Environmental Commitment

As an energy provider, socially responsible business and good neighbor, we are committed to being a partner in building a sustainable energy future in the communities we serve. To help us reach that future, we continually look for ways to reduce our carbon and methane emissions and promote sustainable and efficient energy use.

Methane Reduction Initiatives

At Summit, we are proud to be a leader in reducing methane emissions and have committed to maintain a methane intensity score of .5% or lower. Through our participation in several mitigation programs, along with our comprehensive pipeline replacement program in Arkansas and Oklahoma, as of 2018, Summit achieved a methane emissions intensity of just 0.228 percent.

Our methane reduction initiatives include:

Natural Gas STAR Methane Challenge: By participating in the voluntary U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Methane Challenge Program since 2016, we commit to transparently reporting our methane emissions and describing the systematic and comprehensive actions we are taking to reduce our methane emissions. Through this program, we make our system safer, reduce operational risk and increase efficiency. Beyond that, we also share information and best practices with our peers across the country to further enhance methane mitigation efforts industrywide.

ONE Future Coalition: Summit is a committed member of the ONE Future Coalition, an organization made up of energy companies from across the natural gas supply chain that are committed to achieving a science-based average rate of methane emissions across facilities equivalent to one percent or less of total natural gas production. With company leaders on ONE Future’s Board of Directors and other policy and technical committees, we work together to report emissions data, mitigation efforts and best practices with the goal of leading the industry to a sustainable path of lower emissions and more efficient operations. Through our mitigation efforts, for 2017, our methane emissions intensity was just 0.292 percent, beating ONE Future’s goal of one percent by 2025. In addition, as a coalition, we were able to exceed our goal with a methane intensity record of 0.552 percent in 2017. Read the November 2018 ONE Future progress report here.

Pipeline Replacement: To reduce our methane emissions and enhance the efficiency of our system, we are systematically replacing and upgrading aging pipe through a multi-year capital investment. In 2018 alone, we replaced 40 miles of such pipe in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Through this effort, we have been able and will continue to be able to further reduce our methane emissions and promote the ongoing safety and efficiency of our system.