The Impact of Sustainability on Operator Opex

"Regulation is likely to force operators to adopt a range of sustainability-related initiatives, but these may increase opex."

This report focuses on the impact of sustainability-related initiatives on operator opex.

It provides opex benchmarks for operators in relation to three main environmental areas: energy usage, renewable energy procurement and emissions. The benchmarks are modelled on an integrated operator in a developed market and offer comparative data for other operators that are exploring sustainability-related transitions.

We organise the sustainability-related initiatives by whether they are focused on cost savings or environmental impact. This allows us to disentangle the motivation for implementing a given initiative.

Questions answered in this report:

• What initiatives are operators employing to minimise energy consumption and emissions, and how do they affect opex?
• How does the pursuit of sustainability-related initiatives align with operators' objectives to reduce opex?
• What are the opex implications of adopting alternative approaches to renewable energy procurement?
• What is the relationship between implementation timelines and opex for individual sustainability-related initiatives?