The IDACORP 2021 Annual Meeting will now begin.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Lisa McGrow, President and Chief Executive Officer of IDACOR and IDACOR Power Company and the Director of both companies. On behalf of the directors, officers and employees of IDACOR and Idaho Power Company, I would like to welcome everyone to the 23rd Annual Meeting of Shareholders of IDACOR. If we were holding a meeting today for Icor Power, this would be its 106th Annual Meeting. The annual meeting is being held as a virtual meeting again in the year through a live webcast rather than as an in person meeting.
This format helps to provide a safe, consistent and convenient experience to all shareholders regardless of location. There will be a Q and A session at the end of our meeting today, and I and the other officers, of course, welcome questions from our shareholders outside of this meeting. It's a pleasure to have this opportunity to discuss with you our performance and the opportunities we see as we look to the future. As we get started, I would like to first recognize the directors of our company who are all attending today's meeting. You can find information on our directors in the proxy statement or the annual meeting, so I will not go through their priorities now.
Our directors are Josep Solano, Tom Carlisle, Richard Doll, Annette Elch, Ron Hibson, Judy Johansen, Dennis Johnson, Rick Navarro, Doctor. Mark Peters, and myself. With the exception of Daryl Anderson and myself, these directors are all outsized independent directors. Odess Filano and Doctor. Mark Peters are the most recent additions to the IDACOR and Idaho Power Boards, having been appointed since last year's annual meeting.
All of the existing directors have been nominated for election at today's annual meeting. I would also like to thank retiring Director Christine King for her service on the Idaho Power and Idaho Power Board. Chris joined the Board in 2006 and retired from the Board prior to today's annual meeting. She provided invaluable service to the Board with her strong technology and cybersecurity background, and her leadership skills were greatly appreciated as the Chair of the Compensation Committee. Her insight and experience will be missed, and we thank her for her contribution to IDACOR and Idaho Power.
Before we move on, I would also like to recognize our officer team for both IDACOR and Idaho Power. I want to recognize them for their leadership and service to our organization and for their exceptional leadership through the COVID situation over the past year. I will not miss their names now, but their biographies are on the company's website. We have an outstanding leadership team and one that is excited about our business and committed to serving you, our owners, as well as our customers and employees. For our agenda today, we will first conduct a formal business meeting.
And then after the formal meeting adjourns, I will provide some additional comments about our company. Following that, we will be happy to answer your questions. Today's webcast is also being recorded. A complete replay will be available on our Web starting tomorrow and continuing for the next 12 months. I would like to remind everyone that the presentation today contains forward looking statements, which are statements that relate to future events or expectations.
It's important to note that the company's future results could differ materially from those discussed at this meeting. A discussion of factors that could cause future results to differ materially can be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our annual report on Form 10 ks. I encourage you to review that document as well as the other documents we file with the SEC and our various press releases. It is now my pleasure to officially call the 2021 annual meeting of the ICE Corps shareholders to order. This annual meeting is being held to address 3 items: to elect 11 directors for a 1 year term to address an advisory resolution to approve executive compensation and to ratify the appointment of the independent registered public accounting firm for 2021.
We may also transact other business as may properly come before the meeting. 95,000 shareholders located throughout the U. S. And beyond. The results of the shareholder voting for the annual meeting are typically determined by the returns of proxies from shareholders who are not present, and we have those results today.
All shareholders or proxy holders who registered for this webcast meeting also received a link to book their shares for the annual meeting previously. Before moving to the business matters to be considered at this annual meeting, there are a few administrative matters that need to be addressed for conducting the meeting. First, a majority of the shareholder floating power outstanding is represented at this meeting by proxy. Therefore, a form shift for the transaction of business. 2nd, in accordance with IDACORES bylaws, no matters other than those stated in the proxy statement were properly raised by the shareholders in accordance with the advanced notice provisions of the bylaws to be considered at this time.
