Climate Policy Engagement Analysis
Climate Policy Engagement Overview: Williams Companies (Williams), appears to be negatively engaged on climate policy. The company is opposed to climate regulations and advocate for new fossil gas infrastructure in the US.
Top-line Messaging on Climate Policy: Williams’ top-line messaging appears supportive of climate action, although with some ambiguities. On the website, accessed in June 2024, Williams stated its commitment to address climate change through a "pragmatic" and "economically feasible" approach. In the 2023 CDP Climate Change response, Williams supported climate policies that prioritize energy infrastructure and development of new technologies, however it appeared unsupportive of "prescriptive" climate regulations. InfluenceMap could not find any evidence of the company’s support for the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Engagement with Climate-Related Regulations: Williams engages negatively on climate regulations. The company opposed US Department of Energy’s proposal to raise the ambition of energy conservation standards for gas and propane furnaces in October 2022 comments. In October 2023 comments, Williams opposed US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) GHG emissions reporting regulations, claiming that EPA is acting beyond its legal boundary in proposing methane reporting revisions to include large emission events. The company also did not support EPA’s methane regulation for the oil and gas sector in January 2022 comments.
Positioning on Energy Transition: Williams appears unsupportive of a transition to a clean energy mix and advocates for continued investments in fossil gas, in contradiction to the IPCC recommendations. In September 2023, Williams’ comments to the US government opposed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Phase 2 Revisions, which propose to consider climate-related effects in project reviews. In this submission, Williams advocated for the review process to facilitate fossil gas infrastructure build-out, claiming that environmental impact from new fossil gas pipelines are overstated. Similarly, in July 2022 comments to the New York’s Climate Action Council Scoping Plan, Williams advocated for policymakers to consider a long-term role for fossil gas in the energy mix.
Williams is engagement on policies related to decarbonization. In the 2023 CDP Climate Change response, Williams disclosed advocacy on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to incentivize the development of hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS), although the company has neither mentioned the need to decarbonize hydrogen production nor the intended applications for CCS. However, in the same CDP response, Williams stated that it advocated for a “color-blind” approach to hydrogen production in the Inflation Reduction Act — a stance that would incentivize hydrogen produced from fossil gas. The company’s 2022 Sustainability Report, published in July 2023, supported measures to increase the use of renewable natural gas (RNG).
Industry Association Governance: Williams discloses its membership to industry associations in its 2022 Sustainability Report, released July 2023. However, it does not provide details of indirect policy engagement undertaken via these associations. The company holds memberships to groups that engage negatively on climate policy such as the American Petroleum Institute, Consumer Energy Alliance, and National Petroleum Council.