially designed to facilitate process wastewater management. We are required to submit DMRs monthly for each of our major wastewater treatment plants, said Bill Tibbitts, Senior Environmental Compliance Analyst. We had an outdated Access database that was very difficult to use. Recalculations and reports would take more than an hour to process and if any of the data needed to be updated, we would have to wait Challenge Track hundreds of compliance tasks and deadlines in one system Prepare Discharge Monitoring Reports (DMRs) for CA Regional Water Quality Control Boards Improve efficiency and accuracy of regulatory compliance reporting Solution Environmental Performance and Compliance Assurance Solutions Water Usage and Discharge Compliance Assurance Task Management Results Increased leadership team s level of confidence in environmental reporting accuracy Reduced time spent generating DMRs from over 24 hours down to less than a minute Increased accountability for environmental performance by tracking compliance tasks Enabled transparency for auditing trail purposes for any changes made to environmental data Improved data accuracy and timeliness through seamless integration with LIMS, SCADA systems Assured retention of institutional knowledge and process consistency for compliance, continuity Enabled team to proactively track pollutants in anticipation of future regulations

7 EMWD Enhances Reporting Accuracy and Efficiency until the next morning to get it run. Now with Sphera, running DMRs takes less than a minute. These are our compliance reports so we need to be able to make sure they re accurate and reproducible. Previously, wastewater compliance monitoring figures on reports had to be recalculated when a change was made. Creating a single report could take anywhere from 1 to 24 hours and reports sometimes included inaccuracies that required manual correction. EMWD reports that the DMRs from the updated EMIS have proven very useful for maintaining data quality and consistency, reducing the need for additional oversight and making it easier to discern data trends. The information in the EMIS is consistently accurate and up to date so we are very confident about the quality of our reports, said Jayne Joy, Director of Environmental and Regulatory Compliance for EMWD. Our old homegrown system did not track anything about who did what. The Sphera system tells us who has made an entry and who has made changes. We dramatically improved our ability to manage our workload by tracking task ownership right through to completion. It s helping us drive continuous improvement throughout our operations. The information in the EMIS is consistently accurate and up to date so we are very confident about the quality of our reports... We dramatically improved our ability to manage our workload by tracking task ownership right through to completion. It s helping us drive continuous improvement throughout our operations. - Jayne Joy, Director Environmental & Regulatory Compliance Eastern Municipal Water District The quality and timeliness of data in the EMIS has been further enhanced by seamless integration with primary data sources such as EMWD s Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. Data from the LIMS and SCADA systems downloads into Essential Suite multiple times a day so reports generated from the EMIS are always up-to-date, no matter when they are generated. In addition, if they have to change the data and an audit trail is required, the EMWD team can add addendums to reports stating exactly when and why those changes occurred eliminating rework and potential compliance violations. By having improved integration with other systems and leveraging a broader base of personnel for data input, information can now flow into reports quickly and accurately. Nearly 70 percent of EMWD wastewater is recycled back to the district for irrigation. EMWD s environmental team uses the EMIS to track tasks that are required to verify that wastewater meets the highest quality standards and is in full compliance with the discharge permit program before it is released. Staff members receive alerts when specific required tasks are due, ensuring all of EMWD s requirements concerning contaminants, air quality, bio-solids, hazardous material tracking and other monitored issues are completed on time. Any user can create and assign recurring tasks. Plus, they can set up and maintain regulatory and operational time derivative values (TDV) and their limits. From my view, the biggest benefit of the EMIS is that we don t miss anything anymore including those non-routine compliance dates, Joy says. We can establish when deadlines are coming and easily shift tasks from individual to individual, or from group to group as necessary to make sure that assignments are completed properly and on time. What we were doing before was not transferable. EMWD s environmental management team now relies on the EMIS to help mitigate the impact of staff changes by safeguarding institutional knowledge and consistent work processes enterprise-wide to assure continuity of operations and minimize the risk of non-compliance. In 2013, when an Sphera Essential Suite version upgrade was completed, EMWD s staff reported that the system hierarchy also helped improve communications and security across the agency by allowing members of the team to see only the level of information they need for their respective roles. Looking forward, the team is using its enhanced EMIS to help it continue taking a proactive approach to upcoming compliance challenges. We are always watching for new regulations on the way, said Alfred Javier, Environmental Service Manager for EMWD. For instance, we have to be concerned about new standards for nutrient quality in our effluent how it s supplied and whether or not it s going to impact either ground water or surface water. We need to know what concentration of unregulated contaminants are currently found in our wastewater so we can be ready, in case a new regulation comes out that is more restrictive than the current rules. Compliance is one of our top strategic priorities and the EMIS is really our workhorse, Joy concluded. Environmental regulatory requirements are constantly changing and our EMIS helps EMWD stay ahead of the curve.

