Operational Excellence

Climate Resilience

In recent years, Con Edison has adopted an ever more proactive, forward-looking approach to system resiliency to address increasingly severe weather due to climate change. After Superstorm Sandy, we upgraded our infrastructure to be resilient to a 100-year storm plus one foot of sea level rise. In 2019, we completed a multi-year Climate Change Vulnerability Study to understand local climate change projections, identify potential system vulnerabilities that could result from the changing climate, and explore potential adaptation options to protect our infrastructure.

In 2020, Con Edison continued to make progress toward strengthening our energy systems to address the adverse impacts of climate change and natural disasters. We have changed the way we do business to address climate change risks and continue maintaining safe, reliable service for the millions of people who rely on us for power. Our efforts included adopting forecasting and design processes that more fully incorporate future impacts of climate change. Our Climate Change Implementation Plan, filed with the New York State Public Service Commission in December 2020, addressed the areas specified in our recent Rate Plan Order and significantly advanced our climate change governance structure.

Our key 2020 climate change resiliency accomplishments were:

1. Created a governance structure to manage climate change risks and build resilience: A newly created Climate Change Adaptation and Resiliency Corporate Instruction^[1] establishes clear responsibilities within our company for climate change adaptation and resiliency efforts. It creates a new Climate Change Risk and Resilience Group, with oversight by an executive level Climate Risk and Resilience Committee.

2. Set a clear pathway to prepare our system: Our Climate Change Planning and Design Guideline (the Guideline) reflects the best available climate science and aligns with regional benchmarks. The Guideline will help us consistently evaluate our system and operations. We will review and update it over time, as needed, to help support continued safe operations and reliability.

3. Adjusted to how we plan and design infrastructure for increasing climate change: By reviewing our specifications, procedures, and practices against anticipated changing climate conditions, we better understand how to proactively adapt our planning, operations, and emergency response. We have already made changes to address climate risks that will support the resilience of our system and customers.

We recognize that our approach needs to be flexible as more is learned about climate change impacts. Continued collaboration with stakeholders will be key to our ability to continue to provide safe, reliable, resilient energy to our customers in a changing climate.

For more information please visit conEd.com/resilience.

^[1] Con Edison uses Corporate Instructions to describe major courses of action in conducting Company business that impact major activities or functions of more than one department or affect all or a major segment of Company personnel.