Hello. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to our first sustainability event. My name is George Trissic. I'm the Chief Governance Officer and Corporate Secretary here at Algonquin.
And but maybe more relevantly, I'm the member of the executive team that has accountability for our sustainability program. So I'm pleased to welcome you here today. And hopefully, a good number of you had a chance to avail yourselves of the Tesla shuttle we ran to make sure that you traveled here sustainably. So without further ado, I'm going to introduce Ian Robertson, our CEO, who's going to share with you our sustainability program followed by a panel discussion. Ian, over to you.
Thanks, George. And while the ride from the GO station might have been sustainable, I'm pretty sure the GO train, we got to do some work on that one as well. So anyway, thanks for joining us today and for everybody here in the room, but also those of you who have logged in on our live web stream. And so we're obviously, as George said, excited to have you here for our 1st Sustainability Morning at our lovely offices in Downtown Oakville. And it's following the recent release of our 2019 sustainability report.
And just from a timing point
of view, we're promising to have you
out of here by 11:30. As George mentioned, my name is Ian Robertson. I'm the Chief Executive Officer of Algonquin Power and Utilities Corp. And actually together with Chris Gerhardt, who's one of our panelists today, one of the founders of Algonquin Power. So let's spend half an hour draining this slide.
No, I'm just kidding. So actually I'd like to start by welcoming a special guest here, Myla Craig of Millianna Consulting. She's kindly agreed to join us as our panel moderator. And so we're actually hoping that with Myla's extensive consulting experience in the ESG area, she's going to help focus the upcoming discussion on the most relevant issues to ESG minded investors and analysts. And joining Myla and myself today are 3 panels comprised of our senior leaders.
They are going to discuss how our business strategies reflect our commitment to sustainability. The approach here today is actually intended to go beyond kind of the typical focus on economics and augment that discussion with how environmental, social and governance considerations are impacting our business. At our heart, we actually believe that a commitment to sustainability is correlated with the creation of economic opportunities. And so as a shameless plug for upcoming 2019 Investor Morning being held here in Toronto on December 3 and in New York on December 6. We're actually invite we'd like to invite you to attend the event to kind of see how we're going to focus it on how we're capitalizing on those opportunities.
And then maybe even as a teaser to talk about an exciting announcement or 2. So with respect to the agenda, we'll be structuring the discussion into 3 panels, one for each of our E, S and G. And so firstly, we're going to discuss the environmental aspects of sustainability. We're going to take a short break and following that, we'll continue with the panel focusing on the social considerations of our business and then wrap up with a discussion of how governance relates to our sustainability. And we're going to I'd like to invite everybody in the room, please, as the discussions are going on with the panels, I'd invite you to frame up questions and we're going to we've allocated time at the end of each panel for Q and A.
So consistent with our commitment to safety, we actually have a program where we start every meeting with where there's more than 5 people in the room to talk about safety. And to my account, there's more than 5 in the room here. And so I think what I'd like to do is call on and perhaps welcome the newest member of our executive team, Kirsten Olson, our recently minted Chief Human Resource Officer, maybe to stand up and give us a quick safety moment. Kirsten?
Thanks, Ian, and good morning, everyone. George mentioned earlier the Tesla shuttles that I know some of you had a chance to take from the GO station. And I appreciate as well some of you may have driven here in an electric vehicle. Some of our employees are. You may have seen we have charging stations in the parking lot.
And in the context of that, some note if you've ever ridden in or driven an electric vehicle that they're quiet, some say dangerously quiet. And so I think it's important to be mindful that if you're driving 1, pedestrians may not know that you're there because they don't hear you coming. And likewise, if you're walking around electric vehicles, just be aware that they might be driving towards you even if you can't hear them. While I'm here, for those in the room, I'll also just point out from a safety standpoint that if you do hear the fire alarm, the emergency exits, there's one behind us here, you would come out and turn left. Otherwise, at the back of the room, you would head out and head straight back towards reception.
I don't think we have any fire drills planned today. So if you hear something
It's real.
Thanks, Ian.
It's like the bomb's gone. If you see me running, keep up. I wouldn't be like George Costanza, just so it's clear here. Anyway, before Maila gets started with the panelists, I did want to take a couple of moments to give and share an overview of how we're becoming more deliberate and transparent with our communications around sustainability and ESG. And I'll start with the observation that sustainability isn't something new to us.
In some respects, it's not even something we do. I'd observe that it's something that we are. And so you trace the roots of this organization back 30 years ago when we were the developers of run of the river, small hydroelectric generating facilities, it's probably fair to say we were green before it was kind of hit to be green. But even fast forward today, dollars 11,000,000,000 U. S.
Organization, and we continue to focus on the creation of new renewable energy sources and finding ways to meet the needs of our 800,000 utility customers by running our utilities in a sustainable manner. And I think we take pride in the fact that the way we operate our business is going to make a positive impact on the lives of our customers, of our employees and the communities that we serve. So the issue of the 2019 sustainability report, which in some respects is being celebrated by the event today is, from our perspective, the next step on our journey to sustainability. It's a step that will be providing a more formalized approach to integrating sustainability into our business, a step where we're clearly articulating how we're making positive changes to the internal and external environment in which we operate. We believe that intentionally embedding sustainability into our business will actually deliver on the 3 elements of commercial success from my point of view.
First of all, it will create loyal and satisfied customers, which is kind of strange when you think we're largely in the utility business, but they are getting greater choice in the provision of their utility services. And so creating we want to create and maintain a satisfied customer base who are loyal to our brand and value it and are served by engaged, talented and safe workforce and who are funded by patient and committed investors. And we're confident if we can get those three elements right, that commercial success through new investment opportunities is going to follow. So when thinking about the future, I think we believe that the most significant risks that the world faces relate to the impacts of climate change, Disruption related to the transition to a low carbon economy may be viewed as actually creating threats, but to these entrepreneurial eyes, we see opportunity. We believe that our stated mission to provide sustainable, clean energy and water solutions that create better everyday lives and inspire communities is closely aligned with a number of the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
At its heart, sustainability from my perspective is a shared responsibility to leave this planet in a better place than we found it. In fact, perhaps it's about how do we conduct ourselves so that meeting the needs of our generation doesn't make it more difficult for future generations to meet theirs. Our sustainability report and as a factor sustainability policy have positioned our commitments to sustainability in the context of a curated list of 6 of the UN 17 SDGs. And this list represents the 6 areas where we think we can have the greatest impact. I'd like to give you a couple of thoughts on each one of these 6 SDG foci.
So as we think about where this organization can have its greatest impact, it seems commonsensical that our involvement in renewable energy brings the climate action SDG to the fore. Last year, our sustainability policy codified our commitment to the global goal of limiting planetary temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius this century. And to do our part, we're going to continue to focus on, 1st, decarbonizing our non regulated renewable energy generating portfolio and second of all, reducing our utility customers' reliance on fossil fuel our fossil based energy sources. And we set some pretty impressive goals for ourselves. And you're going to hear more about those from our panelists.
So with respect specifically to climate action, we're committed to reducing our CO2 or greenhouse gas emissions by 1,000,000 metric tonnes. And to put that in context, that represents a 20% reduction in our 2017 emission levels. We believe that the key to customer centricity is to provide affordable utility services delivered by an empathetic organization. And while we know that our rates compare favorably with neighboring utilities, our research shows that customers want more than simply fair rates. They want their utility services delivered in a manner which is consistent with their own ESG objectives.
Our commitment to the affordable and clean energy SDG is embodied in our goal of building and commissioning 2,000 new megawatts of solar and wind capacity. And we're confident in our ability to meet that goal. We already have 800 megawatts worth of new wind and solar capacity in construction today, targeting completion by December 31 next year. And our panelists are going to tell you a story about one of our keynote Keystone projects, a project of where we're building 600 megawatts worth of new wind capacity for our regulated utility customers, an investment that's going to save perspective is going to be occasion a shutdown of an existing coal facility. As you're likely to hear more at our upcoming Investor Day, the provision of clean water distribution and wastewater services is an important part of our business.
It's easy to imagine that the cost and complexity of continuing to secure water sources for our customers is impacted by climate change, drought, dropping aquifer levels, I'm sure, sound like there's something that we have to deal with. We're committed to maintaining healthy water ecosystems by employing best practices with respect to efficiency, conservation and water reuse. In our case, sustainability within our water utilities is generally focused on reducing the environmental impact of our customers' use of freshwater resources. An example that I'm very proud of is in Arizona, where our aquifer replenishment facility, 78,000,000,000 gallons of fresh water back into the aquifer over the coming century. One of the distinguishing characteristics of this organization is our Think Global, Act Local business model.
I think our local, responsive and caring operating model is focused on creating and supporting resilience in the communities we serve. Our 2023 goals include an ambition to achieve top quartile customer service as measured by JD Power. Today's panelists are going to tell you more about how we're focused on creating great relationships across our business, including our work with local suppliers, vendors and contractors. I hope that it's obvious that we care deeply about the overall well-being of our employees, and we do want to champion a more just society. But to attract and retain the team member to the future, we're dedicated to lifelong learning, professional and personal development and providing challenging assignments to our workforce.
I believe that the only real sustainable competitive advantage that an organization can have is its culture. And those initiatives that I described, they're key to building and maintaining the culture in this organization. Our annual corporate scorecard, by which most of the people in this organization's compensation is tied, is connected to reaching top quartile status in terms of employee engagement as measured by our annual survey. I'm proud to say that we're currently above average from an industry perspective, but we recognize we have more good work to do. Lastly, but certainly not least, in order to successfully navigate the challenges we have in front of us, we need to make sure that we're capitalizing on the talent of every member of the team.
