Safety
Safety
Gasunie operates and maintains networks of pipelines and installations used to transport and store hazardous substances such as methane, LNG, hydrogen and soon also CO2. Gasunie staff and (sub)contractor employees work in potentially hazardous process conditions. The projects they work on are complex in nature and sometimes involve short lead times. Unsafe working conditions can result in serious accidents.
Impacts, risks and opportunities
Based on our double materiality assessment, working in potentially hazardous process conditions presents the following impacts and risks:
| No. | ESRS | Material topic - ESRS | IRO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17 | S1 | Safety (S1) | Actual negative impact: Gasunie’s operations involve technical, industrial, and field-based activities—such as pipeline maintenance, construction and energy infrastructure management—which inherently carry health and safety risks for employees. If safety protocols are not consistently followed, if training is insufficient, or if there is a lack of proactive risk identification and mitigation, the likelihood of workplace accidents or health issues increases. This can lead to serious injuries, long-term health problems and even fatalities. |
| 18 | S1 | Safety (S1) | Risk: Gasunie relies on its employees for various operating and technical activities, often in high-risk environments such as construction sites and energy infrastructure. If employees experience health and safety incidents due to insufficient safety measures, training, or oversight, this can lead to serious accidents or injuries. Such incidents may result in staff shortages, loss of critical knowledge and delays in project execution. Additionally, they can damage Gasunie’s reputation, increase financial costs, and jeopardise its licence to operate or ability to obtain future permits due to perceived safety risks in its organisation. |
| 21 | S2 | Safety (S2) | Actual negative impact: Gasunie’s value chain operations involve technical, industrial and field-based activities—such as pipeline maintenance, construction and energy infrastructure management—which inherently carry health and safety risks for employees of contractors and subcontractors. If safety protocols are not consistently followed, if training is insufficient, or if there is a lack of proactive risk identification and mitigation, the likelihood of workplace accidents or health issues increases. This can lead to injuries, long-term health problems or even fatalities. |
| 22 | S2 | Safety (S2) | Risk: Gasunie relies on subcontractors for various operating and technical activities, often in high-risk environments such as construction sites and energy infrastructure. If subcontractors experience health and safety incidents due to insufficient safety measures, training, or oversight, this can lead to serious accidents or injuries. Such incidents may result in staff shortages, loss of critical knowledge and delays in project execution. Additionally, they can damage Gasunie’s reputation, increase financial costs, and jeopardise its licence to operate or ability to obtain future permits, due to perceived safety risks in its value chain. |
Policy
Gasunie’s workforce forms a central stakeholder group for our company. Employees play a key role in the ongoing development and the implementation of our material topics. The speed and dynamics associated with topics such as security of supply and the energy transition demand a lot in terms of the flexibility and resilience of all employees. It is important that we enable our employees to carry out their work as best as possible – in a pleasant, healthy, safe working environment – so that they can contribute well to the company’s objectives.
Gasunie’s objective in the area of safety is to ensure that everyone – our own staff and (sub)contractor employees14 – can work safely and in good health. The Executive Board is responsible for the safety policy and ensures the proper functioning of the safety management system and compliance with the rules and regulations. It is supported in this by the Safety department.
14 In the context of safety at Gasunie, we define contractor employees as ‘employees who work at a Gasunie site or on Gasunie premises who are employees of a contractor/supplier contracted by Gasunie’.
Work safety
In our efforts to achieve our safety objective, we meet health and safety standards. Identifying, reducing and controlling risks during the works is a core element in all our activities. Our safety policy applies in full to all our employees and all (sub)contractor employees, regardless of the type of work they do. This value chain responsibility is a unifying element in our safety policy. When a contractor performs work on behalf of Gasunie, the same standards apply to them as for Gasunie’s own staff. All works must be carried out safely. The contractor and its employees must be familiar with the Gasunie Safety Policy and comply with that policy.
Our own employees and (sub)contractor employees are exposed to safety risks, with those working in an environment where there are heavy objects, machinery and hazardous process conditions exposed to the greatest risk. The work is often complex in nature and/or involves short lead times. Work may only start once we have identified foreseeable safety, health and environmental risks, and taken appropriate control measures. We adhere to our work safety policy by:
- working in accordance with the prescribed safety rules, including the Principles for Working Safely, with the aim of having a proactive safety culture and proactive safety behaviour;
- ensuring that our own employees and workers engaged from outside the company are adequately trained and instructed, and have adequate supervision;
- embedding safety from the design phase, creating safe working conditions by implementing technical and organisational controls (‘safety by design’);
- accepting ISO 45001 certification alongside our VCA company certification.
Process safety
To guarantee the safety of our pipelines and installations, we ensure that our infrastructure is correctly designed, constructed, managed, maintained, operated and dismantled. Over their entire service life, we aim to prevent loss of control, particularly in the case of major accidents. This policy is implemented by: ensuring technically safe and ergonomic design and construction of our plants, installations and pipelines, as well as safe operation and maintenance of these, with an ongoing acceptable level of technical integrity over their entire service life; setting up sufficient and adequate lines of defence such as mechanical integrity, detection, containment and venting systems, ignition prevention, alarm management, contingency facilities; and ensuring a safe work zone, work preparation, work permits, inspections/approvals.
