As one of the largest trans-regional integrated energy service providers in China, China Gas follows the industry changes and market trends, committed to providing customers with safe and reliable gas, as well as high-quality services, with four main businesses, namely, natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas (“LPG”), value-added services and integrated energy. In response to the complex environment, the Group has been adopting a variety of promising measures to strengthen the planning and operation of gas sources, and thus ensured its stable gas supply. Meanwhile, the Group constantly optimizes its management regulations for safety operations and steadily improves its safety management, in order to secure gas supply.

With regards to safety and health, the Group has formulated internal and external certification systems and safety policies for employees to manage occupational health and safety risks and improve performance. In terms of the internal system, China Gas takes the initiative to comprehensively plan the health, safety and environment (HSE) management system of project companies within the Group. As of FY2022/23, 46 project companies over which China Gas has operational control have obtained ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 certifications. The revenue of these project companies accounted for 51% of the Group’s total revenue. We are on further moves to carry out the system certification implementation plan on project companies, aiming to achieve 100% certification within the Group within 3 years.

During the financial year, the number of work-related injuries per million hours of employees fell to a record low of 0.01, and that of all employees and contractors is well below 0.75.

The Group has also introduced more intelligent safety management equipment. With technologies such as the SCADA platform, the patrol inspection system, and the Geographic Information System, the Group has been monitoring business operations in real time, delivering risk warning, toward an unattended digital security management system to provide employees with a good and safe work environment. Besides, the Group has established the Safety Digital Integrated Management Platform 2.0, where contents of diverse dimensions are available. This platform, primarily on safe production permits, standardized management, hidden hazard inspections and other business applications, features a safe-production database with unified data views within the Group.

To help achieve the “dual carbon” goals of “carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060” proposed in the “14th Five-Year Plan” and to accelerate the transformations and upgrades of its own business, China Gas is actively exploring various business scenarios related to energy conservation and carbon reduction. We launched the dual carbon digital platform with carbon accounting data management system, and also proposed to cooperate with investment platforms of local governments in key domestic regions to establish carbon management service centers to provide carbon asset management and integrated energy management services as well as digital and modular technical solutions including carbon footprint calculation systems for key industries and corporate customers in energy conservation and carbon reduction, gradually planning and promoting the services nationwide.

With the expansion of our business scale and the growth of our strengths, China Gas has undertaken more social responsibilities, dedicated to creating more social value. This financial year, we have signed syndicated loan agreements linked to sustainability and social responsibility with a number of banks domestic and overseas, and successfully issued the first green medium-term notes of RMB1 billion with a term of 3+2 years of the gas industry, all for our gas-to-coal conversion in Northern China and the transformation of old pipeline networks, to grow our businesses sustainably with high quality.

With the mission of “Converging in Harmony and Benefiting Communities”, China Gas has always been enthusiastic about public welfare, caring for and serving society. The Group established China Gas Charity Foundation in 2014, which is in active exploration of the public welfare operation mechanism with the characteristics of China Gas, in a genuine China Gas way, which serves its development strategy and plays an active role in public welfare of caring for women and children, poverty alleviation and student financial aid, disaster relief, and supports against COVID-19. During the year, total number of employees participating in volunteer activities is 16,890, total time of employee volunteering is 2,523 hours, and total donations for public welfare projects is HK$ 5,437,000.

During the financial year, following the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (“TCFD”), China Gas disclosed its plans and achievements against climate risks in four major areas, namely “Governance”, “Strategy”, “Risk Management” and “Metrics and Targets”. We further completed our climate change scenario analysis and selected important project companies from city groups to conduct more in-depth entity-level climate risk assessments to evaluate the impacts of climate risks on the Group’s businesses, so as to formulate appropriate plans to mitigate such impacts respectively.

The Group established a Transformation Office in April 2022, which is responsible for implementing its transformation and reform decisions, coordinating and promoting the efficient implementation of transformations and reforms. In addition, all employees attended anti-corruption training in FY2022/23, of 124,599 hours in total. To motivate the Board and senior management to focus more on environmental, social, and governance matters, the Group links the remuneration of Directors and senior management to sustainable development performance indicators. The Company conducts value creation assessments of senior management annually, with ESG indicators being a crucial factor for the assessment results.

On 19 June 2021, the Group signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the United Nations Environment Programme (“UNEP”) and joined the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership (“OGMP”), becoming the first OGMP member company in China. In December 2022, the Group was awarded the “Outstanding Award for Green and Sustainable Loan Issuer – Visionary Social Loan Framework” and the title of “President of Climate Disclosure Initiative” at the Award Presentation Ceremony of Hong Kong Green and Sustainable Finance Awards 2022 organized by the Hong Kong Quality Assurance Agency, reflecting capital markets' recognition on our performance and sustainable development capabilities in environmental protection, social responsibility, corporate governance and beyond.