Finally, before I get started, note that if you have not already voted for shares or if you have previously voted and wish to revoke your proxy and vote now, you may be so by following the voting instructions provided in the virtual meeting email sent to you earlier this morning. Remember, if you previously voted your shares on the proxy card or online, you need not do so again today unless you still choose and want to change any of your prior votes. If you previously voted and we vote today, this will revoke your previous vote. The voting mechanism for this virtual meeting will remain available until we complete the formal portion of this meeting. We will now proceed with the formal business of IDACOR's 2021 annual meeting.
The first item for action by shareholders is the election of directors. 11 director nominees are up for election at this meeting. Priorities for those 11 nominees are included in the proxy statement, and I read their names at the beginning of this meeting. All 11 directors have been nominated for 1 year term to expire at the 2022 annual meeting. The IACOR Board of Director, Tai Chi Minh Anamsu, recommended a vote for the nominees.
The second order of business is the advisory resolution to approve executive compensation. This advisory resolution is commonly referred to as the stay on a vote. The IDACOR Board of Directors has unanimously recommended a vote for this proposal. The third order of business is the ratification of the appointment of IDITOR's independent registered public accounting firm, Deloitte and Touche LLP, for 2021. I-four Board of Directors has unanimously recommended a 4 they vote for this proposal.
I will remind you at this point that you may use the virtual meeting webcast portal to vote if you have not already voted or wish to revoke the prior vote. The IDEX IV proxy committee has voted all shares represented by proxy in accordance with the instructions in each proxy on all three matters. Based on the proxies received prior to the start of this meeting, the preliminary results of the voting are as follows: First, each of the 11 director nominees named in the proxy statement has been elected to serve on the Board of Directors for a 1 year term 2nd, the advisory resolution on executive compensation has passed. And 3rd, the ratification of the appointment of the independent registered public accounting firm for the year 2021 has passed. At this time, I now declare This concludes all items scheduled for action at this annual meeting of shareholders.
The business portion of the meeting is now adjourned and we will now move to the informal portion of the meeting. Welcome everybody again to the 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. On behalf of employees, officers and Board of Directors, they appreciate your investment in our company and your attendance today. At IDACOR, we powered through together during a very challenging year, and we grew because of it. While no one could have predicted a global pandemic in its time, our company still celebrated many successes.
I'd like to start by sharing a few of those highlights. 1st and foremost, safety is paramount at ID4. And in 2020, we recorded the 2nd best safety results in company history. Safety has long been a core value of our company and it has achieved such success in our safety results, while our employees were working in structural unfamiliar circumstances is at huge This very fast will have recorded items powered in 2 focus on safety and raises the bar for us to continue enhancing our responders and countless others who have helped keep us safe during this pandemic. At Idaho Power, we activated our emergency management team and organized a reconnect team to help us monitor the pandemic, keep employees informed and engaged, and establish new health and safety protocols.
Today, I would like to recognize these groups for their efforts. You have significantly contributed to keeping our employees safe and our business moving along with as little interruption as possible. Over the course of 2020, I had the honor of awarding 8 Idaho Power employees with the President's Safety Award, which recognizes outstanding examples of practicing the company's 4 vital safety behaviors: focus, assess, think up, and make the safe choice. I'd like to highlight one awardee today, lineman Lloyd Maff. Lloyd and his family were out for a Sunday drive when a motorcycle carrying 2 passengers to the deer, sending both riders tumbling down the road.
Lloyd's Idaho Power emergency training and his experience as a long time volunteer with salmon's search and rescue team sent him into immediate action. He victims were breathing. With no cell phone coverage, Lloyd leaked his search and rescue radio to call for help. He grabbed a blanket from his car and supplied him his 1st aid kit to keep both his own safe stable until an ambulance arrives nearly an hour later. Lloyd also enlisted the help of his family to direct traffic and delegated jobs to other motorists he stopped to assist.
Once the ambulance arrived, Lloyd stayed on the scene as one victim was transported to the hospital in Salmon and the other was flown by helicopter to a bigger hospital out of town. I'm incredibly grateful for people like Boyd and for daily actions, great and small, our employees take to keep themselves, each other and our customers safe. 2nd, I'd like to talk about reliability. We maintained excellent system reliability throughout 2020, keeping the lifeline 99.96 percent of the time. Given the circumstances, this is an incredible achievement, one that highlights the resiliency of both our people and our infrastructure.
