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Suncor's Sustainability Goals

Our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions goal: harness technology and innovation to reduce our emission intensity by 30% by 2030

We asked some of our employees why it's important for Suncor to have a GHG goal. Here's what they had to say.


We share in the global challenge to tackle climate change head on by reducing emissions, while providing energy the world needs. We will work to harness technology and innovation to set us on a transformational pathway to a low carbon energy system. We will measure our progress by reducing the total emission intensity of the production of our oil and petroleum products by 30% by 2030.

We have a responsibility to our planet and future generations to address our impacts. This means finding new ways to extract and produce oil and bitumen while minimizing our carbon footprint. This goal will stretch us beyond our current competence and technology, and ultimately help bend the curve on our absolute emissions.

We are focusing on the following areas to achieve our GHG emissions goal:

  • continue to drive energy efficiency at all our facilities, and where opportunities exist, switch to lower-carbon fuels such as natural gas;
  • develop and pilot technology to fundamentally change how we extract bitumen and optimize downstream processing; and
  • participate in greening the electricity grid towards a lower-carbon future by investing in cogeneration at our facilities and renewable energy. Our goal will also drive us to seek and evaluate new business opportunities in the evolving future energy system. 
Achieving this goal is not something we can do alone. We can achieve so much more when we collaborate on solutions. Some examples of collaborations already underway: 

  • Annually investing about $200 million to support research and technology development.
  • Being a leading member of Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA), a group of oil sands producers focused on accelerating the pace of improvement in environmental performance in Canada’s oil sands through collaborative action and innovation.
  • Being one of eight COSIA member companies supporting the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, a $20 million (USD) global initiative, operated by the XPRIZE Foundation, designed to accelerate new technologies by converting CO2 emissions from industrial facilities for electricity generation and oil and gas production into valuable and useable products. 
  • Launching Evok Innovations, a new initiative between the BC Cleantech CEO Alliance, Cenovus Energy and Suncor. As a cleantech fund, Evok connects the oil and gas industry with entrepreneurs and innovators with new solutions to help address the most pressing environmental and economic challenges we face today.

Improving energy efficiency

Current initiatives:

  • Implementation of our Energy Management System at our refineries, lubricants facility and at Oil Sands Base Plant. Preliminary results have been promising as we continue to see improvement in energy intensity between 2% and 3% achieved shortly after implementation
  • Advancing research in CO2 capture and conversion through COSIA research studies (CO2 Capture from Synthesis Gas Research Study (COSIA) and CO2 Conversion Research Study (COSIA)
Future opportunities:

  • Improve reliability of existing operations with less energy
  • Regional energy mapping between producers and users across geographies

Transitioning to lower carbon fuels and power

Current initiatives:

  • Use of natural gas at our oil sands facility 
  • Natural Gas De-Carbonization Study (COSIA)
  • Through our co-generation facilities (a highly efficient technology used to generate electricity from what would be otherwise waste heat) we use power for our own operations as well sending electricity back to the grid. This reduces provincial GHG emissions.
Future opportunities:

  • Using and producing clean power at Fort Hills (co-generation)

Investing in technology to change the way we extract and process the oil sands

Current initiatives:

  • Using radio frequency instead of steam (ESEIEH)
  • Storing CO2 underground and minimizing heat loss (DCSG) 
  • Advancing our pilot surfactant technology to reduce our steam-to-oil ratio which enables more production with less intensity and emissions (SAGD LITE and co-injection) 
Future opportunities:

  • Using Paraffinic Froth Treatment technology at Fort Hills which eliminates the need for an onsite bitumen upgrader by removing asphaltenes and reducing GHG emissions 
  • Government and industry research in processing bitumen (Partial Upgrading Program CANMET Energy & AI-EES)

Transitioning to a lower carbon future

Current initiatives:

Future focus opportunities: