2012 Sustainability Report

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Sustainability Strategy

Operating Sustainability

Our employees volunteer to plant trees, spruce up parks, and teach kids about nature as part of Con Edison’s commitment to protecting natural resources.

Con Edison’s sustainability strategy recognizes the importance of balancing economic, environmental, and social responsibility in order to ensure long-term success. This report will highlight strides made in the pursuit of excellence in each of these areas, from the implementation of our new finance and supply chain system, to the growth of our strategic giving and volunteer programs, and our commitment to mitigating our carbon footprint.

Operating sustainably begins with a plan. We recognize the need to implement both mitigation and adaptive solutions to address the challenges of climate change. We know that mitigation efforts may require upfront costs. However, if mitigation efforts are planned and implemented properly, they can also lower costs and reduce risk - measured in both dollars and impact to the environment. Efforts to mitigate climate change not only make good environmental sense, but also good business sense.

Con Edison’s climate strategy includes five critical perspectives:

  • Integration of climate-change and global-warming principles into our business planning
  • Publicly committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from company operations
  • Expanding our energy-efficiency programs, including customer outreach and education
  • Linking the company’s carbon footprint to our customers’ use of energy, and setting goals to reduce regional emissions
  • Advocating for legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that is both proactive and balanced through economy-wide integration

We recognize that the effects of climate change might also include physical damage to Con Edison’s facilities and disruption of their operations due to the impact of more frequent and extreme weather events. Such was the case with Superstorm Sandy, which interrupted service to approximately 1.4 million of our customers. While we continue to implement projects to mitigate the impacts of climate change, we have also developed a comprehensive adaptation strategy to upgrade our infrastructure and ensure our ability to better handle similar events. We plan to install stronger flood barriers and more submersible equipment, raise critical equipment, and strategically bring overhead power lines underground. We will install additional state-of-the-art monitoring sensors, switches, and related smart-grid technologies to improve the flexibility of our system. Our long-range investment plan remains focused on keeping our systems reliable and safe for our customers.