01 About this annual report

A company does not publish an annual report for its own reading pleasure.  As a company, we derive our social licence to operate through creating value. Where companies previously explained how they created economic value like profit and dividend, society is increasingly demanding to be given insight into the creation of value that cannot be measured in financial terms, or at least not directly. In this annual report we distinguish four types of value creation*:

By taking this approach to presenting our results, we are able to provide advanced insights into the role and impact we, as a company, have on our stakeholders and, so doing, create a better picture of the interaction between society and our company.

This report has been prepared in accordance with the Core application level of the GRI Standards. The building blocks for this report are:  

• the relevant provisions of the Dutch Civil Code 
• the revised Dutch Corporate Governance Code 2016 
• the EU Directive on Disclosure of Non-Financial Information and Information on Diversity (Directive 2014/95/EU; NFRD), and 
• the GRI Standards reporting guideline (Core application level). 

We aim to be transparent about our objectives and how we intend to achieve them. Accordingly, in our annual report we elaborate on our activities and results, explaining not only what went well, but also what did not go so well and which dilemmas and uncertainties we faced in the process of creating internal and external economic and social value.

We review our annual report in light of the criteria of the Dutch Transparency Benchmark (TB) and we aspire to remain among the front runners (Top 20 ranking). The criteria in the TB were inspired by such sources as the Sustainable Development Goals, the EU Directive on non-financial information (EU NFI Directive), the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the Dutch Corporate Governance Code, the Natural Capital Protocol, the Climate-related Financial Disclosures, and supply chain transparency. 

In this report, we report on Gasunie Transport Services (GTS), Gasunie Deutschland (GUD) and other consolidated participating interests. The information about these business entities has been included in the total figures and results, to the extent they are available. Gasunie subsidiary GTS is included in the consolidated results, but also publishes its own annual report. We also include details on acquisitions and divestments in the 2021 annual report.

For more information, please refer to the financial statements, section ‘Notes to the consolidated financial statements'.

Due to differences in laws and regulations, the Netherlands and Germany do not always record information on matters like safety, health, the environment and employment conditions in the same way. Whenever possible, information from the Netherlands and Germany has been combined; where this is not possible, this is presented separately. We do not include non-consolidated participating interests when compiling the information regarding these topics.

To help determine which topics to include in the Management Report, every two years we ask our external and internal stakeholders which material topics are most relevant to them, in relation to the impact we as an organisation have on these topics. We describe the results in the section What matters to our stakeholders. Deciding on the material topics is the starting point for the GRI Standards and Integrated Reporting guidelines. 

The annual report is prepared by the Executive Board and the financial statements it contains are audited by an external auditor. After taking note of the external auditor’s opinion and the advice from the Audit Committee, the Supervisory Board advises the General Meeting of Shareholders to adopt the annual report and financial statements without amendment. 

The external auditor also assesses the sustainability information included in the annual report. We have this sustainability information assessed because it is important to us that the user of this report be provided with at least ‘limited assurance’ regarding this information. We are working on ultimately being able to obtain ‘reasonable assurance’ on our sustainability information, as is already the case for our financial information.

Gasunie has a large number of stakeholders, from customers, suppliers, consortium partners and financiers to government bodies, employees and local residents. Every other reporting year (in the odd years), we ask these stakeholders to make a ranking of the material topics in order to determine which topics, in their view, have the most impact on Gasunie or in which areas Gasunie has the most impact.

The results of this ‘materiality analysis’ help us determine which topics to report on in our annual report. The materiality analysis also provides us with strategic insights. The 2021 stakeholder survey covered thirteen topics and the findings resulted in the following materiality matrix:

y-axis: importance to stakeholders 
x-axis: impact on/of Gasunie  

The top three of our most important material topics remained unchanged in the 2021 survey compared to the 2019 survey. ‘The energy transition’ remains the number 1 topic, with the understanding that our respondents have come to find this matter and our influence in this area even more important than before. ‘Safety of the network’ and ‘Security of supply’ are, respectively, number 2 and 3 in the rankings.

‘Complying with and influencing legislation’ has moved up a few places. According to our stakeholders, the impact of legislation on Gasunie has become relatively greater; we believe this is related to our now bigger role in the energy transition. In matters relating to hydrogen and CCS, we are dealing with legislation and regulations that are essentially still being worked out.

One topic that has moved down in the ranking is ‘strong market position’: both external and internal stakeholders consider this topic to have become relatively less important. We believe that our stakeholders now regard our market position in natural gas as a given. The focus around the energy supply is shifting from fossil to sustainable energy, and in the development of sustainable energy chains, collaboration is more important than a strong market position; that’s the sense we’re left with.

In our respondents’ assessment, the impact of ‘cybersecurity’ on the Gasunie organisation is much higher than it was previously. We believe this is related to a number of major cybersecurity incidents concerning large organisations that have come to light over the past two years, in the Netherlands and abroad. 

In 2021, we split the topic ‘employee health, safety and development’ from 2019 into ‘employee wellbeing, training and development’ and ‘employee health and safety’. Both topics score relatively low with our external stakeholders, and are average among our internal stakeholders. Our newcomer to the list of material topics, ‘diversity and inclusion’, scores lowest in our survey, both on the y-axis (relevance to stakeholders) and on the x-axis (impact on/of Gasunie).

In the Connectivity Table appendix, we show the correlations between the material topics and the risks we are facing, our stakeholder groups, our KPIs and our results, our social impact and our sustainability goals.

We started by drawing up a new shortlist of relevant topics, which were then presented to external and internal stakeholders in the form of a survey. This shortlist emerged from a longlist. The longlist contained the topics we could possibly report on and was compiled by means of various internal and external reports, annual reports of a number of comparable companies, statements in the media and trends and developments in our sector.

The shortlist included thirteen topics, two more than in 2019. A total of 78 external and 32 internal stakeholders were approached. The first group includes suppliers, customers, regulatory authorities and social advocacy groups. The latter group includes members of senior management, the Works Council, Executive Board and Supervisory Board. The survey was open in August and September 2021. A total of 44 external stakeholders and 19 internal stakeholders completed the survey in full.

The results of the external stakeholder groups were consolidated and, in combination with the internal scores, formed the materiality matrix. The selected topics were given a score from 2 to 6. Topics that were not selected were assigned a base score of 1, with the thinking that, since these emerged from an extensive, robust analysis, every topic had some degree of relevance. In drawing up the matrix, internal and external stakeholders were given the same weighting. 

The results of the materiality assessment have been evaluated together with, and approved by the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board.