8 Power & Utilities Industry Excellence Award Winner Public Service Enterprise Group PSEG Transforms Environmental Compliance into Powerful Driver for Operational Efficiency, Sustainability As New Jersey s oldest and largest investor-owned utility provider, Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) provides gas and electricity to threequarters of the state s population as well as supplying power to Connecticut and New York. PSEG has always been committed to ensuring that its facilities are in full compliance with a multitude of municipal, state and federal regulations regarding air, water, and waste emissions but, over the years, the proliferation of those regulatory mandates was becoming increasingly burdensome. In 2008, PSEG s environmental management team took action authorizing implementation of an enterprise-level Environmental Management Information System (EMIS) built on Sphera opsinfo software, part of the Sphera Environmental Performance Solution. The initial goals of the centralized EMIS were manifold: to enhance compliance reporting, to better manage environmental risks, to make environmental permitting evaluations more efficient, to improve greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting, to deliver environmental metrics for sustainability reporting and to provide greater continuity during staff changes. A new EMIS was the fastest, easiest way for us to achieve an enterprise approach to compliance, said David Hinchey, Manager of Environmental Permitting and Technical Services at PSEG. We needed a consolidated system capable of advanced data processing, monitoring of emissions limits, and regulatory reporting. But it turned out that we gained a lot more than compliance management. The EMIS was an important step in improving our knowledge management and operational excellence. PSEG previously collected air, water and waste data from disparate sources all around the company. Each plant had its own set of systems, often heavily customized and specific to local operations, and used its own methods to manually compile reports on its environmental performance. Knowledge of exactly how information was being captured and aggregated typically remained with a single environmental professional at each plant now the processes are standardized across the fleet, to the largest extent possible, and the knowledge base is now distributed across a team of subject matter experts to reduce company risk in cases of staff turnover Challenge Enhance environmental regulatory compliance by establishing a centralized system Manage environmental risks more effectively including maintenance of environmental permits Track and report on environmental metrics for corporate scorecards and sustainability index Promote operational accountability through task management, ensure continuity thru staff changes Solution Environmental Performance and Compliance Assurance Solutions Water Usage and Discharge Air & GHG Emissions Water usage and discharge Waste management Compliance Assurance Task Management Results Increased leadership team s level of confidence in environmental reporting accuracy Replaced 20 redundant systems and 1000s of spreadsheets with 1 enterprise EMIS Enabled centralized compliance tracking of 80,000+ tasks for 200+ environmental permits Automated integration with process historians, lab information and grid operator systems e.g. extracting 8,000 air emission points every minute Tracked water discharge from 60 outfalls with 5,000+ parameters reduced time for monthly water report from 3 days to a few hours Provided environmental metrics for sustainability reporting to shareholders, DJSI, GRI, etc. Supported adoption of EMIS as task management system for operations side of business

9 PSEG: Environmental Compliance Powers Operational Efficiency with EMIS used as the institutional tool. Implementing the new EMIS enabled PSEG to replace more than 20 homegrown, facility-level systems and thousands of piecemeal spreadsheets with a single enterprise-wide software platform. The initial migration and rationalization of data from all of those legacy systems into the EMIS required a concerted effort but the benefits were clear. Companywide data collection that was previously labor intensive, requiring manual transcription and aggregation as well as quality control monitoring, is now largely automated. PSEG s environmental management team has not only eliminated a host of redundant legacy systems, they have also integrated their EMIS with a variety of other systems for example, importing high-volume process data directly from the company s laboratories and megawatts fuel data from PSEG s Electric System Operations Computer (ESOC) system. We re always striving to be more proactive than reactive. By implementing the EMIS, we ve freed up resources and are providing the information that people need to start looking ahead, to see how we can continuously improve our operations. - David Hinchey, Senior Environmental Engineer PSEG For air emissions alone, we re extracting from the field about 8,000 separate points that are then validated, aggregated and compressed into about 300 points that are pulled into Sphera opsinfo, every minute of the day, said Joel Resig, Senior Environmental Engineer and EMIS Program Manager at PSEG. By eliminating old redundant systems and automating data flow between new systems, we are able to work more efficiently. We used to have 6 full-time employees and contractors aggregating air emissions data. Now that work is handled by one employee who also has time now for other responsibilities so the rest of the team can focus on compliance, governance, oversight and reporting and less time on data gathering and concerns on data accuracy. The environmental team s efficiency gains have been especially important because their workload continues to grow. In 2010, PSEG tracked approximately 30,000 compliance tasks. Two years later, the