We strive to protect the environment by minimizing our impact, improving the sustainability of our operations, executing our climate strategy and finding opportunities to enhance the ecosystems we interact with.
VEGETATION MANAGEMENT
We're proud to be recognized as a fully accredited Right-of-Way (ROW) Steward through the ROW Stewardship Council, a designation honoring our dedication to responsible and sustainable practices in vegetation management.
We’re making continued progress on our decarbonization efforts, including reliably enabling and supporting low-carbon solutions in both generation and customer end use.
FirstEnergy’s Green Teams have successfully installed 26 pollinator gardens on company property since 2020. We have also planted 11 community gardens through our new community pollinator garden initiative.
Energize365, our multi-year grid evolution platform, focuses on delivering the energy our customers depend on today while also meeting the challenges of tomorrow. With planned investments of $26 billion between 2024 and 2028, we’re enhancing our system to ensure we are ready for the increased demand for power that comes from customers adopting electrification of transportation, industrial equipment and home products.
We are responsible stewards of the natural resources impacted by our operations and are committed to fulfilling this responsibility for current and future generations by conducting our operations according to the principles in our policy.
In 2023, our energy efficiency programs helped save over 645,000 MWh of electricity. Continuing these efforts, our goal is to help customers reduce their cumulative electricity usage by more than 7.5 million MWh between 2021-2025.
We’re steadily and responsibly converting our conventional fuel vehicles to electric and plug-in hybrid alternatives, and we expect to achieve our goal of electrifying 30% of our light-duty and aerial truck fleets by 2030 and 100% by 2050. As of June 2023, we have reached 10% electrification of this 3,400-vehicle combined fleet.
Wood utility poles are one of FirstEnergy's largest waste streams, contributing thousands of tons of waste each year. In 2023, we diverted more than 2,400 tons of wood poles, which found new life in farmers' fields and parks or were milled into lumber. This and other company recycling programs help us minimize waste and mitigate our impact on the environment.
With the first of five planned solar sites now complete at the Fort Martin Power Station, we’re advancing our goal to own at least 50 MW of solar generation in West Virginia by 2025. We’re also leveraging our expertise to connect renewable resources, big and small, to the grid. This includes individual customer connections and large-scale projects such as connecting New Jersey’s offshore wind farms to the grid.