As our customers face the uncertainty of the pandemic, our role as an essential service provider was more important than ever. I'm glad we were able to be there for our customers by powering our own live businesses with reliable energy. With an iSport's continued reliability as our service area grows, our company continues to strengthen its grid. Ongoing projects include building new substations, building and upgrading transmission and distribution lines and implementing actions in our wildfire mitigation plan. We expect that existing and sustained future customer growth will require that Idaho Power procure other new sources of energy and capacity to serve growing well as well as to maintain system reliability.
We are in the process of analyzing options for potential energy capacity resource procurement, while at the same time working on our 2021 Integrated Resource Plan in conjunction with the IRB Advisory Council. I can't talk about reliability without acknowledging our outstanding employees who maintain power quality and reliability around the clock, often in challenging circumstances. On top of pandemic safety protocols this past year, Park produced a usual array of weather related challenges. In July, a big storm damaged equipment located on an island in the Snake River. With no road access, crews used a helicopter to shuttle materials and equipment to the island, working long hours to safely restore power.
Mother Nature dealt with another challenge in September when a fire destroyed 50 power poles in Home Canyon. While line crews work to replace the poles and restore power, our maintenance team protected our facilities by creating fire breaks and clearing brush around holes. Since light these truly require all hands on deck, from alignment working around the clock in all conditions to customer service representatives responding to customer needs, we would be hard pressed to find a better team than our Idaho Power employees. 3rd, Idaho War enjoyed another year of financial success. We achieved our 13th consecutive year of earnings growth, a thing we believe is unprecedented among investor owned utilities in the U.
S. We also preserved the full $45,000,000 of tax credits available under our Idaho regulatory stipulation for future earnings support, and we increased the quarterly dividend on iacore common stock for the 9th consecutive year. Strong customer growth and effective cost management remain key contributors to our financial success and stability. Idaho was once again the fastest growing state in the U. S.
In 2020, and Idaho Power experienced 2.7% customer growth across its service area. That growth continues to accelerate as we experienced 3.5 percent growth this March. Efforts to control costs are also paying off. As our employees work to stay within budget, our 2020 operations and maintenance expenses were down compared to 2019. Of course, women who travel because of the pandemic also played a role in these savings.
Finally, I'd like to highlight how we supported our communities. Corporate citizenship has always been an important item of power, and our role in the community has been even greater important in 2020. As many of our friends and neighbors were impacted by the pandemic, our company donated more than $1,000,000 to charitable organizations, connected our communities with bill assistance programs and temporarily suspended disconnection. Much of our giving was directed at food pantries, shelters, senior centers and other pandemic relief programs. Our employees also provided many hours of community service and volunteerism.
As always, matching funds from MightyCall shareowners helps maximize the impact of our corporate giving. I'd like to share one of the many stories that show how much our employees care for their community. When the pandemic hit, one of our customer service representatives, Lisa Motta, put her team and talent time and talent to use by selling dozens of masks for local hospitals, animal shelters and those who couldn't afford to purchase their own. She even took it a step further, creating clear window maps after receiving a request from a local speech therapy clinic that needed a way to communicate with patients while staying safe. Then during her regular job, Lisa happened to be on the phone with a customer who needed medical assistance.
Lisa recognized the need, spoke up and contact with the colleagues to complete a wellness check on the customer. We later received a letter from the customer thanking Lisa, who we recognized with the President's safety award for her many efforts to keep our customers and communities safe. This is the kind of people we employ at Idaho Power, and I couldn't be prouder to be their leader. In addition to many efforts in the communities we serve, our focus on the customer experience continues to make an impact on 2020. Idaho Power received some of the highest overall customer satisfaction scores ever achieved, and at 86%, our 2020 customer relationship index was the 2nd highest ever achieved in the calendar year.
