Good morning, and welcome to the Spire Inc. Sustainability Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Scott Dudley, Managing Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for joining us today for Spire's Sustainability Call. We published our annual sustainability report online on June 8th, and issued a news release highlighting the continued progress we made in 2022 on environmental, social, governance matters, while moving Spire toward becoming a carbon neutral company by mid-century. We had expanded disclosures that we put into the report. You can view the report on our website at spireenergy.com/sustainability, and the news release is available on our website under Newsroom. There's a slide presentation that accompanies our call today. You may access it either from our website or the website for this call. On the call today is Suzanne Sitherwood, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Steve Lindsey, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.
Also in the room with us is Steve Rasche, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Adam Woodard, Treasurer and CFO of our gas utilities, Nick Popielski, Vice President of Sustainability, and Courtney Vomund, Vice President, Compliance and Corporate Secretary. With that, I will turn the call over to Suzanne.
Thank you, Scott. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for Spire's Sustainability Conference Call. We're pleased once again to have an opportunity to update you on our ESG commitments, programs, and performance. We believe natural gas plays a key role in supporting a sustainable energy future for our country and in delivering affordable, reliable, and cleaner energy. Our efforts go beyond serving the energy needs of our customers. For example, our efforts include supporting our communities, time and philanthropic investments, supporting our commitment to diversity and inclusion, as well as protecting the planet through emissions reduction. In 2022, we built upon the results we previously achieved while furthering our reporting on environmental, social, and governance. Reflecting our commitment to sustainability, we recently named our first Vice President of Sustainability.
Many of you will remember Nick Popielski, who we introduced during last year's sustainability call, Head of Environmental Commitment. In his new position, Nick will retain the responsibility for Spire's environmental commitment, but is also taking on responsibilities for our enterprise sustainability strategy. This role also includes social and governance business practices. Suffice to say, Nick is quite busy. To that end, last week, we published our 2022 sustainability report online at spireenergy.com. I encourage you to access the report, which details our continuing progress on environmental, social, and governance matters, with further enhancements to our reporting. We're focused on four sustainability priorities: the environment, safety, people, and governance. Spire has a great story to tell in each of these areas, starting with how we care for the planet we all share.
We are highly focused on operating in an environmentally responsible manner for future generations, including fulfilling our commitment to be a carbon neutral company by mid-century. Our environmental focus has been on reducing methane emissions from our gas utility operations. We continue to make significant strides, as Steve Lindsey will discuss, through a combination of infrastructure upgrades with accelerated leak detection and damage prevention. Steve will also discuss safety, which is a core value at Spire. One of our greatest responsibilities is ensuring the safety and well-being of employees, customers, and communities. Our performance here continues to be strong and improving. Our focus on people includes serving and supporting our employees, customers, and communities. I'll discuss this in greater detail in just a moment. Finally, there's the priority of governing responsibility. Strong financial and operating results come about through effective governance practices overseen by our board of directors.
Turning to people, beginning with our employees, we strive to foster a strong, safe, sustainable workforce. Our efforts are focused on improving gender and racial diversity, while integrating broader initiatives to provide a more equitable and inclusive workplace. In that regard, we are improving how we go about recruiting and developing our workforce, as well as proactively planning successions across our company. At the same time, we continued our program to better understand and meet the evolving needs of our customers. To support that effort, we established what we call a customer success team. The team piloted a new program to offer individualized support solutions, especially for new customers and those with limited income. Last year, we helped customers access more than $27 million in energy assistance funding. Supporting our communities has always been an important part of who we are at Spire.
Last year, we invested nearly $6 million to enrich the communities we serve. As a company, we also serve our communities by volunteering through nonprofits and other support organizations. I'm proud to note that in 2022, the number of Spire employees involved in volunteer community support activities increased 20%, while the total hours they contributed, 45%. Through our focus on responsible sourcing, specifically our smart sourcing initiative, we are taking steps to increase efficiency, standardization, while reducing costs within our supply chain. Remain committed to supply diversity and working with companies that are focused on equity and sustainability across their operations. Corporate governance has consistently been one of Spire's strengths, and we continue to make it even stronger.
