Global Ship Lease : 2021 ESG Report

ESG REPORT 2021

4. Environment

3. Climate strategy

2. Materiality analysis

and stakeholder engagement

6. Governance

Table

of contents

Message from our Executive Chairman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 About this report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1. About Global Ship Lease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Company profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Our fleet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Our commercial and operational performance . . . . . 9 Our ESG roadmap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2021 Summary of performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Materiality analysis process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Materiality matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Our industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Our approach to decarbonization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Energy efficiency and GHG emissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 SOx, NOx and Particulate Matter emissions . . . . . . . 37 Waste management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Water management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Protection of the marine environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Responsible ship recycling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Our ashore environmental impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

I 2021 ESG REPORT

5. Social . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Health and safety: our top priority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Our employment practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Responding to social crises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Our strong social engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Responsible and sustainable procurement . . . . . . . 51

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Board of Directors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Business ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Risk management and internal controls . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Cyber security and data protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

I: Management and impact of material issues . . . . 59

II: GRI content index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

III: SASB content index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

2

Message

from our Executive Chairman	of Global Ship Lease, Inc
	George Youroukos
	Executive Chairman

2021 was another unusual year, both for the world and for our industry.

COVID-19 remained a threat to be managed; but recovering economies and increasingly positive consumer sentiment prompted a dramatic growth in trade, putting pressure on an already-stretched supply chain. New challenges presented themselves in early 2022, most notably the conflict in Ukraine. This humanitarian crisis in a key seafaring nation was felt keenly by the shipping industry as a whole and by us as a company. Moreover, the second order effects of the conflict, which include heightened energy security concerns and inflation, continue to impact the global economy in numerous ways. On a more positive note, evolving regulations and industry initiatives designed to accelerate decarbonization of the industry have continued to gain both prominence and momentum.

''The health and safety

of our people, both at sea and ashore, remain ''

an absolute priority.

This, our third annual ESG report, covers a lot of ground, from which I would like to highlight a handful of points:

• The health and safety of our people, both at sea and ashore, remain an absolute priority. We have continued to refine our COVID-19 protocols, we are signatories to The Neptune Declaration on Seafarer Wellbeing and Crew Change, and, at the inception of the Ukraine conflict, we rolled out our Safe Haven project to protect and accommodate the displaced families of our Ukrainian seafarers.
• We are pleased to be making further progress on our diversity goals. Of note, we now have 12 female officers aboard our ships: a positive step in a historically male- dominated industry. Furthermore, to complement the women already in senior management roles across our organization, we are delighted to have recently welcomed our first female board member to the GSL team.
• In 2021, we worked with independent experts to craft a decarbonization strategy to achieve our goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, with a clear focus on full life-cycle carbon impact. In the near term, we will - in close cooperation with our customers, the liner operators - focus on technical and operational enhancements to reduce the emissions of our existing ships, which we believe will provide the most immediate societal benefits and economic returns. In the longer term, when there will be greater clarity on the nature,

availability, and economic viability of next-generation green fuels, we expect to embark on a fleet renewal program. In the meantime, we believe that carbon capture offers compelling potential for shipping to mitigate its carbon footprint and have invested in a promising carbon capture venture focused upon marinizing that technology.

We are signatories to the Call to Action for Shipping Decarbonization and are committed to both meeting and beating the emission reduction goals implicit in evolving regulations. The increasing incorporation of decarbonization principles throughout all areas of our industry - from the regulatory environment, to the growing role of sustainable finance and investment, to the Scope 3 driven demands of our liner customers and their own customers further downstream to the consumer - underlines the need for alignment and cooperation between all stakeholders along the energy and supply chains. In the current context of record earnings and strong balance sheets, we firmly believe that both the industry in general and our company in particular are well placed to manage the challenges and capitalize upon the opportunities ahead.

I 2021 ESG REPORT

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About

this report

01.01	Reporting Period	31.12
2021		2021

This is our third annual Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) report; unless otherwise noted, it covers the period from January 1, 2021 through December 31, 2021. As in previous years, some of the data presented in this report includes the activities of our strategic partners: the technical and commercial managers of our fleet.

The report focuses on certain important ESG issues identified both by us and by our stakeholders, with a particular emphasis on decarbonization and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reduction objectives established by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and other regulatory and environmental bodies.

We note that our fleet grew substantially during 2021, from 43 ships at the beginning of the period to 65 ships at year-end. Logically, this resulted in an increase in our absolute emissions. The TEU-weighted average Annual Efficiency Ratio (AER) of the fleet - a carbon intensity measure - also increased slightly, to 9.8 gr CO2

• DWT- mile in 2021, from 9.3 gr CO2 / DWT- mile in 2020. This incremental increase in AER is attributed to the acquisition of comparatively smaller vessels (with lower average TEU capacity) during 2021, resulting in higher specific emissions for the overall fleet.

I 2021 ESG REPORT

In preparing this report we considered the following standards and reporting frameworks

Global Reporting Initiative	Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)
(GRI Standards: Core option)	for Marine Transportation
Reporting based on the GRI Standards ensures	The report discloses information on the basis of SASB
that the content and issues discussed	maritime industry-specific metrics.
are relevant, consistent, and comparable
across companies and sectors.
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1. About

Global Ship Lease