Satisfaction among all customers was consistently high throughout 2020 with large commercial and irrigation customer satisfaction floors at or near all time records by year end. While 2020 included many success stories for iCORE and iCORE Power, it also highlighted how our business is evolving. As the energy landscape shifts, we believe our adaptability and focus on sustainability will position us for continued success. I want to touch on a few of those areas today. First, we will continue modernizing our business.
The energy industry faces the balance of adopting new technologies and a clean energy future while maintaining reliability and affordability. We are fortunate, thanks largely to our hydroelectric system, Idaho Power already has a very clean energy mix and prices among the lowest in the nation. So how do we build on this foundation? Strengthening the grid is key. 1 of the tough lessons energy companies learned in 2020 and into 2021 was how difficult prolonged outages can be for utilities and their customers.
We continue to enhance our grid integrating new technologies, strengthening physical and cybersecurity and emphasizing the goal of transmission in maintaining reliability and affordability as we move toward our goal of 100 percent clean energy by 2,045. As we modernize our business, digitalization provides adaptability. 1 of my favorite takeaways from 2020 was how much we accomplished and how little was interrupted with so many of our employees working remotely. The circumstances were not ideal. Our technology allowed us to stay connected to our work, our customers and each other.
We are doing more focused visualization work, enhancing areas ranging from our customers' experience to how we operate the grid. As technology evolves, electrification is coming. Exciting advances in technology like electric vehicles provide many benefits. Powered homes, businesses and transportation with electricity provides cleaner, more cost effective solutions than gas and other fuel. In addition to electrifying our own fleet, Idaho Power is working with customers and communities to add EV charging stations and continue moving electrification forward.
2nd, I'd like to talk about how environmental sustainability guides our work. Clean energy remains a top of mind issue for our company. We are striving to reach our goal of 100 percent clean energy by 2,045 and the Boardman coal fired plant closed in 2020. We also continue to work with businesses and cities on reaching their own clean energy goals. We understand the path towards a clean energy future won't always be a straight line, especially if we balance price and reliability, but we are committed to the journey.
Our environmental work extends beyond clean energy. There are lots of exciting things happening in our Snake River stewardship, Fish Management and Raptor Protection Program. Notably, items are received, the Idaho Chapter American Fisheries Society Aquatic Hydroelectricity remained Idaho Power's largest energy resource in 2020, and we continue to utilize long term purchases of energy from additional clean resources, including wind, solar and hydro. I encourage our owners to check out our 2020 ESG report, which was issued today and is available on the ISOR website. This robust document, formerly known as the Sustainability Report, covers many areas that may be of interest to investors, including our carbon emissions data, our clean energy goals and Idaho Power's energy mix.
In addition to sustainability, our company is committed to diversity and inclusion. We live in a divisive time. While different beliefs and views are often a source of friction, we at Idaho Power believe in an inclusive environment where we are all valued, respected and given equal consideration for our contribution. We won't always agree with one another, but we are a stronger company when we stand together and embrace our differences. This commitment extends to our community.
Idaho Power recently donated $15,000 to the Watchmen Center for Human Rights, home of the Anne Barranc Memorial in Boise. The donation is earmarked for an electronic kiosk in the new Human Rights Education Center intended to better serve Idaho's classrooms and communities and to support the center's mission to promote respect for human dignity and diversity through education and to foster individual responsibility to work for justice and peace. As we prepare to return to the office and our new normal later this year, I look forward to continuing to build upon our strong company culture of diversity, inclusion and respect for all. Customer growth has been a reoccurring theme over the past several years, and we expect it to continue. Despite the impact of COVID-nineteen, Idaho Power's service area remains one of the fastest growing in the U.
S. The influx of business and residential customers to benefit our company. Our employees have worked hard to accommodate the growth, often through long nights and weekends, and we are preparing for a future that includes continued growth and electrification, which take additional investment by Ironman Power. In doing so, we will keep our eye on our 100 percent clean energy strategy as we advance projects like Gordon to Hemingway transmission line hydroelectric relicensing in upgrades, improving the efficiency of our plants and potentially adding new resources and storage projects. As we look to the future, we have an outstanding leadership group in place at ID Core and Idaho Power.
