Sustainability
Mike Beehler has over forty years of electric T&D experience at Tucson Electric Power, Hawaiian Electric Co. and Burns & McDonnell. He was educated as a civil/structural engineer at the University of Arizona and is a registered professional engineer in eight states. He serves as national spokesperson for the Power Delivery Intelligence Initiative found at www.pdi2.org and is a fellow in ASCE and member of CIGRE and IEEE.
Investors are increasingly socially aware. They invest in value but also examine how a company sustains the environment, engages the community, and operates the organization. Investors evaluate the environmental, social, and governance scores of publicly traded companies, and many electric utilities have responded by producing annual ESG or sustainability reports.
The Edison Electric Institute has worked with member companies and investors since 2018 to develop a standard template for utilities to consider as they produce these important reports. A quick search for ESG templates by EEI reveals a dozen current ESG reports from some of the largest investor-owned utilities in America.
The ESG template provides a consistent reporting mechanism and metrics for investors, regulators, and other stakeholders to evaluate as they consider investment risks, future opportunities and growth strategies, and the assumptions they are based on.
Recently, many IOUs have embarked on pilots and programs to enhance the resiliency of their electric transmission and distribution grid. Beyond operational safety and traditional reliability, resiliency is the ability of a utility to provide critical electric service during high-impact, low-frequency events.
How can investments in resiliency improve a utility's ESG score, and potentially, how could undergrounding current overhead T&D lines improve ESG?