We recognize the powerful connection that diversity and inclusion has with business success. By fostering a supportive workforce, encourage a business practice, which are free from barriers and bias. We're able to attract and retain employees with diverse backgrounds, talents and perspectives, and the result is greater collaboration, creativity and innovative thinking. We're committed to surfacing and in fact celebrating our differences. One of our specific ESG objectives is our commitment to the tenants of something called the 30% club.
Our 2023 goal is to have at least 30% of our senior leadership positions filled by talented women. And while we're proud that today, a third of our executive team and our Board of Directors are represented by females, we continue to drive our utility business. And you can imagine it's a business which has historically been male dominated to achieve that goal. Executing on a commitment to sustainability demands a commitment to good governance. In our case, we've taken significant steps over the past year to strengthen governance and to increase our transparency around sustainability.
Sustainability is embedded in our Board of Directors mandate, a mandate which is fulfilled, as George Trisic had mentioned, by delegating sustainability first to the Board's governance committee and then to responsible executives within the company. And then I guess so lastly, in summary, I'm hoping at the end of this morning, you'll agree that we've articulated an impactful set of ESG objectives and have identified the right opportunities and efforts to reach these goals. I believe that we're eager to be part of the solution, to be a leader in the transition to a low carbon economy, to make a difference. And I think it's clear in our purpose, sustaining energy and water for life. It's easy to think though of what we're doing in the context of our own lives.
But sustainability is about focusing on the expected challenges of our children's grandchildren. I'm invigorated by how much there's yet to do, and I hope in telling our story, it inspires each of you to join us on this journey to sustainability. So with that, please join me in welcoming Myla and our first panel to the stage to start that deeper dive into how ESG issues and opportunities are being identified and treated within our company. Myla?
Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Ian. It's a real pleasure to be here with you this morning. I come from Montreal, so I need to obviously do the bilingual part of the day.
I'm not
reading in French.
Are you ready? So a warm welcome to all of you here with us today and those of you who are on the webcast as well. As mentioned, my name is Myla Craig, and I'm the Founder and President of Milani. We are an ESG consulting firm based out of Montreal. And we have a very particular niche in this market where we work very much with the investor community and with publicly listed companies as well as other capital markets players.
So it's been a real pleasure for us to be working alongside of the team here at Algonquin over the past year and helping them on their journey to getting to additional disclosure around these ESG issues for you. Before we get into our panel, however, a couple of housekeeping items. Maybe the first and foremost, I did hear not to make anybody feel guilty, but I did hear a phone going off. So perhaps we'll just ask everybody to just remind you to click it off to vibrate. Secondly, we are webcasting today, as mentioned.
So perhaps just be mindful as you're exiting out that there is a camera there if you don't want to be on the camera. And the third element is just simply for the washrooms if anyone does need out through the corridor out to the main security and just in front of the elevators, you can find the washrooms. So we at Milani, we hear over and over again from investors that they don't want to tell companies how to run their business. But what they want to hear is they want the companies to be telling you how they're running their business and how ESG issues are important to their business. So helping Algonquin identify and communicate these ESG issues of what has been most what is most significant to the business has been an important part of the work that we've done here.
For many companies that we work with, they're innately focused on and are managing ESG issues. They just don't realize the value that it brings to you in the marketplace, and particularly those that are increasingly focusing on ESG issues and for both shareholders and debt holders. And as is often the case, Algonquin is not different. So today, we have a great lineup of individuals from Algonquin's teams to provide you exactly that, more context on what we have unearthed as we've done the work together with the team here. So we're going to be highlighting some of the most significant ESG issues, what they are, how they're being managed and how they connect to the value of the business.
So with that, we're going to get started. Our first conversation this morning will be on the environmental aspects of Algonquin's business. And obviously, for a utility, and Ian spoke about that, a utility and a renewable energy company, the E is the one that comes first to mind for most people in the market. I would say from our perspective, climate change is in the 2019 issue in ESNG. And much of that focus has been driven by something called the Task Force for Climate Related Financial Disclosure or the TCFD.
And the conversation is moving from what's your GHG footprint to actually what is the impact of climate going to be on your business. So the first panel, we're going to dive into talking about the context for Algonquin of these environmental issues. We're going to talk about some of the opportunities, but equally about some of the risks that may be lingering out there. So with Saaj, I think we'll get started. We have 3 wonderful people up here.
So I'm going to ask you just to introduce yourselves very quickly and then we'll get into the conversation. Shall we start with you, Johnny?
Yes. Good morning, everyone. My name is Johnny Johnson. I'm the Chief Operating Officer here at Algonquin for both our Liberty Utilities regulated business and the unregulated Liberty Power organization. I joined the company back in January, moved here from the U.
S, where I spent about half of my career, over 20 years in the regulated industry.
Great. I'm Geoff Norman. I'm the Chief Development Officer, which means I'm responsible for growth and strategy. And growth comes through both our internal development and acquisitions. I joined 16 years ago.
And it's amazing the change in the economics of renewables since the time that I joined and where they are today.
Hi, good morning. Brenda Marshall, I'm Senior Vice President for Wind Development with Algonquin and joined the company just about a year ago. I've been in the power space for about 23 years. But a lot of that time in kind of more traditional utilities on the wrong side of history in terms of I think where the industry is going. So it's been really great to join Algonquin and to be able to kind of live out my own personal values through the work I'm doing.
And with the increased customer interest in renewables, it's also great to be selling something that people are interested in buying. Super. Well, thank you.
So, Johnny, let's start with you. Let's start with the market context. Can you provide the group here some insights on what are some of those external factors that are influencing Algonquin's approach to the environment?
Sure. So I think as maybe as Ian said, as you think about our organization, in some ways, we were focused on the environment and sustainability before it really became the important corporate topic that it is today. And so I don't see the external factors necessarily having a major shift in terms of our strategy, but I think it does have an impact in terms of how we engage with our stakeholders. And so as you think about the public at large, there's far more awareness today around environmental impact of organizations than ever has been before. Phrases like climate emergency or net zero, even just a few years ago, were not commonly used on social media or in the news.
They're almost every day today. And so for us, that means there's more interest in almost every activity our organization does in terms of what we're doing and what the impact is on the environment. So for us, we have to do a better job, certainly one of listening to where our customers are at and what and our stakeholders are at and the public are at in terms of what concerns them and then how do we engage back with that. Whereas I think in the past, we probably just kept our head down and tried to do a good job without having that conversation with stakeholders. That then flows through, I think, into government officials and regulators who have got more interest in the environmental space than they ever used to.
We're seeing more regulation targets, in some cases, incentives. And so we're having to be way more proactive in terms of how we engage with our regulators. And I think we've got some real success stories there in terms of, if you look at our regulated businesses, almost all of them now have decoupled rates, where we've been able to separate the revenues that we need to run our businesses from the consumption of our customers, which allows us to really work with our customers in helping them use less of the commodities that we're providing to them and still run a successful business. It's also technology is important and getting the support from our regulators of putting that in. We've got a battery pilot in New Hampshire, which is maybe a good example of the partnership there, where we're putting batteries into customers' homes behind them either.
It's going to help them to save money, help us to better balance the system and bring down the rates for all customers and, of course, has a good resilience benefit for them as well. And finally, I think environmental elements. It's personal for our customers, our employees and of course, our investors. And when I talk about our customers, I don't just mean the 800,000 water, gas and electric customers that we serve. It's our commercial customers that are starting to partner with us on the unregulated side on the renewable generation business that want to be part of the solution.
So next week, we have groundbreaking for our 500 Megawatt wind farm, Maverick, down in Texas, where we've got a couple of commercial customers that are delighted to be partnering with us to get renewable energy into their businesses. On the employee side, this, I think as Ian said, it's actually a key retention and attraction tool for us. Our focus on the environment is one of the main reasons that many of our employees join this organization. They want to be part of creating that future. And then for our investors, people want to put their money to work in making a difference.
And so for us, that means we're going to be more transparent and share all the good things that we're doing. And so I'm looking forward to hearing the feedback from the folks in the room here, 1, on the sustainability report that we put out last week, but also from this morning's session, if that's giving you some of the information that's going to be helpful to you in your roles.
Perfect. So can we take that then? Can you talk to us about where the opportunities are to create the value, the environmental value out of the operations at Algonquin?
Yes, absolutely. So as an engineer, you wouldn't be surprised here. We started with data to make sure that we understood and got some external support and make sure that we're measuring the right things in a consistent way to understand really where we stood as an organization as to where we could have those impacts. And if you look on Page 11 of the sustainability report, you'll see where those impacts are. And it's clear that the area for us to have the biggest impact is around the emissions from our fossil electric generation fleet.
And so for those that have been part of our so 3,000,000 metric tons a year come from there. Those of you that have been coming to our Investor Days for a while will know about our Greening the Fleet initiative, the 600 megawatts of wind that Iain talked about putting into our Missouri utility, that's going to enable us to close in the next 6 months Asbury, the only coal facility that we fully own. That's a 200 megawatt plant. It's been providing reliable service to our customers for over 40 years. The team that have been running that have done a fabulous job.
But we're at a point in time where economically, environmentally, the best thing we can do for our customers is to bring that plant to a close. And that's going to have a significant impact for us. That's over around 1,000,000 metric tons a year that's going to come out of our overall emissions. And before we did that, when you looked at our fleet as a whole, we're getting my numbers right, we're 24%. The carbon intensity of our fleet as a whole is 24% less than the U.
S. Average. So we're starting from a good place. We have a far more sustainable fleet than many of our competitors. But that incremental 1,000,000 metric tonnes, it's going to bring that number down by another 20% in terms of the overall intensity of the fleet as a whole.