It's a privilege to be part of such a great team and never as their knowledge, guidance and compassion meant more to me in this past year. Stepping into my new role at the height of the pandemic was a unique challenge, but having the support of my colleagues with a constant source of comfort and strength. I'm happy to introduce 2 new officers appointed in 2020, Mitch Colburn as Vice President of Planning, Engineering and Construction and Jason Azar as Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer. Both bring a wealth of experience to our leadership team, and their input will be crucial moving forward as we capital transmission line projects and continue to modernize and digitalize our grid and our business. We also have 2 new admissions to our Board of Directors, Josep Villano, CEO of Cinophos' Health System and Doctor.
Mark Peters, Executive Vice President for Laboratory Operations at Battelle Memorial Institute. Odette's background in health care ties to the communities we serve and Hart's expertise in energy technology and cybersecurity further strengthened the outstanding governance team leading our company into the future. Our company has grown in unexpected ways over the past 12 months. Our ability to take care of each other, meet financial targets, sustain earnings growth for our owners and continue to provide reliable, affordable clean energy for our customers is a testament to our great employees as well as the resiliency and adaptability of our company. The stories of 2020 are a great reminder that no matter what the challenge what the challenges are that come our way, IDACOR and Idaho Power stand ready to adapt, adjust and power through.
Thank you for your investment in IDACOR, and we look forward to sustained prosperity in 2020 21 beyond. We will now be happy to respond to your questions. On your webcast screen, you will see a QA icon near the bottom of the screen that you can click to submit a question. Our corporate secretary will receive these questions and read them to me, perhaps summarizing the questions, thinking where appropriate, particularly if we have multiple questions on a similar topic. We would ask that each shareholder submit only one question so that all shareholders have the opportunity to participate.
And she is asking about iCORE's trajectory towards 0 carbon and recognizes that in our 2019 IRP, carbon emissions were projected to rise through that journey. And the question is, if Idaho Power's commitment to clean energy is real and not just greenwashing, how will Idaho Power demonstrate consistent progress towards this rolling 2021 IRP. And the answer to that, Lisa, and to everyone, this is not going to be a straight line. It is over time, and that's why we gave it a long 25 year runway. It's critical that we also balance reliability and affordability.
And so it is not greenwashing. In fact, it's already shut down 2 coal units. And so we are really making headway there. And as we work our way through it, we have to balance all 3, reliability, affordable and clean. So I'll move on to the next question.
One with the data, mitigation of wildfires and really asking how are we positioned related to what we've seen happening around us. Certainly, California, Oregon, Washington, we're really hit hard by fires. So while I say, we have a very robust fire mitigation program, we are it includes really aggressive vegetation management, new equipment such as fuses that will not expel parts, our own practices, how we whether we avoid driving food, dry grass, and how we work around that equipment. And so we feel like we are in a really good place, and we don't have some of the similar weather phenomenon that happen in California, for example, with the Santa Ana wind, but they do happen. And so we really make sure that we have done everything we can to mitigate our equipment involvement as well as make sure that if one happens either naturally or caused by someone else that our system can survive that event.
And another new thing that we've added is a fire index. We publish it every day. So we're looking at all the conditions that exist with weather, impending storms, what have you, so that we are and we have special areas that we are watching. When we look across our system, we've created the high risk areas are mapped and known. And so we focus really a lot of the effort into those areas.
And then we're watching carefully as in each of the zones what we see as the higher potential index. So we feel very good about where we are. Certainly, there are things that happen that are out of our control, so we work very hard to make sure we can survive it and that we can restore power if something does happen. And the second question, again, this is from Gary Huff, asking about the if the South Canyon dams are part of Congress and Simpson's proposed legislation. And no, they are not.
And the dams that Congressman Simpson's still is focused on are actually owned by power or government dams. And so they the bill actually suggests that we would extend our license for our outstanding dam. So they are not slated to be removed, and we are certainly watching the build carefully, but we're not exactly positioned the same as those 4 dams on the lower snake. And then we have one from Kipp Sykes, who we all know very well, former employees and one we miss very much, Kipp. And you asked Kipp asked the question, what technologies and research can best contribute to reliability, resiliency and security to service to our customers?
