Strategy

Integrated Long Range Plan

In an effort to better plan for the next 20 years, Con Edison has developed an Integrated Long Range Plan (ILRP), the first iteration of which was published in 2012. While flexible to the evolution of our industry and technologies, the ILRP outlines how the utilities will use an integrated approach across our electric, gas, and steam businesses to meet the needs of our stakeholders as we work to provide safe, reliable, clean, innovative, and cost-effective energy services for a sustainable future.

There are three key objectives of the ILRP:

1. Help our customers use less energy and lower their energy costs: Our energy efficiency and demand response programs reduce our system peak and help us defer large capital investments. Focusing on oil-to-gas conversion opportunities will provide a path for growth in our gas business, and savings on heating costs for our customers.
2. Improve our use of existing assets: Improved project management and work management processes will help us make more strategic infrastructure-planning decisions, manage costs, and lower maintenance expenses. Along with the implementation of smart grid technology, these efforts will help us to remain one of the world’s most reliable utilities for the ten million people who depend on us each day.
3. Minimize the impact bills have on our customers: We will do this through an array of approaches, including promoting our energy efficiency programs to save customers money and energy. We will also advocate on behalf of customers to minimize the supply charges, taxes, and fees that we do not control.

As we strive to meet these goals, we will continue to focus on the importance of improving customer service, meeting governmental and our own internal environmental standards, and maintaining reliability and safety.

In 2014, the company will update its long-range plans to reflect changes in our operating environment and the needs of our customers, as well as growing adoption of distributed energy resources. To learn more about Con Edison’s long-term goals and our plan to reach them, please view the full text of the Integrated Long Range Plan.

Sustainability

Con Edison’s Corporate Leadership Team developed the company’s first sustainability strategy in 2008. The strategy, which covered both the regulated utilities and competitive businesses, consisted of six principles, 14 strategic goals, and 35 initiatives throughout the company.

In 2013, significant effort was made to update the strategy to broaden its environmental focus. The new strategy balances the values of business, environment, and community – commonly referred to as the triple bottom line. We have identified six principles to guide our efforts:

Business Value

1. Provide our customers and the public with safe, reliable, cost-effective, efficient, and clean energy
2. Adapt our business model to industry changes and manage risk to meet our shareholders’ expectation of financial stability and a growing dividend

Environment

1. Reduce our environmental footprint, making wise and effective use of natural resources
2. Address the challenges of climate change and its impact on our business

Community

1. Develop a work environment that fosters a diverse, high-quality and engaged work force valuing safety, sustainability, and business ethics
2. Support the vitality of our communities and engage our stakeholders regarding strategy and performance

The stories, information, and data presented throughout this report will highlight the progress that we’ve made in these areas, as well as outline our focus for continued improvement in the coming years.

Key Sustainability Aspects and Materiality

As a key step of our strategy redesign, we worked to identify what aspects we deem material to the sustainability discussion for Con Edison. Our work began using the EPRI 2013 Technical Report Material Sustainability Issues for the North American Electric Power Industry. This report outlines 15 material sustainability issues for the industry as a whole. These issues were determined through a literature review, nearly four dozen interviews with utilities and stakeholder organizations, and a survey of nearly 300 people from utilities or stakeholder organizations. Using the material issues identified in this report as the basis for our work, we then overlaid our own Con Edison and service territory-specific policies, procedures, plans, and goals. As a result of that process, we developed the following list of 15 Key Sustainability Aspects for CEI:

It should be noted that these issues were identified using the definition of materiality from the EPRI report: “…a ‘material’ sustainability issue is an environmental, social, and/or economic issue that has the potential to impact the long-term viability of electric utilities and/or their stakeholders. Importantly, this is different from but related to financial materiality, which is a threshold for influencing the economic decisions of investors. Material sustainability issues reflect a wider range of stakeholders and are not limited to topics that have a significant financial impact on the organization.”

The icons above will be used to identify corresponding KSAs throughout each section of this report. For information on those issues the company has deemed financially material, please see the section on Enterprise Risks.

Our goal for 2014 is to evaluate our approach to these issues and how we might be able to better engage our stakeholders in the discussion of materiality. We are also now looking toward better defining metrics in each of these areas to provide a more transparent and consistent way of gauging our progress.