So a major impact and a step change for our business going forward. We have a number of gas utilities. Gas is really important to talk about in this space, particularly when you look at some of the older mains that we have, cast iron bare steel, sometimes known as leak prone pipe. Leak prone pipe means that methane is leaking out of them, which has major safety impacts. But actually, from an environmental perspective, methane has a carbon or impact in terms of global warming 25x greater than CO2.
So really, we need to focus in there. The good news for us again is I think we're ahead of the curve. Only 3% of our entire set of gas mains is lead prone pipe. And of that 3%, 38% of it, we've already replaced. And so we're well on our way.
Last year, we replaced another 33 miles of that pipe. And so over the next decade, we're effectively going to completely eliminate the greatest source of emissions from our gas system as well. Going back to the data. When you look at actually our day to day operations, it's not the most material impact in terms of from an environmental perspective, but it's an important area nonetheless. And as we go through today, folks will hear more around how we're looking to put solar facilities onto our water sites to reduce electricity usage there, how we're being more efficient in terms of how we use water, putting wastewater back into the water table, And then our fleet.
So we have a large number of vehicles, I'm sure you can imagine, and we've been changing those out to low and no emission vehicles. 28% of our vehicles today come into that category. And as technology evolves, particularly for the larger trucks that you can imagine that we need for the work that we do, that, that number is only going to increase. And then finally, it probably goes beyond our own internal emissions, and we sort of talked a little bit about it earlier. But the biggest impact for society as a whole as we look to move to a net carbon neutral world is really around efficiency and how can we partner with our customers to help them to use less.
Great. Well, thank you. There's obviously lots of great opportunities.
Lots going
on. However, in the investor community, we want to look at both sides. So we want to also hear about some of the risks. So can you give us some sense of what are some of the operational risks that Algonquin has to contend with as you're thinking about the environmental side?
Yes. Maybe a couple of things. I mean the biggest one for us for sure is the weather. Whichever bit of our business you look at, climate change has been real for us. And whether it be the increased storms that we're seeing on the electric side of the business, potential flooding on the gas side, water availability for our water business, there's real impact of weather on our operations.
And what that means for us is that our engineers are working hard proactively to go what are the investments that we need to make to make sure that we can continue to provide safe and reliable service to our customers. And we've got a significant investment portfolio in that space that we'll talk more about next week at Investor Day at Investor Day next month. I think the other area of risk for us is just the pace of change. I'm talking a little bit about it over breakfast this morning. Things are moving really fast.
And that's a real challenge for us, but it's an even bigger challenge for regulators and for the government to keep up. And so working closely with them to go, where can they help make a difference? And one area maybe worth talking, that's renewable gas, a critical part of decarbonizing the whole energy supply chain. It's a relatively new technology, maybe like wind was 40 years ago when it came into North America. And there need to be the right incentives in place to support that new technology to become commonplace.
And so we're working hard with our regulators on that.
Perfect. We will be opening up for a couple of questions at the end before we go to the next session. So if there's more questions for Johnny. Jeff, I think we'll move over to you. So obviously, there's a number of pieces of the business here.
And we talked about a lot of them on the ESG basis when we were doing our work with you. So perhaps we'll start with water. What are those environmental influences that are at work here in the business? Where are some of the initiatives that up what Algonquin is doing on the waterfront?
Yes. No, certainly. And maybe before digging right into the environmental impacts, I'll just put it in context in terms of water. When we started in the utility business, the first acquisitions we made were actually small water utilities in Arizona. We've grown that business to be 164,000 customer connections between water and wastewater.
And we're very keen on continuing to build it because we think it's an important part of our platform.
When you think of the first thing
you do when you buy a utility from our perspective is try to align the interests of the environment, our customers and our shareholders. And Johnny made reference to decoupling, which is breaking down that relationship between the revenue from a shareholder perspective and the volume that you deliver to customers. And if you can break that, which we've been successful in doing that in many, many markets, you can then take and pursue the cheapest form of conservation or environmental protection, which is conservation of water. And so that is where we start. But Ian pointed out the LARP project and just a little bit more context on that LARP project.
If you think of when you got up here this morning and you ran water and it went through the cycle of coming out of your tap and going down the drain, well, it comes out of Lake Ontario and it goes right back into Lake Ontario. But in and we're extremely fortunate to have that here in Ontario. But in Arizona and California, we're drawing water out of aquifers. And when it goes through the normal waste system, it doesn't go back into those aquifers. And so the LARF treats the water and allows reinjection into those aquifers, which are under strain from a sustainability perspective because of growing populations and incremental farming.
And so the 78,000,000,000 gallons over the life of that project going back into the aquifers is extremely important. Financially, it was a relatively minor investment. It was only around $7,000,000 but it is an investment that we get to earn on, which kind of brings that alignment, but it's just doing the right thing. If you go back to water, I don't know if anyone's had the opportunity to haul a bucket of water up a hill, but it's unbelievably heavy. And so and I think people often forget that one of the big things when you waste water is you're wasting the energy that it takes to pump that water.
And so we have, as Johnny pointed out, been very deliberate in replacing the power that we're using in our water facilities with renewable power through the installation of solar panels, which once again kind of hits on the 3 things. It's the right thing for the environment. It's the right thing for our shareholders and it's the right thing for our customers because there's savings there. So we're very proud of doing those things in the water sector from an environmental perspective.
Great. Well, let's then move into the the energy sector, sorry. So what are some of the initiatives that are happening on that front? Can you talk to us about that too?
Yes. No, the power sector is really and the change and I mentioned that I joined 16 years ago. And when I joined, solar and wind really didn't make economic sense. You needed extreme incentives to make them work. And we've seen such a transition in that.
And that transition in terms of that low levelized cost of energy that you get from renewables really allowed us to grow Liberty Power the way that it has. And by initiatives like the customer savings plan and loaning, which I'll talk about a little bit, which is another utility owned solar generation asset. We've been able to grow both Liberty Power and Liberty Utilities while doing the right thing for the environment. And I think the magic really comes in the knowledge from renewables and being able to apply that to the utility mindset. And so our California utility, which is on the border of Nevada and California, was initially served by NV Energy.
We wanted to build a solar facility to supply renewable energy to that facility. But the economics didn't pencil initially. But we dug into our toolbox from the Liberty Power side and said, well, we use investment tax credits to take and drive down
the cost.
Nobody had done that on the utility side, and there was a bunch of things that made it complicated. But with good legal help and support from the regulator and support from our customers, we were able to do it. And that allowed us to deliver renewable energy from that solar facility at a competitive cost and have an investment for our shareholders. And once we had that set up, we got pretty excited when we bought Empire District Electric in Kansas and Missouri principally because it's really windy. And we knew the power of wind and the power of this tool in terms of putting investment tax credits.
Johnny mentioned the customer savings plan, which is 600 megawatts of wind, 300 megawatts of that is under construction right now. And the 2 other 150 megawatt projects that are part of that have just commenced And it's delivering $300,000,000 in savings to our customers And it's delivering $300,000,000 in savings to our customers over its life. So we just see that as a win, win and win. And we're not stopping there. The California utility, being California, there's great support from customers and from the regulator to go to 100% renewable.
And so we are hard at work at saying how do we take and go from that initial 50 megawatts, to the Looney facility and take and replace all the energy needs of our California utility with renewables.
So how about Johnny brought up natural gas. Can you talk to us on that front as well, Andrew?
Yes. So do the same thing as the water. It's a little bit of a template, but natural gas is an important part. Our customers use it primarily for heating their homes and heating their businesses and running appliances. And natural gas is a great clean fuel.
We serve about 338,000 customers now, and we see that continuing to grow. But once again, our regulatory team has been hard at work each time we buy a new distribution system to take and get that decoupling so we can promote conservation. And the conservation is key to reducing costs for our customers and advancing the project. The other thing that's important is renewable natural gas. And I believe that we're going to see a parallel to like if we go back 16 years to when I started and we had RPSs, Renewable Portfolio Standards, which drove things that were not economical to happen that were important, such as wind and solar.
And then the costs of those came down to the point that they can drive themselves. I believe we're right at the beginning of that for the gas sector and that there's going to be significant opportunity for both the Liberty Power side in building out RNG facilities for other utilities and building it in rate base for our own utilities.
Great. Obviously, I would love to dive into some of these questions, but time doesn't allow. But that's a great overview of what's happening here in North America. The other piece of Algonquin is thinking beyond the boundaries of North America. Can you talk to us a little bit about what's happening or what the thinking is in the international front?
Yes. I think the macro drivers that are creating the opportunities here in North America for building up more renewables are the same, and they're happening globally. And so it's really the same business plan except on an international footprint. And so it's utility ownership, greening those utilities and building privately owned utility or sorry, generation assets that are wind, solar and the infrastructure to support them. So from a business model, very similar.
From the process for doing that, we've made an investment in Atlantica Yield, which gives us good recurring dividends, and we've supported their renewable fleet. And it gives us a footprint that we can expand upon. We've also moved forward with the acquisition of the Bermuda Electric Company, which currently is primarily fueled by thermal fossil fuels. And we see that as a little empire effectively, Empire District Electric, in that we can take and start to put renewables into that. And we were really excited when we saw the regulatory agency put forward that they want an 85% target of renewables.
So same thing.
Same thing. Well, keeping on that, Brenda, let's switch to you. Can you talk to us a little bit about Algonquin's current efforts to bring new renewables into the generating fleet here?
Yes, absolutely. So there's lots of exciting things going on in the development front. We're seeing lots of opportunities out in the market right now, driven by kind of a nice confluence of customer choice and also government policy responding to environmental initiatives. And so as I mentioned, I came on about a year ago. We've also brought on another colleague of mine, Michael Dilworth, and he's heading up our investments in the solar space.