And what I would say, Kipp, is we are really looking hard at hydrogen, for example. I'm really excited about the possibility of over time being able to switch out natural gas for hydrogen. And there's a lot of work being done in that area, and there's a lot of buzz about it. And I think there's I think there's some great opportunities there. The other thing that I think about is, we need visibility and, control of
the distribution system that will
really help to, of the distribution system that will really help to further optimize how we operate that system, much like we do the bulk electric system that really can help with the addition of all the distributed resources. You really are going to need to be able to operate that system differently. And so if you have any other great ideas, we're all ears. And he does note in his question. He does not quite yet, so I'm that that you have.
Let's see. We have another question, Lisa Hat. How will we how will ICEL Power incorporate a weighting towards consistently approaching the 2,045 clean energy goal to its operational principles and decision making. And again, it is our goal is a journey to 2,045. And as I mentioned a few times, it's not a straight line.
So we are balancing reliability, affordability and clean. And so sometimes that's what makes the line less great than another time, but it is a trend downward. So it's always top of mind. We are looking all the options that we have available, but I again draft the need to really balance all 3 because it's in that order. It is what's not reliable.
Nobody really cares about the rest. If you can't afford it, that puts a lot of stress on our customers. And clean is very important, but we've got to meet the other 2 as well. Another question. How is ITIL Power Building technical expertise in information and computer science in its board, executives and workforce to meet the growing demands of the world's complex machine and intelligent grid.
We well, I mentioned on the Board, certainly adding Doctor. Mark Peters was a driving force. In addition, he has access. He runs all of the national labs. So we're very excited about having access to that expertise as well.
And then for our own workforce and executives, I mentioned the promotion of Jason's arm. We continue upscale our IT folks as we go through our transition to a digital. More digitalization requires that kind of skill. Cybersecurity continues to be a very big focus of what we're doing. So we are making sure that we have the skills we need in cybersecurity and that remains a continued
threat.
And then there's another question. We're talking about how we prepare to support ransomware attacks. What's the company done to keep current with the security recommendations. And I'm going to turn that one to Brian Buckbaum, who heads up that.
Yes. Thanks, Carrie, for the question. This is Brian Buckbaum, the company's general counsel. We have a number of systems in place for cybersecurity, and those include systems for ransomware. That's typically been in the media lately, and it's always been an attentional of something that we've had our attention on.
And so we have a team of cyber professionals tasked with our security profile, and we received threat intelligence from a number of sources, and that includes both government partners and private entities. And so that combination of people and tools and intelligence sources are how we approach our cybersecurity efforts, both through our cyber team and our IT team as well. This is reflective importance of this period to your company and our shareholders and other stakeholders. So we do include some information on our cybersecurity efforts and the ESU report that we have mentioned that we posted on our website today. So I'd encourage people to take a look at that ESU report and what we talk about on the cybersecurity side.
So another question comes from Chad Worth. Is the company currently accounting for carbon emission intensity when making supply and resource dispatch decisions? For example, is carbon considered on an hourly basis whether to call on a gas or a coal resource or to import more clean energy through the and balanced market. If not, is the company willing to consider incorporating the carbon intensity of its supply resource options in its dispatch decisions? And again, I go back to the balance of reliability, affordability and clean.
So we have a very clean portfolio to begin with. And certainly, we try to utilize as much hydro as we can. We have all the PPA contracts from other resources when they're available. And then of course, you've got to keep the lights on. So we will supplement it with the carbon emitting resources as required.
So it is certainly something that we think about, but again, balancing the three criteria. So as Lisa Heck noted, I did mistake that Representative Simpson plan is not available to act with the proposal. Fair enough. Okay. Well, there we go.
Hopefully, we've answered all the questions satisfactorily, and we thank you again for adding or for attending the annual meeting and for your questions. We appreciate your investment in IDACOR and look forward to your continued participation at future annual meetings. Thank you.