Action plans
Analysis and campaigns (MT)
Gasunie ran targeted campaigns in 2025 to increase safety and improve risk management: ‘learning from incidents’, ‘working at height’, ‘falling and tripping’ and ‘loss of containment’. We chose these specific topics to focus on because they consistently feature in incidents reported through our Gasunie BeSafe incident registration system. On top of that, we have developed several campaigns to raise risk awareness as part of what we call our ‘HSE calendar’. Topics addressed included: ‘social safety’, ‘line of fire’, ‘tidiness and cleanliness’ and ‘electrical safety’.
Safe@Gasunie (LT)
Safe@Gasunie is the overarching safety culture improvement programme at Gasunie’s Dutch business units. Following a study of the safety culture at Gasunie Deutschland in 2025, we put together a plan to improve safety there. Following the Safety Culture Ladder (SCL) baseline measurement, several workflows were initiated in 2024, focusing on strengthening leadership, knowledge and skills, process safety, visual safety and collaboration across the value chain. Rather than ending these workflows in 2025, they were consolidated into the Safe@Gasunie programme.
In 2026, we will be taking the following safety culture steps:
- We intend to launch the Gasunie Safe Working app in early 2026. This app will offer both Gasunie staff and partners a low-threshold way to share HSE information. One of the main advantages of the app is the ease with which users can raise concerns and report incidents;
- We have revised the Principles for Working Safely. In line with this, we will be rolling out a Safe@Gasunie corporate safety programme in 2026, which we have compiled based on the Principles for Working Safely and the existing Safe@Gasunie initiative. The specifics of this programme for 2026 are as follows:
- Safe@Job – everyone knows what kind of work they’re supposed to do and how to do it. This involves an integrated HSE activities plan for all projects and implementation of a Process Safety Start-up Review (PSSR).
- Safe@Rules – everyone works to procedures, instructions and agreements. This involves rolling out Life-Saving Rules and highlighting one of these rules every month.
- Safe@Mind – everyone is aware of risks and knows how to handle them. For example, using the BeSafe app.
- Safe@Life – everyone is responsible and accountable for their own behaviour. This includes a safety leadership programme.
- Safe@Stop – when necessary, we stop working and discuss the measures we need to take. For example, by organising a safety day under the banner of ‘Trust in Safety’.
- Safe@Team – everyone understands how their work affects that of others. This involves active participation in and facilitation of the H&S partner platform table.
- Safe@Skills – everyone keeps their professional knowledge up to date. For example, through further education and training.
Resources
Since implementing our safety policy is part of our regular business operations, the money we spend on this is included in our operating expenses.
Measurable targets
Our target is zero accidents. Gasunie uses its Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) as a threshold value for safety. This figure represents the total number of ‘recordable accidents’ (i.e. accidents resulting in lost-time injuries, requiring medical treatment or involving one or more fatalities, or due to which the employee must perform alternative work) per one million hours worked. As in previous years, our threshold value in 2025 was a TRIR below (and in any case no higher than) 2.5. This includes accidents involving employees, non-employees in our own workforce and contractors who fall under our operational management while working for Gasunie. We also include fatal accidents involving third parties, whereby ‘third parties’ covers visitors to a Gasunie (project) site, local residents, passers-by and road users who inadvertently become involved in an accident at a Gasunie asset.
Our calculation of the Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) figure is based on 1,680 working hours per FTE per year (employees and non-employees).
In 2025, Gasunie revised the method used to calculate the TRIR, aiming to further increase the reliability and transparency of our safety reporting. A key change that was made lies in how we determine the number of contractor hours used in the TRIR calculation. Until the end of the 2024 reporting year, these hours were calculated by dividing contractor costs15 by a certain standard hourly rate. As of 2025, we use a lower standard hourly rate based on data from Statistics Netherlands, because it is easier to establish. In this case, this results in a higher number of contractor hours and consequently a lower TRIR. As a result of this change, the TRIR for 2024 was adjusted down from 3.4 to 3.1. For Gasunie Deutschland, it proved impossible to fully reconstruct the underlying cost basis of outsourced work. Consequently, the TRIR for 2025 and the TRIR for 2024 are not fully comparable. This will be rectified in the 2026 sustainability statement, as the harmonisation will have covered two years by then.
15 CAPEX and OPEX of activities for Gasunie under our operational management.
In addition to the downward adjustment of the hourly rate, Gasunie decided in 2025 that, alongside GTS and Gasunie Deutschland as the largest group companies, all other group companies must also be included in the calculation of contractor hours. This further increases the total contractor hours and reduces the TRIR for 2024 further from 3.1 to 2.8. The comparative figures have been adjusted accordingly.
Achievement of our goals
| 2025 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|
| Reportable incidents | GU | GU |
| Lost-time injury | 11 | 10 |
| Injury leading to restricted work | 4 | 1 |
| Injury requiring medical treatment | 9 | 11 |
| Total | 24 | 22 |
| TRFI | 2.2 | 2.8 |
There were no work-related fatalities in 2025 (same as in 2024). The TRIR dropped below the threshold value in 2024 and 2025 partly due to these changes to the way it is calculated. We continue to work on bringing down the number of accidents.
Under the ESRS, we are required to report not only the TRIR but also a figure covering our own employees only, i.e. employees and non-employees. In 2025, 10 recordable accidents occurred involving our own employees (2024: 8). The total number of recordable accidents involving Gasunie’s own employees came in at 1.8 (2024: 1.6) per one million hours worked. The hours worked were calculated in the same way as the hours worked for the TRIR (1,680 hours per FTE per year).