So we're really kind of moving forward and trying to capture the opportunities with all engines on full throttle. And
I think that one
of the really key things that we're seeing in the market at the moment is that customer choice is really coming around to where we've been for a long time. And so we're feeling very confident about making our 2,000 megawatts by 2023 goal. You've heard a lot about the 600 megawatts that we've got in our customer savings plan on the regulated side of the business. But we've also got about 1200 Megawatts in late stage development on the unregulated side of the business. And that's about 200 Megawatts located in Canada and about 1200 megawatts across 5 different states in the U.
S. And as we roll out those investments, that's really going to have a profound impact on changing our generation portfolio. So as of 2018, we were about 52% renewable by generation. And as of 2023, we're going to be in the 75% range. So we see those investments as both being really profitable opportunities.
But as we expand our renewable footprint, we're also getting a lot of diversity out of those new investments. So we're diversifying into new technologies, we're diversifying our geographies, we're diversifying our customer base and we're diversifying the markets that we play in. So we're really looking forward to those opportunities.
So in order to do that, obviously, maintaining a social license to operate within those communities is extremely important. It's one of the criticisms that we hear sometimes about the sector. Can you talk to us a little bit about what Algonquin is doing to maintain that strong social license to operate in those communities where you were expanding?
Yes, you're right. Social license is a hugely important part of what we do in development. And so the environmental in development. And so the environmental side plays a lot into that. So I think people in host communities are understandably concerned about what the environmental impacts of new development is going to be.
And I think that's very true for the folks within our company as well. So nobody gets into renewable energy development because they want to hurt the planet. And so as part of our development process, we do extensive studies before we are actually able to construct facilities. But I think one of the things that really sets us apart that we spend a lot of time on is screening opportunities upfront so that we just avoid getting into areas where we're going to come into conflict with other environmental priorities like protecting endangered species.
Okay.
All right. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thanks, the 3 of you.
I see our time ticking here. So we're going to open up to the room to see if there's any questions. We have time for a couple of questions. Yes, there's one here in the front row.
Sure. Rob Hope, Scotiabank.
How has
Sorry, there is a mic. Yes.
Rob Hope, Scotiabank. Thank you.
I want to get a
sense of how your framework for evaluating M and A has changed as you're now looking at more ESG factors. For example, let's say you're taking a look at Empire 2.0, which will have a lot of coal and will, let's say, decrease the quality of some of your ESG scores, but on the other hand, give you an opportunity to improve that asset? Yes. So we certainly value
there will not be there will be some spikes as we do acquisitions and then change. And so we would not want to buy a coal facility Empire 2 if we felt we wouldn't be able to green the fleet. But we would actually be even more motivated to buy it if we feel we can because it creates incremental investment, which is good plus it's doing the right thing from an ESG perspective. I don't know, Rob, does that answer that question? Yes.
Thanks.
Any other questions in the room? We have time for one more before we go to our break. Yes, there's a gentleman here. There's a mic just coming.
Hi, Angie Matin, Industrial Alliance. Reading the pharma's almanac, it's talking about the solar flare, okay? The weather has been getting colder. They're saying that we may be going into a period of much, much less sunlight and colder temperatures. Does this affect basically the solar aspect of your business?
I would like to take it from operations? Or do you want to share it? Or what do we think? I just buy them. You have to operate them.
Yes. It's a great teamwork that we have here. Not our problem. So we spent a lot of time, I think, as you heard from sort of Brenda, thinking about facilities as we set them up front. Once they move across into operations, we work very carefully in terms of having a view of what we're expecting each of the facilities to produce on a week by week basis of tracking that.
And certainly, in terms of the performance of the solar facilities that we have today, here right now in this year, that's for sure not a problem for us. Our facilities are operating really well, and we're seeing the expected production coming out of them. Going forwards, we'll always keep a view on that, but certainly has not been a problem for us today.
And I would just add, and sorry for throwing the question your way, but teamwork. And I would add that we do and we are long term impact on the solar fleet for different things that can happen. Generally speaking, it feels like it's very marginal on where it is. But it's a complicated question and it will require ongoing study and ongoing reporting.
Perfect. Well, thank you. We're going to take a short break just so that everybody can refill their coffee mugs here. We'll welcome you back here. We're going to reconvene right at 10:20 sharp, and we'll be starting back with the social panel.
So these gentlemen and lady will be available for questions on a 1 on 1 basis if you have any. So thank you. Hello. Excuse me. I don't think this is working.
Can we ask everyone to come back into the room and to take your seat, please? Thank you, Ian. Please. Excuse me, everyone. Can we could we invite you to take your seats, please, so that we can get started on time?
I know the Networking is too great. No one's listening to me, George.
All right, everyone.
Thank you. Ian, over to you.
David, we're sitting down.
Thank you, Ian, for helping get everyone back in the room.
Please join a little later.
Thank you. So welcome back, everyone. Our next panel conversation this morning is going to focus on the social aspects of Algonquin's business. And for many, the social issues, they tend to be the issue that is the most challenging to value. Our experience is that the social issues are truly where some of the most intangible value sits, however.
And there is a growing acknowledgment that these underlying elements offer a great opportunity to learn about the culture of an organization. And of course, there's no culture without leadership and people. And on this session, we're going to dive a little deeper into some of those interactions with key stakeholders like employees, customers and the communities. So let me introduce Jen Tindale, Brent Baker and Luisa I'm going to get your name wrong. De Camare.
De Camare. And so I'll do the same. May I ask you to just introduce yourselves very quickly about your role and your connection to
the sustainability efforts? Certainly. I'm Jen Tindale. I am the Chief Legal Officer here at Algonquin. I joined the company just under 3 years ago.
I am a member of our Ethics and Compliance Committee and I'm also the Chair of our Disclosure Committee. Outside of those formal roles, I enjoyed being an active executive participant in our employee development initiatives. And so I'm looking forward to talking a little bit today about how we're building a workforce for the future. Thank you.
And I'm Brent Baker. I'm the National Vice President of Customer Experience. And I came by way of the Empire acquisition, January of 2017. And I'm really focused on the customers. I started out as an engineer, but I've lived in the communities that we serve.
And so I'm going to talk a lot about how we get engaged in our communities, and it's really been a part of my career growth and ties well to what we're trying to do as a company.
Thank you. Luisa?
Yes. So Luisa de Camare, I'm in charge of supply chain, fleet and facilities for Algonquin. The group was established a couple of years ago. We've been definitely maturing on our journey. But sustainability was always a part of our portfolio.
And hopefully, I'm going to share some examples with you and you're going to see that. It definitely comes full circle working for Algonquin. I started my career back in Brazil, where I'm from, as an environmental researcher for an economic group. So it's great to be here.
Super. Thank you. So Jen, we'll start with you. So as I mentioned earlier on, the E is the maybe the easier part. Easier to understand.
The S is the one that people have a bit more of a challenge. So as we launch into this next panel, can you talk to us a bit more about the workforce here at Algonquin? And in particular, the relevance of that workforce to the sustainability efforts?
Absolutely. Sustainability here at Algonquin is really at the heart of our why. We have a goal of making a meaningful contribution to a a sustainable energy and water future, and that contribution comes from our people, our workforce. And they're supported here by a culture that promotes their development, their performance, and equally as importantly, it promotes the sharing of their ideas. Now for that contribution from our workforce to be sustainable, we have to make an investment in our employees, a deliberate investment, a continuing investment.
We sometimes refer to that as our workforce commitment. The commitment actually starts before people are even technically part of our workforce. In our recruiting, we use a process that has been recently overhauled to remove unconscious bias, promote diversity and attract talent that has a passion for our sustainability goals. Now once they're on board, the diverse perspectives and ideas that those employees bring need to be nurtured and encouraged. We need to surround them with an environment that supports their health, their wellness, their safety, and we need to make that investment that I mentioned with a view to the future, and more specifically with a view to their preparedness for the transition to a low carbon economy.
Okay. So you've talked about the culture. And certainly with the work we did, we certainly touched on that as well as one of the significant elements relating to ESG here. Can you talk to us about what it is about the culture? Why it's so supportive?
And how the company is working to maintain that culture? Absolutely.
One of the first things I noticed actually when I came to Algonquin that really struck me was the apparent sincerity in the belief that better ideas and better outcomes come through collaboration of diverse contributors. Sort of a hard thing to explain. You almost have to feel it. And I have to say that as a female executive coming in from outside the energy industry with a legal background, I arrived and I felt it. On my first day, I had a sit down with our CEO, Ian, and we had a frank conversation, not unlike many we have had since then.
And listen, I will tell you, I will always remember how he encouraged me to weigh in on every topic. He even went so far as to acknowledge that people that weren't used to having someone like me in the building may not think to include me in their conversations or in their meetings, but that I should invite myself in, elbows up if necessary. He assured me that those self invitations would be welcomed and that it would be enlightening for all involved. Now I have to say a story about needing to invite yourself in does not sound like a story of inclusion, but here's the thing. When you have a CEO who is so passionately promoting inclusion, coupled with someone like me who seizes the opportunity to jump in and contribute, the effect is almost contagious.
What happens then is those people whose conversation I joined the next time may even consider me part of their shared passion and invite me back. In turn, I may be the person who invites the input from the next one. The next one might be a millennial, perhaps with an international perspective, maybe even with a disruptive perspective that pushes us to think outside of our comfort zone, and on it goes. But I will say, I'm not meaning to suggest that all of our progress on diversity inclusion comes from this intangible culture that you've got to feel, although that is super important in my perspective. There are a number of deliberate initiatives that we have also undertaken that I should mention.