number has escalated to over 80,000 tasks. To maintain more than 200 environmental permits, the team uses the EMIS to continue driving convergence of data from thousands of sources. For example, PSEG must track water discharge from 60 different outfalls with over 5,000 water parameters. With the EMIS, the environmental team is not only keeping pace but actually gaining ground for instance, completing monthly water reports that used to take 3 days in just a few hours. The EMIS also made it easier to arrange coverage during staff transitions because work processes are institutionalized inside the system. We re always striving to be more proactive than reactive, Hinchey says. By implementing the EMIS, we ve freed up resources and are providing the information that people need to start looking ahead, to see how we can continuously improve our operations so our business will grow and our environmental impacts will shrink. The PSEG environmental management team s successful implementation of the EMIS is also paying dividends at the highest levels of the organization. PSEG also incorporates environmental performance metrics from the EMIS into our corporate scorecards, annual sustainability report and submissions to groups like the Global Reporting Initiative and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, said Hinchey. Our data has to be timely and accurate because we are sharing key performance indicators with our customers and shareholders, providing them with a kind of environmental accounting perspective. We feel confident providing those KPIs because, in our EMIS, the data is the data. Our departmental reporting is consistent with our corporate reporting because the information all comes from the same database. In an interesting twist, PSEG s environmental team has achieved such outstanding results by using the EMIS to bring greater transparency and accountability to environmental compliance tasking that their senior management team recently decided to also use the EMIS as a task management tool for many of the company s other day-to-day business operations. Looking to the future, PSEG s environmental team is developing additional innovations for the EMIS, including prototype executive dashboards that will provide company leaders with views of data and analysis that they need to make critical decisions. We are actively promoting wider use of the EMIS, Hinchey concluded. Almost everyone is using it now. That s great because the more involved we all are with the EMIS, the easier it is for us to continue working together to integrate environmental management into our core business and drive operational excellence.

10 Power & Utilities Industry Excellence Award Winner CenterPoint Energy CenterPoint Energy Streamlines GHG Management to Meet New Regulatory Compliance, Voluntary Reporting Goals CenterPoint Energy, Inc., headquartered in Houston, Texas, is a domestic energy delivery company that includes electric transmission & distribution, natural gas distribution, competitive natural gas sales and services, interstate pipelines and field services operations. Since its launch as a stand-alone company in 2002, the company has been committed to the highest-quality energy delivery, while operating in an environmentally responsible manner. Its leadership team is intent on ensuring that their facilities are in compliance with current regulations and that their management team is actively partnering with other organizations in the development of future environmental laws and industry best practice guidelines.1 In 2010, CenterPoint Energy stepped up to address one especially critical environmental management challenge facing US energy companies global climate change. The company s Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Program team began implementation of an enterprise-level Environmental Management System (EMS) that is significantly enhancing their ability to maintain compliance with mandatory government regulations as well as voluntary sustainability reporting. CenterPoint Energy had previously managed its environmental reporting processes with hundreds of spreadsheets that were separately developed and maintained at its many facilities. But, to meet more rigorous information management demands imposed by a new generation of regulations, including the Environmental Protection Agency s (EPA s) GHG Mandatory Reporting Rule (MRR), and voluntary reporting to nongovernmental organizations such as the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), senior managers realized that complying with these complex new requirements using spreadsheets would be inefficient and potentially risky. CenterPoint Energy experts evaluated leading systems on the market and selected Sphera Essential Suite software part of the Sphera Environmental Performance Solution to serve as the foundation for the company s EMS. We have come a long way in the last two and a half years. All of our records including permits, emission limits, compliance deadlines, equipment Challenge Ensure compliance with new regulations, including US EPA Mandatory Reporting Rule Improve efficiency of GHG and other air emissions tracking/reporting work processes Provide GHG emissions metrics to company management for voluntary public reporting Solution Environmental Performance and Compliance Assurance Solutions Water Usage and Discharge Air & GHG Emissions EHS Regulatory Content Permit Management Results Established centralized EMS that eliminates the need for 100s of disparate spreadsheets Reduced time required for greenhouse gas-reporting from 2-3 months to 2 weeks Provided GHG metrics for corporate annual report and Carbon Disclosure Project Mitigated risk of noncompliance with automated alerts that provide notification when permit limits are approached Set stage for additional 2-3 months of time savings for all air emissions reporting Enabled data entry via mobile devices, facilitating a single point of data entry

