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Committed to Climate Action

Sustainability Report 2019

2019 Sustainability Highlights

Safety & Environment

Safety & Environment
Safety

Con Edison finished 2019 with a recordable injury rate of 1.26, a slight decrease over the previous year, and we are pursuing a reduction in the OSHA injury rate to 1.00 in 2021. We invested more than $3 billion in our systems 2019 for safe energy delivery throughout our service area.

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Safety & Environment
Reducing GHG Emissions

We reduced our carbon footprint (carbon dioxide, methane, and sulfur hexafluoride) by more than 50% since 2005 — equal to taking more than 500,000 cars off the road.

Safety & Environment
Energy Efficiency

Since 2009, more than 1 million customers have upgraded to energy efficient equipment, saving more than 7 million metric tons of carbon emissions.

Operational Excellence

Operational Excellence
Reliability

We won two PA Consulting Group ReliabilityOne awards—the 2019 Outstanding Customer Reliability Experience Award, as well as the organization’s award for Outstanding Reliability in the Northeast Region.

Operational Excellence
Smart Grid

Interconnected the 1.2 million square foot Kings Plaza shopping mall with our feeders, for the first time in 50 years. This allows us to supply customers with power, export power to the grid from on-site generators, and manage demand in the Flatbush network.

Operational Excellence
Renewables

Providing low- and moderate-income customers with an opportunity to access the benefits and savings of clean energy, including our Shared Solar Program in New York City.

customer and Community

Customer & Community
Electric Vehicles

Launched the curbside charging project for electric vehicles, delivering 120 charging stations to 45 locations across the five boroughs. Installations begin in the third quarter of 2020.

Customer & Community
Strategic Partnerships

We’re promoting future green careers through our support of Sustainable South Bronx. Their 12-week green jobs training program prepares students through hands-on projects such as tree surveys, water quality testing, and shoreline restoration. Over 80% of graduates secure employment.

Customer & Community
Supplier Diversity

We spent $294 million with minority- and women-owned businesses, and $627 million with small businesses—the highest level of expenditures in our history.

Sustainability Journey

Con Edison has been committed to sustainability for more than two decades—we have learned from our challenges and are proud of our successes. We recognize that sustainability is a journey, and while we have achieved much, we continue to look for ways to improve and meet the needs of our stakeholders.

Read more in the timeline below.

Timeline
2020
Tomorrow’s Clean Energy Future Starts Today

Today our customers are more environmentally conscious than ever. Their passion reinforces our own commitment to combating climate change. We’re experiencing an increase in violent storms, extreme heat, and major flooding. The higher frequency of extreme weather—and our increased dependence on energy in our daily lives—underscores the need for reliability and an accelerated reduction of fossil fuels. That’s why Con Edison commits itself to being a next-generation, clean-energy company, delivering the transition to the clean energy future that our customers deserve and expect.

Here is a snapshot of the past year:
  • We ranked seventh among solar energy producers worldwide. With a presence in 19 states, we’re also the second largest solar producer in North America.
  • Con Edison released results of a comprehensive climate change vulnerability study. It found the most significant climate-driven risks to Con Edison’s systems include sea level rise, coastal storm surge, inland flooding from intense rainfall, hurricane-strength winds, and extreme heat. The report estimates the company might need to invest between $1.8 billion and $5.2 billion by 2050 on targeted programs to protect our electric, gas, and steam delivery systems and shield customers from the impacts of climate change.
  • We joined several coalitions challenging the federal rollbacks of clean-energy standards, including the repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Affordable Clean Energy Rule and the repeal of the Clean Power Plan. We’ve also joined the coalition to defend strong state auto emissions standards.
  • Con Edison continues to pursue natural gas alternatives, largely in Westchester, including energy efficiency measures, electric heating options, and ground-source heat pumps.
  • Through our Clean Energy Businesses, we acquired 191 megawatts of solar projects, which includes the 80-megawatt Water Strider Solar in Virginia; the 101-megawatt Battle Mountain Solar in Nevada; and 10-megawatt Lakehurst Solar in New Jersey.
  • Orange & Rockland continued its first large-scale energy storage deployment in Monsey, Pomona, West Haverstraw, and Blooming Grove.
  • We experienced an unprecedented outage in July in which 72,000 customers in Manhattan lost power. All customers had their power restored in less than five hours. The cause was determined to be a faulty wiring mistake. Additionally in July, we intentionally turned off equipment in Brooklyn to avoid catastrophic damage. This resulted in an outage for 33,000 customers, while allowing us to keep the power on for 99,000 customers who would have lost power otherwise.
  • We coordinated more than 125 drills and exercises, including a two-day national exercise, to test our response to physical- and cyber-security threats.
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