Back in 2017, our Board adopted a diversity policy. In that policy, we define diversity as any characteristic or quality that can be used to differentiate groups or people from one another. But most importantly, it recognized the value of diversity to corporate performance, and it mandated that diversity be included in both the consideration and the selection of candidates for our Board of Directors and for our executive team. Currently, we have 33% of our board members that are women and women represent 30% of our executive teams. So we are meeting and even exceeding some of the goals of the 30% club in which we are members and tracking quite strongly against one of those 2023 sustainability goals that Ian mentioned at the outset, which is for us to exceed a target of a 30% level for women in leadership roles right across the organization.
That was getting back to 2017. In 2018, we actually introduced the Diversity and Inclusion Council here at Algonquin. And that council really champions diversity and inclusion as fundamental to our purpose. And one of their main mandates is to help create some resource groups within the company that are intended to really support an inclusive workforce. Our LGBTQ Council would be a recent example of that.
And certainly, our 10 lean in circles with over 2 50 participants are another excellent example of sort of the empowerment and support that can come, in that case, in particular, for women in our company. Most recently, I can think of an example this past fall in Niagara Falls, where we recognized an opportunity at our Leadership Summit in Niagara Falls. We had 230 participants there. And noting that inclusion is not necessarily always something that comes naturally, we use the opportunity to have an expert led workshop, which was designed to sensitize our employees to the unconscious bias and introduce some tools for them to squash it. I have to say, our employees really embraced it.
It was actually emotional for some. And for me, that was the most recent example of that sincerity that I mentioned at the outset of my remarks. Here, we really do believe that diversity inclusion is not just healthy, it's not just respectful, but it actually really does lead to better outcomes.
That's great. Those are great initiatives. So you talked about the 2023 goal on women, 30% women in leadership. If I recall, Ian also spoke a 2023 goal about engagement. Can you talk to us where you are on that path towards meeting that goal?
Right. Yes, indeed. 1 of our other 2023 sustainability goals is to achieve top quartile employee engagement. And as I think Ian acknowledged in the opening, we are tracking at above the average for North American utility companies, we're committed to taking action to continue our growth as an employer of choice. We seek to educate, to develop and to empower our high performance workforce.
And that workforce has to, as I said before, support their health and their wellness, and it has to include a positive safety culture. In 2018, we actually invested over $1,800,000 in employee training. We really do champion here the concept and the expectation in fact that our employees are lifelong learners. Beyond the typical training that you would expect in person, online and targeted leadership training, we have a number of other programs that are quite valuable. First, I'd mention our achievement fund.
And that's a fund that provides $4,000 annually up to a total of $30,000 to any employee that would like to pursue some education from an external institution. And in this changing world where we're moving to this low carbon economy, you may imagine that there are plenty of offerings out there that are nontraditional that actually will serve to equip our employees to be not just ready to survive in the new economy, but actually thrive in it. And now perhaps I should go to the other end of the spectrum away from the more academic offerings and acknowledge a program that we call our interconnect program. And this program is intended to provide an opportunity for employees to get practical experience in an area of the business that is outside of their usual professional discipline. We found this to be quite effective in opening up but also of the environments in which we work and we strive to make a positive difference.
Finally, I should mention that fundamental to employee engagement is the strength of our safety culture. We really do strive for 0 injuries, and our lost time incident rate is world class. Our 12 month trailing rate is actually 0.04. And we have a number of formal programs that have supported the build and continues to support the maintenance of that strong safety culture. And those include an annual safety leadership symposium, an ongoing safe start training program that is personalized to all of our employees.
And the what is the name of that driver? Driver. Escape me, the Smith driver training system. But beyond that, listen, beyond the programs, we do continue to really make the most of evolving technology. And we've also made some adjustments to our incentive programs as well.
And the idea there is that we want to encourage better reporting and more timely analysis, not just of safety incidents, but perhaps even more importantly, near misses and safety concerns. So we're hoping that with that initiative, which is sort of an ongoing process, that we will be in a position to predict risks associated with safety and more importantly prevent occurrences.
Thank you. That's great. You've hit on a number of the most relevant issues, one being the employee retention and attraction issue that comes up for all companies these days, but also safety. So thank you very much, Jen. Obviously, employees are really important piece of the backbone of the business, but so are customers.
So Brent, let's move over to you. Can you talk to us a bit about on the utility front, what's happening on the customer side?
Yes. So glad we started with employees because they're the ones that deliver that great experience that we expect to give at every one of our communities. So it is our goal at Liberty Utilities to be the favorite utility no matter where we serve. So if you are one of our customers, we really want you to realize how much effort we're putting in to making your life better. So we do that in many different ways, and I'll go through some of that as we think about this.
But Johnny mentioned really the needs of our utility industry changing. A lot more young people are becoming our customers. We have millennials and younger generations that are now our customers, and they expect to have choice in everything they buy, including utilities. So they're figuring out ways, whether it's through solar or some other tool for themselves to find a way to have choice. They also want our values to align with theirs.
So when they buy products, we see it all the time in the news. They want the company they buy products from to align and value with them. And so we find that to be something very important that we look to our customers to find out what they really expect and to meet that. So utilities now have to begin changing their thinking to address these. And so with increased competition coming into the market, whether it hits our regulated market in every way, we're changing our business to be as though we're in a competitive environment every day and we're focusing on delivering the highest level of service to our customers and everything we do.
So then can you given everything you've laid out, can you talk to us about what are the steps that Algonquin is actually taking to deliver meat and sort of exceed those customer needs?
You bet. Yes.
So we are committed to being a top quartile customer satisfaction company by measured by J. D. Power. And so we talked about that by 2023 to be in the top quartile. That's great to get to that point and we can talk about we've hit that metric.
But really what we want to do is provide that great relationship with our customers so that the regulators support the work we're doing and that we're doing the right work for those customers and that are city leaders. We've got mayors and city managers that really are the ones that support our efforts and we make sure we're heading the right direction. So J. D. Power will be the way we measure that.
There are 6 components in there that we can look at the social aspect of what we do, the billing and payment and the traditional customer service items that we need to measure, but we will have accountability through that. We then begin focusing on really key drivers that help us improve that side, it's safety and safety, our duration and frequency of outages. And we want to make those as infrequent as possible and as short of duration as possible. We have a lot of good engineers. I think Johnny mentioned our engineers working hard to make sure that always that our systems always work well.
We have to make sure we have resiliency in place that if we ever do have an outage or a gas issue or a water issue that we can restore as quickly as possible in a way that customers don't feel that impact. And we now have an innovations team that's underneath me that has a customer solutions focus that's looking for what customers really want next. And so we have things like energy efficiency tools that will help customers know more about their usage and use energy better to the battery storage project that we talked about behind the meter in New Hampshire that we're looking at in California and in the central region as well, electric vehicles and smart cities, all a part of that focus on the future and how we become a leader in the industry and in our communities. And then with the favorable cost of renewables, we're now able to deliver renewable investment in a way that drives down costs for customers. So one of the harder conversations for us to give is anytime we have to increase a cost of any kind.
So our focus is to invest capital that has a long term savings for our customers. And then the final thing I'll talk about is our customer first initiative. We're moving our technology to be more modern so that we can respond to customers in a more timely way that we give our employees the tools to be able to provide the services customers want. So it's a customer information system. It helps on procurement.
It helps across the company to make sure we're running more efficiently, but it really enables us to respond quickly to customer demands.
Great. So one of the other major stakeholders, and Brenda spoke about it earlier is about the social license with the communities.
So can you talk to us
a little bit about the communities and how that what that relationship is and how that is purposeful?
Yes. And that's I mentioned in my opening remarks just growing up in a utility that serves my family and my friends, and you kind of learn what it's like to be in the community. And you realize how much a utility is a part of making the community grow. So our biggest effort that we make is to make sure our communities are successful. So economic development, 1 being key workforce development, 2nd.
And our approach is really to be local and caring and to know exactly what they need in each community. And so the social license that was talked about by Brenda comes from those manager city managers and mayors that believe in what we're doing. And we actually last year did a community partnership survey that reached out to top 30 communities to find out what they want. And we wanted to know from a sustainability effort, do they already have a sustainability vision of their own From things like street lights or renewable natural gas, whatever that might be, we wanted to hear from them what it is that they're expecting on their own to do and what do they expect of the utility. And remarkably, over 60% of those surveyed want the utility to be a big part of that.
And over 80% of them have a renewable future of some kind that they have thought of, but I will admit that they are not as advanced as we are here. And so we have a great opportunity to really help people understand what that vision looks like. And so we developed some of our strategies around smart cities and some of the renewable movement that we can make around those conversations that we've had. Additionally, employees live in the communities that we serve. So they're very familiar.
They volunteer. They're on boards. They're on city councils, city boards, that kind of a thing. And then we also give them 3 Liberty Days a year to volunteer their time to be able to get involved and give back to the communities. And really, that's where we find out where our donations should go.
As from a grassroots perspective, we hear about what the needs are in the community, and we learn from that. And then that I did mention that smart city goal that we're trying to develop, that really came from a little bit of a partnership with our cities and with our own thoughts about where we should go. And we developed that community partnership survey. And it's actually now become something that EEI is using for the rest of the industry to show how you can get involved with your community. So something we want to kind of brag on and highlight is that we kind of came up with this as a way to have a conversation.
And I get a call about every other month from a utility somewhere in the United States that's called me and
said, hey, how did that
go and what did you get out of it and how can we use that survey? So it's been really interesting. And then with our commercial and industrial customers, I've talked about economic development, and it's really about attracting those industrial customers into our service territories and our commercial customers to be successful. That has to start with new location to our service territory or an expansion. And so companies like Owens Corning, La Z Boy and Simmons Food have asked us specifically how can we get more sustainable energy from you because we have sustainability goals as well.
