Sustainability reporting must focus on the environmental and social issues that matter most to a company and its stakeholders. That is why we have again selected “Meeting the Energy Challenge” as our theme; why we use key performance indicators that were developed with our stakeholders to report on our biggest environmental and social impacts; and why we use a well-established and auditable process to select the issues to cover.

Step 1. Ask readers what matters most to them, using surveys, interviews, media reviews and workshops with reporting experts.

Step 2. Use our internal risk management systems to determine which environmental and social issues most affect our business strategy.

Step 3. Combine the results (see figure). Allowing for legal restrictions, we include all the highest-priority topics in our Report. Those at the next level of importance are covered on our website.

Step 4. Check with stakeholders, and our External Review Committee, that our coverage of these topics is balanced and complete.

The Committee helped us refine this process in 2006. The weightings used in Step 1 now take more account of topics that are important for society but attract less media attention.