For example, we completed a review of the skills and experiences of each director to support board succession planning, and after formally assigning oversight of sustainability to committees of the board last year, further refined the board's oversight responsibility. In addition, in keeping with best practices, we continue to review and update our governance policies, all the while maintaining a well-qualified and experienced board to year-end calendar 2022 was 50% female, 20% were racially diverse. 9 out of 10 directors being independent. Before turning things over to Steve Lindsey, I would like to note that our sustainability report remains very strong. Our disclosures are aligned with ONE Future, SASB, and TCFD platforms. With the 2022 report, Spire has achieved 100% compliance with GRI, the Global Reporting Initiative. Let me turn to Steve.
Thank you, Suzanne. Safety is a core value at Spire. We continue to advance an already well-established safety culture across our company. One of the important employee safety measures we focus on is injuries, as measured by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA. Track safety is an industry-standard metric of injuries, called the OSHA DART rate, which measures the number of recordable injuries and illnesses per 100 employees, result in days away from work, restricted duty, or transfer of duties. As you can see, the rate has been steadily declining, in fact, by more than half over the last five years, and has dropped 18.5% to a record low last year. As we go about our daily work of serving our customers with affordable, reliable, and cleaner energy, we continue to implement programs to keep our employees and communities safe.
An area of particular focus is driving safety. Reducing our at-fault motor vehicle accident rate is an ongoing goal. Fiscal 2022 completed the installation of in-vehicle technology, including safety cameras and GPS systems, to help our employees become safer drivers. We're seeing results. Our motor vehicle accident rate was markedly improved compared to the prior two years, accidents down more than 17% in 2022. As Suzanne noted, we're highly focused on operating our business in an environmentally responsible manner and meeting our carbon neutral commitment. One of our efforts to date has been reducing methane emissions from our gas utility operations. I'm pleased to note we achieved further reductions in 2022. As noted in our 2021 report, we established baselines for Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions for all of Spire.
In 2022, we reduced carbon equivalent emissions by 6.3% compared to last year's baseline. We've done this primarily through our continuing program of investing in infrastructure upgrades to replace pipelines constructed of older, more leak-prone materials. Last year, we spent almost $260 million to replace more than 250 miles of pipelines related to distribution infrastructure. This upgrade work, combined with accelerated leak repair programs, has enabled us to further tighten our system, leading to a 19.5% reduction in leaks per 1,000 system miles. Another way we've been able to cover methane emissions is through reducing third-party damage to our system, typically occurs due to excavation near our lines. We had a record low damage rate last year, thanks to our participation, along with other utilities and awareness campaigns, to promote Call Before You Dig programs.
Part of our plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions includes evaluating alternative energy sources, such as Renewable Natural Gas, or RNG, as well as certified natural gas. Last year, we began implementing our RNG strategy, as I'll describe in a moment. We had shared previously, in 2022, we achieved a reduction in methane emissions, specifically leaks from mains and services in our distribution system, about 50% from 2005 levels. We're targeting cumulative methane reductions of 60% by 2025 and 73% by 2035. As I noted earlier, you can see graphically the steady improvement in damages and leaks over the last five years to record lows in fiscal 2022. Damage rate is down 13%, while leaks per 1,000 system miles have been reduced by nearly two-thirds.
Turning to alternative and renewable energy, we've been exploring RNG opportunities across our utility footprint, especially in Missouri, including methane capture from wastewater treatment plants and landfills, and to a lesser extent, animal waste from agricultural operations. Key to our assessment is the level of interest and demand from customers for renewable energy. While we await regulatory rulemaking in Missouri regarding alternative fuels, we've got several projects in the works in the state, including one in the implementation stage in the St. Louis region and another final evaluation in Kansas City. Meantime, Spire Marketing is already providing its customers with certified natural gas to help them meet their environmental goals, and Spire Missouri is including certified natural gas in its supply portfolio. We continue to study the use of hydrogen as a renewable fuel that can be offered in our system.
Over the next year or two, we'll be evaluating feasibility, including resolving technical and production supply issues, while also working with Missouri regulators on rulemaking. Let me turn the call back over to Suzanne for some closing comments.
Thank you, Steve. In conclusion, let me reiterate our firm belief that the future of our industry and company is bright. Natural gas plays a vital role in ensuring an affordable, reliable, and clean energy future for our country. We'll continue to advance our business through innovation and how we serve our customers and communities, while protecting the planet and achieving overall greater sustainability in all we do. Thank you for joining our call today. We're ready and happy to take your questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Again, if you have a question, that's star, then one. There are no questions in the queue. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Scott Dudley for any closing remarks.
Well, thank you all for joining us for our annual sustainability call, and we'd be happy to follow up with any of you that have any questions. Thank you so much.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.