Climate Position
We believe climate change is among the most important issues of our time, and we’re committed to doing our part to ensure a bright and sustainable future for the communities we serve. Through the diligent execution of our Climate Strategy we’re working toward achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, which we view as a key step in meeting the climate challenge and building a sustainable energy future for the next generation. In addition, we have a responsibility to our stakeholders to proactively mitigate the company’s climate change risks and capitalize on emerging opportunities in a carbon-neutral economy—all while meeting the changing energy needs of our diverse customer base.
Climate Strategy
Our Climate Strategy is a major driver of our efforts to modernize our transmission and distribution systems, support widespread electrification and incorporate emerging smart technologies. Our Strategy includes:
- Protecting and enhancing our transmission system to enable a clean-energy and carbon-neutral future.
- Building a technologically advanced distribution platform that improves grid reliability and resiliency, while also enabling our company and customers to support a carbon-neutral economy through efforts such as electrification.
- Committing to a thoughtful and just transition of our regulated coal generation fleet, while being innovative and forward-thinking as we explore near-term opportunities to reduce emissions, incorporate renewable resources and implement emerging technologies that support our company’s mission. This includes a goal to own at least 50 MW of solar generation in West Virginia by 2025.
- Integrating carbon pricing into our financial forecasting, advocating for regulatory and legislative policies that support our efforts toward a carbon-neutral future and driving innovative cross-functional initiatives, such as our Wood Pole Diversion Program, that modify our business practices and asset replacement strategies to be more environmentally responsible. These and other important corporate services objectives are integrated into the long-term planning processes for our business units to support our Climate Strategy.
Reducing Emissions
As part of our Climate Strategy, we plan to reduce our companywide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions within our direct operational control (Scope 1) by 30% by 2030 (from our 2019 baseline), as we work toward carbon neutrality by 2050. Key steps in reducing our emissions and improving the sustainability of our operations include:
- Replacing Aging Equipment: We’re responsibly replacing aging equipment on our transmission system, such as circuit breakers and substation buses, that contains sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), a greenhouse gas commonly used in electric utility equipment. Please see our ESG data table for our SF6 emissions metrics.
- Electrifying our Vehicle Fleet: We’ve committed to 100% electric or hybrid vehicle purchases for our light-duty and aerial truck fleet moving forward. We are also targeting 30% electrification of that vehicle fleet by 2030 and 100% electrification by 2050.
- Using Generation Efficiencies and Flexibility: We’re utilizing operational flexibilities at our generation facilities that will enable us to reach our interim 2030 goal of a 30% GHG reduction from 2019 levels, while continuing to provide customers with safe and reliable electricity.
- Transitioning Away from Coal Generation: We expect to thoughtfully transition away from our coal generation fleet no later than 2050. We have 3,082 MW of coal generation remaining between our Harrison and Fort Martin Power Stations. These two plants are part of the vertically integrated utility in West Virginia and represent approximately 5% of our overall earnings.
For historical information on previous emissions reductions and coal unit retirements, please visit our 2019 Climate Report.
In 2020, we achieved a 19% GHG reduction from our 2019 baseline.
Note that global GHG emissions amounted to an estimated 59.1 billion tons of CO2e in 2019, according to the United Nations. FirstEnergy’s 2019 Scope 1 emissions were an estimated 18.1 million metric tons—approximately 0.03% of the annual global total. While FirstEnergy’s total GHG emissions are a small component of global GHG emissions, we believe that climate change is among the most important issues of our time, and we’re committed to doing our part to ensure a bright and sustainable future for the communities we serve.
Please visit our Biodiversity and Conservation, Waste Management and Water Management pages for more information on our efforts to develop increasingly sustainable, responsible operations.
Climate Risk Oversight
and Accountability
Oversight, accountability and risk mitigation of our Climate Strategy and greenhouse gas reduction goals occur at the highest levels of our company, where our Board of Directors, Corporate Governance and Corporate Responsibility Board Committee, executive-level steering committee and business unit leadership guide our efforts. Additionally, employees throughout the company participate in executing our Climate Strategy and play a key role in helping us to meet our objectives.
We encourage you to read the details of our Climate Strategy, Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) document and Climate Report. Additionally, we conducted a 2-degree scenario analysis as part of our 2019 Climate Report (available here), which helped us to understand potential risks and opportunities in a reduced-carbon future.