11 CenterPoint Energy Meets GHG Compliance Goals More Efficiently re now easily accessible in the system. We also have all of the compliance-related tasks associated with those permits and the regulatory citations that apply to those tasks. Everything is much better organized than it was before, said William Manwaring, Manager of CenterPoint Energy s GHG Program and project manager for the EMS implementation. This is the first year we are fulfilling all of our GHG reporting requirements straight out of our EMS system and it is a huge success. We are reducing 2-3 months of work the entire process of gathering the data, doing QA/QC, running the reports and getting it over into the EPA s system for MRR down into a 2 week period. That is a tremendous time savings. Now we are taking the same approach to address other air emissions regulations. Since concern about proliferating state and federal mandates was a primary driver for this project, CenterPoint Energy s team also implemented Sphera CyberRegs as part of their new Environmental Management System. With Sphera CyberRegs an online regulatory content service that is integrated with Sphera Essential Suite they can track regulatory requirements and facilitate the assignment and tracking of tasks at the operational level to ensure end-to-end compliance. Environmental regulations are always changing and the EMS, with CyberRegs, helps us stay up to date so we can meet our responsibilities, said Manwaring. Our executives even use the system as part of our due diligence before acquiring a new company to see if there are regulations that apply to an acquisition target and how they might potentially impact our business. CenterPoint Energy is now using its EMS to prepare air emissions inventory reports for the eight states where its facilities are located. The team is running its Emissions Inventory Questionnaire calculations both manually and in the EMS so they can cross-check and verify the results. Once we ve made sure everything is running properly, we will do all of our air emissions calculations and reporting straight out of Essential Suite. We estimate that we re going to achieve another 2-3 months in total time savings by eliminating the need to use hundreds of spreadsheets and manual calculations, said Manwaring. Before the Sphera implementation, CenterPoint Energy managers tracked tasks for permit requirements with spreadsheets and in scheduling functionality but that proved to be inefficient. Today, they can manage compliance more easily and effectively because Sphera Essential Suite catalogues equipment, applicable permits or regulations and associated tasks that drive compliance requirements. It provides clear visibility to all project stakeholders task owners, team members, and supervisors so users can easily track progress against program goals, and see when tasks are completed, or when corrective actions are required. We ve created key performance indicators that let us know if an engine is reaching an operating hour threshold that would require an emissions test. When an engine comes within 20 percent of an operating hour permit limit, the system provides an automated alert to let us know that we may need to schedule an emission test. It helps us be more proactive, addressing potential issues before they put us at risk of noncompliance, said Manwaring. CenterPoint Energy s environmental management team is also introducing technology innovations to enhance the quality and timeliness of its data. Mobile devices are helping us improve data integrity by eliminating the need to fat-finger data into spreadsheets, which would eventually cause a problem with those calculations. Now we re getting the actual system of record parameters entered into the system from a single point of entry, either from an electronic flow meter or from the person in the field who is directly entering the hours data in our maintenance management system, Manwaring said. With its EMS, CenterPoint Energy s team not only generates scheduled compliance reports more efficiently, they also respond faster and more efficiently to ad hoc information requests. With just a few keystrokes, the system produces reports that previously required as much as a week to produce. We don t have to run around to pull a bunch of spreadsheets together to produce a report, Manwaring said. Now we just go into the EMS, run the report that we need and forward it directly to management. CenterPoint Energy s leadership recognizes that environmental performance is an increasingly critical business issue. As a result, they now include GHG metrics from the EMS in their annual report as well as submitting them to the Carbon Disclosure Project, an independent organization serving investors. 2 CenterPoint Energy has invested time and effort into this EMS because we know how important it is to be accountable to our customers, neighbors and investors, Manwaring said. Now we can efficiently deliver the reporting we need to stay in compliance and be more transparent with all of those stakeholders. 2 climate-change-programs.aspx We estimate that we re going to achieve another 2-3 months in total time savings by eliminating the need to use hundreds of spreadsheets and manual calculations. - William Manwaring, Manager Greenhouse Gas Program CenterPoint Energy Midstream Partners is a master limited partnership (MLP) where CenterPoint Energy is one of the partners.

12 About Sphera Sphera is the largest global provider of Integrated Risk Management software and information services with a focus on Operational Risk, Environmental Health & Safety and Product Stewardship. For more than 30 years, Sphera has advanced Operational Excellence by serving more than 3,000 customers and over 1 million individual users across 70-plus countries to create a safer, more sustainable and productive world. For more information contact us at: sphera.com/contact-us/