And then how can we expand in your footprint? So we offer things like economic development writers. We're right in the mix of helping them grow and making sure we provide their ability to be successful. And so that investment in our communities is not just at the city council level, but it's in our key accounts and making sure they thrive and succeed as well.
That's a great segue into Luisa because as the investor community looks at this, one of the big areas that they want to look at and they want you to be looking at and bringing forth information on is on your supply chain as well. So can you talk to us a little bit about that? And in particular, how suppliers and business partners impact your sustainability objectives?
Sure. Yes. So suppliers and business partners are an essential part of Algonquin's approach to sustainability because our supply chain is long and interconnected. So, that means that the sequence of events doesn't start to stop with us. So on a positive side, suppliers that are strongly aligned on social and environmental factors can definitely contribute to our goals.
But if that's not the case, we could be unnecessarily exposed to risks. So we're very explicit on our supplier code of conduct in terms of the importance of sustainability to our procurement practices. Okay.
So there's a lot to think about with the suppliers, obviously. Can you talk to us about the where the focus areas are with your suppliers?
Yes. So going back to the supplier code of conduct, we expect them to operate in a sustainable way to minimize the negative impact to the environment as much as possible and to have a positive relationship with our communities. But beyond the code of conduct itself, we have a few significant initiatives that I think would definitely benefit our sustainability approach. 1 is sourcing locally. Local care and local support is one of our company's core values and it brings obviously tremendous benefits to the local community, but also positive environmental impacts.
The second one is, we've been working on expanding the and diversifying our vendor network with programs such as our supplier diversity program that started in California and we're now making an effort towards a full rollout across the company. And just to be clear, a diverse vendor would be minority owned, meaning women, LGBTQIA, indigenous and African Americans as well as veteran owned. And we measure the success of the program by the percentage of spend with such vendors visavis our total spend. And last but not least, our supplier risk program, we're in the process of implementing. And basically, we're going to be monitoring key vendors throughout the lifecycle of their contracts from multiple angles, including sustainability, and that's going to improve the reliability and safety of our assets.
Great.
So the other piece of that is obviously we can look at the supply chain, but we also need to look at your own facilities. So can you talk to us a bit more about how you're setting an example for those suppliers through your own operations?
Yes. So, we have, I mean, I would say, numerous initiatives that support our sustainability goals. I'll just list a few. And the main one, I would say, from my perspective would be fleet. We committed back in 2012, so this is definitely not new, to greening our automotive fleet.
And since then, we've been investing our capital dollars and shifting to low emissions and electric whenever technology is available to the point that now 53% of our medium and light 2 d trucks are actually green. And this is not easy because in such a M and A oriented organization like ours, we keep on acquiring businesses that don't necessarily have the same standards as we do. So and a good example of that would be Empire that had a few trucks, green trucks before the acquisition in 2017 and will have, by the end of this year, 51% of their fleet being green. All of that is done through obviously active research on green fuels, but also in the case of heavy duty trucks where this is not an option, we've been installing generators. And this is quite significant because heavy duty utility trucks idle in park for 65% of their time.
And for each hour of idling, it corresponds to 25 miles of driving. So, again, very significant to lower our carbon footprint. Another good example would be our telematics program. We install devices in all of our trucks and we monitor driver performance, not to discipline people, but actually to capture information about how they're driving and customize their training. And again, that improves our safety metrics.
From a facility standpoint, we've been doing a number of things. Recycling, we've implemented recycling in all of our facilities. We've invested in green infrastructure such as this building that is LEED certified. We've been educating people on water conservation. In our operations, we've been retreading tires, investing in technologies such as drones.
We've installed 20 different charging stations across the company. And in Oakville alone, we saved 14,000 kilograms of CO2 with the 11 charging stations that we have on our parking lot.
Great. Well, thank you. There's obviously lots of initiatives going on here. And hopefully, you could see that there is value to these. So at this point, we'd like to open up again to the room for a couple of questions.
Is there anybody here that has a question or panelists? The hand went up. There's one in the back. So one will be up here afterwards.
Manish Goswami, CI Financial. One of the points brought up was hiring without biases. So I was just kind of curious what the first screens are and how you do that. It sounds really good,
so. Well, we've
actually made quite a change in our approach to recruitment recently. We brought in people with experience in identifying where those biases exist. So where in previous times, the identification of candidates would be through more of a who knows who network and would be met with perhaps a person or 2 who look remarkably like each other and come from a similar background. Now we actually have our recruitment specialists involved every step of the way. So the way that they go out and search for candidates is much more sophisticated using sort of analytical tools and as you may imagine sort of the social media web to access candidates that may not otherwise have even heard about our opportunities under the old model.
And then when the influx of candidates presents itself, we now have a, I will call it, a much more diverse panel of individuals who assess the incoming applications and sort of call that down to a smaller group that is going to be entertained through an interview process. One of the really unique things that I learned about when I was trained on some of this recruitment process that is designed to eliminate some of the unconscious biases, we have this method now where we do I'm going to maybe perhaps mischaracterize it as a type of Skype interview, but it's a video interview where the candidate and the interviewer, which includes one of these recruitment professionals, can see each other. And there are questions that have been designed to sort of really unearth inputs from a variety of types of people. So not just people who are typically polished and ready to do well in a corporate interview, but to really try and suss out the innovation and the creativity of people that we think can contribute to our business. And it's been remarkably successful.
Thank you, Jen. There was a question up here in the front as well.
Thank you. Rupert Merer from National Bank. Jen, this is a question for you too. You mentioned some employee incentives towards safety goals. Is there alignment between compensation and the other ESG goals within El Conquin?
Other than safety?
Other than safety.
Yes, absolutely. ESG goals have now been into we have quite a sophisticated scorecard and it sort of trickles through the organization from a corporate level down through more of a team or divisional level and then on to the individuals. When I reference the safety adjustment safety related adjustments, what I really was getting to was now that we've become a little bit more in tune with how these ESG metrics flow through our business, one of the things that we noticed was sometimes in an effort to try and achieve great safety statistics, what we may have inadvertently been doing was creating a bit of a situation where an employee was loathed to report something because they didn't want to impact a metric that would cause them to be compensated less. And so we have flushed those types of things out, not just in safety, but in other respects as well to try and really make sure that we don't create a motivation that is not aligned with the importance of the goals that we set for ourselves.
Perfect. Well, thank you. Thanks to the 3 of you. I think this has been a great panel. Thank you very much.
And I think we're just going to switch over here for the governance session. So again, thank you very much. So while our panelists are coming up, maybe I'll just start to chat quickly on the governance side. So obviously, governance has been traditionally where most of the investors seem to begin their ESG journey. And it tends to be the area where most of them feel comfortable as well.
Obviously, the governance of an organization is the basis by which all of these initiatives that are being brought forward can grow and prosper and can be growth vectors for the organization. So one of the biggest shifts we've seen is the shift of climate change actually from being viewed as an e issue to one where it's now actually being viewed as a governance issue. And as well, we're continuing to have a greater level of scrutiny around these issues like board diversity, compensation and at the forefront, corporate culture. So in this panel, we're going to make the effort to provide you with insights about how sustainability is being put into the governance structure here at Algonquin, how these risks are being highlighted and how they're being built into the risk management system and also about how we can create value and how they will continue to create value. So with that, I'm going to ask the 3 of you to just quickly introduce yourselves as well.
Good morning. David Bronachevsky, Chief Financial Officer for Algonquin Power. I'm with Algonquin Power for, I guess, I'm in my 13th year now. And so I've been here through most of the very rapid growth that we've experienced over that period of time. When I joined, we were about $800,000,000 and largely focused in hydroelectric power generation and some water utilities in Arizona.
Fast forward to today, and we're almost $11,000,000,000 U. S, I'll say, and have since expanded into wind, solar and the full spectrum of utilities here now I can say in Canada as well as the U. S.
Great. Mary Ellen?
Hello. I'm Mary Ellen Paravolos. I'm Chief Compliance and Risk Officer for the company, and I joined last year. I have over 20 years of experience in the energy industry across various disciplines. And my role here at Algonquin is to help to promote and enable a strong risk management culture, a strong compliance culture.
And we see it as being really fundamental and important preserver to our business value proposition, our business value creation, and that includes our sustainability activities that you're hearing about today.
Thank you.
Great. My name is Chris Jarrett. I'm one of the co founders along with Ian for this organization. So we've been here probably 30 years. It's more or less all we know, all we've done.
So I'm Vice Chair of the company. I'm also a Director. And as a Director, I'm a member of the Governance Committee as well as the Risk Committee. And I suppose if I had one objective here on this panel, it's to kind of share with you some of the insights from the Board and how they approach ESG and sustainability.
Well, then let's start with that, Chris. Can you describe some of the fundamental aspects of the governance practices here at Algonquin as they relate sustainability then.
Sure. And maybe without going into all the specific details, like I think I would say it's from the Board's perspective and also management is kind of founded 3 main beliefs. Probably the first one is that good governance instills stakeholder confidence, and stakeholder confidence creates shareholder value. So that's the first belief. Probably the second belief is that there's a strong connection between ESG and corporate performance, which is reflected in kind of all aspects of the business, from operations, which we believe are more efficient, less wasteful from our employees, and we've heard a little bit about that already, commitment, higher productivity, retention and as well as attraction, and that's a huge part of it as well.
And also from our stakeholders, we believe that if you have a strong alignment with your it creates a strong alignment with your stakeholders, and that improves brand equity. The other one that Mary Ellen is going to talk about is risk. We believe it reduces risk for the organization, especially in reputational risk, which is key. And I won't steal your thunder even though that's a core competency of Algonquin. And so just one thing to point out is from a governance perspective, I mean, we've been improving our governance diversity.
