Operational Excellence

Supply Chain

In 2019 Supply Chain continued to leverage activities related to our procurement of goods and services to support our commitments to safety, operational excellence, environmental stewardship, social responsibility, and cost savings. Our Supply Chain efforts are having a positive impact within our company, our industry, and within the communities we serve.

Last year we created a new corporate social responsibility section within Supply Chain and expanded its role in developing sustainability initiatives.

We partnered with our Business Ethics & Compliance group to recruit vendors to establish formal ethics and compliance programs. This pilot program will be expanded in the future to reduce risks within our Supply Chain. In addition, all vendors who do business with Con Edison are required to abide by our vendor code of conduct, which outlines our standards for ethics, human rights, labor laws, environmental management, and supplier diversity. In order to promote safety, our construction vendors involved in excavation work are required to enroll in the Gold Shovel Safety Certification Program.

We also partnered with our Energy Efficiency department, Willdan Energy, and the non-profit organization Green City Force to create an initiative that will develop contract opportunities for minority-owned business enterprise subcontractors and jobs for New York City housing residents.

We collaborated with our facilities group to create a pilot program that repurposed used office furniture that was previously sent to landfills. The furniture was redirected to a woman-owned business that processed these materials to remanufacture office furniture that we bought back from them at a 40% savings. This pilot program has helped us to avoid waste disposal costs, divert more than 3,000 pounds of waste from landfills, save energy, and reduce CO2 emissions.

Our company’s Supply Chain sustainability efforts extend beyond our own internal operations. As an active member of the Electric Utility Industry Sustainable Supply Chain Alliance, Con Edison has led initiatives to collaboratively develop sustainable supply chain best practices for peer utilities and vendors.

For example, we are working proactively with our industry partners and equipment manufacturers to develop alternatives for SF6 gas-filled equipment. SF6 gas, which is used to insulate electrical equipment, including high-voltage breakers and gas-insulated switchgear, is a greenhouse gas with warming potential more than 22,000 times higher than carbon dioxide.

Con Edison helped to lead an initiative within the alliance that will provide vendors access to an online tool that allows them to benchmark their sustainability practices among other vendors and develop plans to achieve cost savings and improve their environmental performance related to factors such as water use, waste production, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2019, Supply Chain issued 51 agreements worth more than $70 million in support of our energy future. This included agreements for energy efficiency and demand management worth $39 million; two agreements to support grid transformation worth $23 million; two agreements for solar projects worth $2.5 million; and three agreements for electric vehicle technology and fleet rightsizing worth $2.6 million. In addition, we purchased more than $5 million in environmentally friendly products (such as hybrid vehicles, low-carbon fuels, recycled paper, and carpet).

Our Supply Chain sustainability initiatives also help to spur job creation and economic growth within the communities we serve. In 2019, we purchased $306 million from women-owned and minority-owned businesses. Our expenditures with small businesses exceeded $627 million, which is the highest level of small business expenditures in the history of our program.

In recognition of the positive contributions made in the areas of supplier diversity and sustainability within the communities we serve and also the energy industry, our company won awards from the Electric Utility Sustainability Supply Chain Alliance, the Regional Alliance for Small Contractors, and the Tri-State Chapter of National Association of Minority Contractors.