That's been reflected in the board as well. And as Jen said, we don't think of diversity on gender or anything like that. It's actually more thought and so diversity of thought. So we brought in directors from Canada, the U. S, international experience, all to reflect the assets and the businesses we own.
We've got things like a robust internal audit committee that or audit function that reports directly to the audit committee. And rather than list them all, I think one of the ways to kind of show how we've improved it is if it's hard to quantify good governance, but one way you can do it perhaps is reflected in the Globe and Mail's board games. And when I think back to when we first started tracking that, I think it was 2013, we were a dismal ranked 171 in the process. And I think last year, we were I think we were up to 38. So basically bottom quartile to top decile in a 5 year period.
And I think the fact that we're not the only ones who are trying to improve our governance scores. So we were able to achieve that alongside everyone else who was in that race. So we're quite proud of that. And I think that just shows how much of an emphasis we put on governance.
So in order to do that, you've obviously put some specific processes in place at the board. Can you talk to us a little bit about those, Chris?
Sure. The board has delegated the authority for and Sustainability to the governance committee. Although having said that, it gets reported at the board level quarterly, If not every board meeting, it gets talked about and discussed. And there's lots of direct links that have been implemented between sustainability, performance and other aspects of our business. It's tied to the compensation throughout the organization.
I think it got mentioned earlier that executive scorecards have always been tied to sustainability. One of the areas that's kind of we put a little bit of focus on recently is the whole strategy and sustainability. The sustainability lens is one that we use on our when we do our board strategy sessions. It's one that we certainly use when we make acquisitions. So that's been a bit of a focus area for us as well.
And human resources, of course, The Board has overseen the development of a sustainability team, which is dedicated and has executive oversight as well. George Trzic introduced that at the very beginning of the day.
Great. And so what are some of the specifics on what Algonquin is doing to establish some of those sustainability objectives, but also on the day to day operations here.
Yes. I think we've heard I won't go into the too many of the specifics because we kind of talked about them already. But we do have of course, we have comprehensive training for all employees. We've got a strict code of conduct that every employee has to read and certify every year. We have a robust compliance program.
But notwithstanding all that, it really does come down to culture. And I always think of a culture. It's like the safety program. You don't have a great safety program by having manuals and policies. You have a great safety program through a cultural awareness and a cultural mindset.
And we've done the same thing for sustainability and ESG. We've also retained several experts in the field, and we're always aware of what the ESG trends are and try to stay on top of that. But getting back to it, it is tied to all aspects of the business, the compensation, the strategy, risk management as well as the evaluation of the strategic risks. And I think it's probably worthwhile saying that there's a belief at the board that if you understand the strategic risks better than your competitors, you'll perform financially better than your competitors.
So Chris, when we had the opportunity to work with and interview a lot of management, the management team and yourself, vision was the word that came to mind. So can you give us give the audience a bit of a sense of what do you see? What's on the horizon?
Yes. And I think sustainability has been in our DNA since day 1 when we started building small hydro sites. I mean, we were Ian and I were both enthralled with this owning a generating station that's going to last 100 years. And just a little bit of a side story, I remember one of the first projects we ever looked at, it had a it was a retrofit of a project. It had 2 turbines in.
1 was built in, I think, 190 4, and 1 was built in 190 9. And they still refer to them as the old and the new units. And so we were always enthralled by that. So this idea of sustainability and being around for the long term, that's not new for us. But probably what is new for us is how do you disclose that?
How do you measure it? Those are what's new for us. And so that's where we're going to be putting a little bit of focus. I think the other thing, and I mentioned it a couple of times, is how it interacts with our strategy. And of course, we're always going to be trying to continuously improve our processes and practices.
And I think the other thing that I think was Brent who mentioned it is working with our stakeholders, and I'm talking our customers, our all of our stakeholders, our investors and how our efforts on sustainability can probably support them. I mean, I think we believe we're out in front of this. We believe we're we've got a pretty good program, and we're aware of it. But how can we help our stakeholders? So that's probably that's something that's pretty big.
Specifically, in 2020, we're going to be initiating the recommendations of the TCFD. So and where that leads us to is I think it was Angelo this question at the very beginning about how does climate change going to affect your assets. And so that's where that will lead to. And we've done a fair bit of work on that already, but that's where it's going to lead to on what we can expect on the assets that we have and how we'd be going to deal with that. And I think lastly, we've always approached this business as a some people may see challenge and we see opportunity.
So how can we use this interest in sustainability and ESG to surface new areas of growth and new opportunities?
So that's great. And with all that growth and opportunity, obviously, behind the scenes, you need a really strong risk management system. So Mary Ellen, let's turn to you. Can you describe a bit the current risk management positioning here at the company?
Sure. I'd be happy to. And it starts from the top, as Chris mentioned, with really strong Board governance. So, in my role as Chief Compliance and Risk Officer, I report to Ian and I report out quarterly to the Risk Committee of the Board and each of my peers, the executive team, are all members of the Enterprise Risk Management Council. And so we really do set a tone and a focus on risk management right at the top.
And how our risk management program shows up and shows up embedded across our business is in a couple of dimensions. First of all, it is proactive. It is anticipative. It is looking at a broad range of outcomes that may come about from risks. We also have developed over the last few years a keen sense of the common language and framework that we use to talk about risks.
So what are the risk impacts, the likelihood, the range of outcomes, controls and mitigation factors. We're using throughout the common language and common framework to help conversations around risk. The risk management program is embedded not only sort of in our day to day operations, Johnny talked about risk, in our regular M and A and due diligence for companies or assets that we're thinking about bringing into Liberty family, but also through a longer term and strategic lens as well. So thinking about growth, thinking about existential risks, those are the kinds of things that sustainability definitely really shines through. Our enterprise risk management team is centralized so that it can see across the width and the breadth of the business, but we also have risk trained risk advisors working across the business with the actual business owners so that we can assess the risks.
We put the accountability for risks right with the business owners. We really drive that accountability for those who are responsible for their business units. And what this gets us is a deep understanding of what our risks are and the ability to keep them updated as well. So, I'm happy to say we actually got an award for our best practices in last year from Governance Professionals of Canada for best practices in So really proud of that. It really motivates us to keep working.
So, can we dive a little deeper into that? Can you give us some specifics, some specific risks that you do manage?
I can indeed. Johnny alluded to a few of them and I can add to the list. And when I think when I look at actually our list of risks that we manage as an organization, most of them are actually sustainability risks. So, things like health and safety, environmental stewardship, supply chain integrity that Louisa talked about, compliance are just to name a few. Johnny touched on operational risk and I'll touch on another one that's been in the news a lot recently and that's California wildfires.
And wildfire risk shows up in that obviously it's a threat to people's health and safety and their lives, but also property. And for utilities, it can show up as a risk to delivering service to customers. So we've seen in the past PG and E and Southern Cal Edison preemptively shutting off electric service to customers so that it reduces the risk of their conductors being the start of a wildfire. So, pretty important. For and this certainly has happened more over the years as changing patterns due to climate change have seen.
So it certainly ties firmly in with sustainability. For us, we have a small electric utility on the east side of the Sierra Mountains. We've got 2 water utilities in California and also a solar and a thermal unit. So, wildfire risk shows up on our operations out in California. We mitigate the risk in a number of ways.
From an operational perspective, we've made a lot of investments already and are continuing to do things like replace wood poles with steel, put up covered conductor, so that should our conductor fall, it will not spark a wildfire. Things like adding sectionalizers into our distribution network, which are basically switches, so that should we have an event where we need to preemptively shut off electric service, we can do it in a very sort of targeted and strategic way, not to shut everyone off. It also impacts our approach to vegetation management. So you can probably see why that's a pretty important thing that we do and also to reduce wildfire risk as well. Our vegetation management budget, I think, is sort of the 2nd largest expense that we have at Calpico.
It's something for which we have a tracker in rates and it's just one of our tools in our toolbox to tools in our toolbox to manage risk. I'll also just mention that no matter where our facilities are, California or otherwise, our emergency management planning and our business continuity planning are pretty core and fundamental. We are always planning for something, an event that will be essentially unplanned. And so the ability to be prepared for a possible event is really important. I'll also note that our assets are quite distributed.
They are across North America and investments elsewhere across many jurisdictions, geographies, weather, as Johnny alluded to, modalities across electric, water and gas. And so from a risk perspective, it's kind of an interesting distributed characteristics to our risk profile and also has an opportunity side as well. We can really think about best practices on one side of the business and applying them to an opportunity in another part of business.
So one of the other major governance issues that comes up all the time is cybersecurity. So I'm assuming that falls in your camp as well?
It does because that is definitely a risk that all businesses face and most individuals face as well who have a computer or may have a smartphone. And so cybersecurity clearly is a risk because we're connected to the Internet and because we are using more technology in our lives and more technology in our business as well. So, things like robust firewalls, things like anti malware solutions are sort of core things that we apply. But cybersecurity just does not rest just in a company's IT department. We really take a keen focus on the behaviors and our work processes that all of our employees take because they really are a driver and can impact how we see cyber risks, how we react to them.
So we really spent a long time training our employees to be part of our line of defense as it comes to cybersecurity. Just to mention one other thing around that is that it's important to think about security not sort of in a silo or just like cybersecurity as an example. Over the last year, we've created a holistic risk and resilience group at the enterprise level. And this team is to help us be effective at the organization across angles of risk management, business continuity and emergency management and security angles across physical and security dimensions as well. So it's really important to take risk and resilience security in a holistic view to be more effective.
Thank you.
So, when I was on the sell side, and I know that there are a few people from the sell side here today, the last phone call I wanted to ever hear on the phone was from the compliance department. It is part of your role. It is part of your title. So can you talk to us as we met with you and others, I realized how important that is actually to your business and really in a positive way. So can you talk to us a little bit about that?
I can. And we recently, last year, actually stood up the compliance and risk office in the form that we have it today to really bring like not like minded, but like focused groups across risk management and compliance, insurance and resilience to be more effectively impacting the culture and the organization as well. So besides our policies, I mean, it is important that we have these code of conduct policies and supplier policies that we regularly train folks on them as well. We also make sure that our leaders are showing up and talking to employees about compliance and risk as well. So, we use a number of channels.
Here, we use our executive face to face roadshows annually. We use our quarterly town halls that are broadcast across the organization to be featuring topics around compliance and ethics and really driving that message home. The other thing we are doing is making sure that employees have enough resources and that they feel supported when they have questions, concerns or if they do see something that they want more information on. So we've got a dedicated compliance team to field questions. We've recently stood up an ombspuds person service so that folks actually talk to someone live through a workplace difficulty they may be wanting to chat through and seek solutions about.
And we also have an ethics reporting line too. So we have many channels to both help employees get their questions answered or if they have concerns to help find solutions.
Perfect. Well, thank you very much, Mary Ellen. So in our business, we've been witnessing a lot of capital moving around, a lot of it flowing out of Canada, to be honest. And increasingly that the ES and G issues are a big part of that decision making process. So David, can you talk to us a bit from the financial perspective?
What do you view as the long term benefits of for companies that are having a strong ESG framework?
Sure. Well, I can only really speak for our company. And the way we look at ESG is really providing us with investment opportunities. And pretty much every dollar that we invest goes into some sustainability investment, and some are obvious some may be less obvious. So we've got a $7,500,000,000 5 year investment program, which we outlined at Investor Day last year.
We'll be updating at our upcoming Investor Day as a little bit of an advertisement on December 3. And with that, if you look at the various investments that we're putting in, one of the biggest ones is our investment in 600 megawatts of wind in Missouri. And once that build out is complete and that will be complete sometime next year, we'll be in a position to be able to shut down the coal plant that we own there. So that's obviously a very obvious and direct example of investments that we're making in sustainability. But I would argue indirectly, almost every investment that we're making is actually for sustainability.
As an example, our bare steel cast iron pipe replacement program is all aimed at reducing methane emissions. Our automated meter infrastructure program that is in there is also aimed at that. So we won't have to be driving around to read meters anymore. And probably even more importantly, this will now empower customers to be able to monitor their usage of electricity, natural gas, water and to be able to take whatever conservation efforts they want. I mean, I could go on and on.
We've got Belco coming up that we're buying, and there's going to be a follow on investment program there to green their fleet. So it really is all about creating investment opportunities is the way we look at it.
Perfect. So in January, you issued a €300,000,000 green bond. Can you talk to us a little bit about the rationale for that and perhaps a bit about the demand and the pricing, what benefits you saw out of it?
Sure. Well, we have a senior unsecured bond platform that finances our renewables program, and we've been issuing bonds on that program since 2010, but this year was the first time that we actually decided to formally get the Good Housekeeping seal of approval and certify it as a green bond, although I would argue that every previous bond and we've got about $900,000,000 of bonds out there. Every previous bond that we had issued could have and are really, in effect, green bonds. But this was the 1st year that we did it formally. And I will say it did attract new investors to the bond platform.
We were 3x oversubscribed on the deal. So that was very encouraging. There were 65 investors, and we even had 15 new investors to our bond platform. So it clearly, I think, attracted new investors to our name. But I will say we didn't really notice any difference when it came to the pricing of the bonds because, I guess, green investors, they like green investments, but they also like the green it would appear.
And so but I think in the long run, I'd say inevitably it probably will lead to better pricing as more and more pools of capital start getting earmarked for green investments, I think that can't help but improve pricing going forward. You think that
there will be more? Oh, absolutely. Like, I'm not you think that there will be more?
Oh, absolutely. Like, as I said, with the $7,500,000,000 pipeline, August, we announced our Maverick Creek Wind Project. It's almost a 500 megawatt project that we're building down in Texas. We've got our Sugar Creek wind project underway. We're just finishing up on our Great Bay solar project, and I could go on and on.
And so really, what that means is there will be follow on bonds. We'll definitely be certifying our next utility bond. That will be the 1st utility bond that we issued that will be certified green, and we'll be doing that towards the end of next year and also another green bond on the non reg renewable side of our business. And so I think the market should expect that we'll be coming to market in late 2020 or very early in 2021 with those green blots.
Okay. Great. Obviously, we could go on and on and on, but we've promised that we'll try to get people out of here for 11:30 today. So I think we'll open it up to some questions from the room. Are there any questions for this particular panel?
There's a question here.
Anyway, Angela.
We have a home audience.
Yes. It's the webcast.
What is your policy on growth of your dividends in the Algonquin?
Well, to this point in time, we've had tremendous success in growing our EPS. And so that's enabled us to grow our dividend. And so I'll say if you go over the last 10 years, we've probably averaged 10% or more increase in the dividend. And for the next 2 years, 2020, 2021, we'll also we've committed to continued 10 percent increases in the dividend. Beyond that, I think our board will be focused on looking at our growth in EPS.
As a management team, we will, as people will see, continue to drive EPS growth kind of 8% to 12% annually, which should allow for an increase in the dividend of 10% continued after that. But I think the question the Board wants to ask is whether given all of the investment opportunities that we have in front of us, if there's more value creation to be had by actually retaining a bit more cash in the business. And so if our EPS is going up by 10%, 11%, maybe the dividend should go up by 8%, and you just improve the payout ratio because right now our payout ratio is in line with the Canadian utilities, so about 75% or so of EPS, whereas the U. S. Utilities are more in that 65%, high 60s range.
And so I think there's an argument to be had that given that 90% of our utilities are in the U. S. That perhaps an improvement in the payout ratio might actually be more value accretive to our shareholders.
Thank you, David. So this is a first for me, but the CEO wants to ask the question. Question. So
David, maybe you could, just following on that conversation about green bonds, kind of let people know kind of some of the advances in terms of ESG linked bonds and sort of kind of the next step along that on that path because it's clearly something we're seeing. And so I thought Yes.
No, there's I mean, we're actually seeing
you can think of it as almost like seeing you can think of it as almost like contingent pricing where there's definitely parts of the world where you commit to hitting certain targets on the ESG scale and you might actually get some improvements in pricing. So I think some banks, even in Canada, are starting to allocate specific pockets of money even for the revolver that we have. And so in there, again, there's some certain targets that if you invest in certain renewables, they'll give you some basis points off of the credit facility for theirs. So again, longer term, we actually are expecting to see some more benefits coming from a focus on ESG.
Perfect. I know we're up against the time line to try to get people out of here at 11:30. So with that, I'm going to say on behalf of myself, it's been a real pleasure to be the moderator today and I hope you've gotten some great insights. And again, I want to thank our great panel. So please welcome in thanking our panel for their comments.
And Ian, I'm going to pass it back to you.
Thanks, Myla. And I actually knew the answer to that question before
I asked it.
So with the conclusion of the panel, I'm going to call the event to a close. And maybe I guess I was hoping to kind of wrap up just a couple of the what I like to think of the 3 most notable objectives and goals that we've set for ourselves, this idea of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 1,000,000 metric tons, the idea of building 2,000 megawatts worth of new solar capacity. But perhaps the one that touches me the most is this idea of making sure that we take advantage of everybody in our organization by ensuring that 30% at least of our senior leadership is populated by talented women. I hope that if there's a takeaway from today, I'm hoping that you got a sense that sustainability isn't I'm going to say it's just something that you hear from me. And I guess I was touched and maybe I shouldn't be.
But by the depth of the knowledge and insight that everybody who sat on the panel brought. To me, the sincerity and commitment was undeniable. I guess I'll just say that at the end of the day sustainability and maybe this is at the risk of repeating myself, sustainability isn't A, new to us or, B, something that we do. It's really something that we are and that while I'm immensely proud of what the organization has done, we are going to continue to assess our ESG factors. You heard a comment about us moving toward the next level, which is this idea of compliance with the recommendations of the task force on climate related financial disclosure, but really is bringing these two things together.
And I think we're committed to building on and enhancing the programs that we talked about today. So with that, I would be remiss if I didn't end with thanks to everybody, the sustainability team led by George and augmented by Shane and everybody else on it in terms of the preparation of that report, but also setting up an event like today. And I guess I will just reiterate what I always say when I see these things is when it appears seamless and it appears effortless, it's because so much work went into it and this is no different. But in addition to members internally, and I again, I'd like to thank obviously everybody who on the business team took time out of their day to be part of this, we've also had help from the outside. Myla, not only in terms of hosting today, and thank you for that, but her and her team in terms of development of our report, our partners at Delphi in terms of helping us examine and verify our emissions calculation methodologies.
You can imagine there's a lot of subjectivity that goes into that. And of course, at the end, let's not forget our friends from Tesla who graciously agreed to shuttle people to and from the GO station because welcome to Canada from a weather perspective. I think altogether, I think the contributions are people who share a kind of a common understanding this idea of sustaining water and energy for life. So with that, shuttles are available to take you back to the GO Station right up until noon. And thanks, everybody, for taking time out of your day.
I would welcome, and I'm sure George would as well, unvarnished feedback in terms of did you feel like we answered questions? Was this a useful contribution of your time. I can't give you back the 2 hours of your life that you invested, but we can certainly make next year's commitment to this taken in a different direction or add or subtract features as you as that feedback. So please unvarnished feedback always welcome. So with that, thanks very much and please safe home everybody.