Consolidated Edison, Inc.

Hello, and thank you for joining us. I'm Jan Childress, Director of Investor Relations for Con Edison. We're happy to be here today for our 2024 Clean Energy Future presentation. This presentation includes information on Con Edison's strategy to achieve goals set forth in clean energy and climate-related laws and regulations, and contains forward-looking statements of future expectations and not facts that are intended to qualify for the safe harbor provisions of the federal securities laws. Actual results or developments might differ materially from those included in the forward-looking statements because of various factors identified in the presentation. Please note that there is an ask a question box right beneath the webcast player. Type in any questions you may have and click on the submit button. Type them in any time. I'll be monitoring them, and we'll cycle through the questions as we get to the end of the program. Now, it's my pleasure to turn this over to Con Edison's Chairman and CEO, Tim Cawley.

Thank you, Jan. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our annual webinar to hear about our strategy for achieving the clean energy future. I'm really happy to be here today to discuss the progress we continue to make and where we're going. Con Ed is among the nation's largest investor-owned utilities. Through Con Ed of New York and Orange and Rockland, we provide electric, gas, and steam service to millions of people in our region. Because we're in the city, most of our electric, gas, and steam systems are underground. We also operate the largest steam system in the US. And as you'll hear, that gives us some unique opportunities in the transition from fossil fuels. And Con Edison Transmission will help us deliver clean energy to customers in the Northeast. Not only that, we've been around for more than 200 years, and we're the longest continuously traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. At Con Edison, the tenets of our company culture remain very consistent. We work to maintain the safety of our employees and the public we serve every day. We value operational excellence, which shows up in our work and helps us earn our reputation for liability. We know our customers count on us and we work every day to maintain that trust. We invest in the customer experience. Earlier this year, we successfully deployed a new state of the art customer information system that dovetails with our smart meter deployment. This technology has significantly improved the way we interact with customers every day. ConEd's committed to excellence and equity across our company and across our service territory. We've developed meaningful diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, which help us attract and retain bright new talent that will have ConEdison grow for decades to come. And we focus on shareholders, prudently managing our company so that we deliver for our investors, including the thousands of retirees who maintain investments in our company and rely on Con Edison for safe, reliable performance. In all we do and everyone we serve, we remain intensely focused on leading the nation's energy sector. And we'll leverage these values to continue delivering a reliable, efficient, and equitable transition to a clean energy future. When we speak about reliability, we really are in a class by ourselves. We're ranked as the most reliable energy company in the U.S., serving one of the nation's largest economies, and we continue to improve. Connecticut of New York's electric delivery system is nine times more reliable than the national average. And in June, the Public Service Commission shared reliability performance results for the state. They found that based on our 2023 performance, a typical Con Edison of New York customer would go nine years without losing power. And that excludes the big storms that hit. This compares to about one outage every year for other utility customers in the state. The best-in-class reliability is critically important to our customers and our region, and that need will only intensify as we move to electrify transportation and heating. Our nearly 14,000 employees are working every day to help make sure our system remains safe and reliable. New York has among the country's most aggressive climate laws requiring a transition to zero emission electric grid by 2040. At the same time, our changing climate and more frequent and extreme weather events, both locally and across the globe, dictate the next stage of our evolution. We have a critical role to play to help meet these goals and challenges. For more than two centuries, we've been executing on sound infrastructure investments and delivering reliable energy to millions of customers. We have the experience and expertise to design, build, and operate the infrastructure required to meet this moment. We're thinking boldly about our energy system. We're expanding and modernizing our grid to accommodate new sources of renewable energy and handle increased demand as customers shift away from fossil fuels. And we continue to make our grid more reliable and resilient. We aim to usher in a clean energy future equitably and efficiently so every New Yorker can share in the benefit of a more sustainable grid. As you'll hear today, there is no single path to enabling the transition to a clean energy future. We're working on multiple fronts and the proactive investments in infrastructure and energy efficient solutions for customers will be driving factors in achieving the net zero goals. That means enabling change by driving growth in energy efficiency with innovative programs. It means implementing measures to help ease electric demand peaks, both in the summer and moving forward in the winter. We're working to make it easier to install charging infrastructure for EVs and support incentives for heat pump installations. We also plan to help transform supply and reduce the reliance on fossil fuels. We'll invest in transmission to interconnect renewable generation. We'll continue to implement energy storage solutions, and we'll advocate for utility ownership of large-scale renewable generation. As we proactively expand the grid and adopt new grid technologies to handle increased demand, we must also build in resiliency to climate change impacts. As you'll see, our approach to climate change is science-based, leading us to actionable solutions to mitigate the impact of extreme weather events. We won't sacrifice safety or reliability to meet growing demand. Resiliency is but one component of our approach to climate change mitigation. Our clean energy commitment is our guide for delivering the clean energy transition in an efficient and equitable manner. We've tailored our commitment to correspond to the goals set forth in New York State's Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, or CLCPA, and related state and city policies, which Jen will cover in more detail in a few moments. Our clean energy commitment accordingly covers five main areas or pillars. We aim to build the grid of the future by investing in our infrastructure so that our system can reliably deliver clean energy for all our customers. empower our customers to meet their climate goals by leveraging incentive programs to electrify heating and transportation, reimagine our own gas system, focusing on transitioning customers to electrification and decarbonizing through advocating for investments in alternative fuels, Reduce our own carbon footprint, too, focusing on electrifying our own fleet and reducing emissions from operations. And finally, we remain committed to partnering with stakeholders, including our customers, the communities we serve, the advocates in the environmental justice community to help ensure the costs and benefits of the clean energy transition are borne equitably. We're very proud of this commitment, but prouder still of the progress we're making every day toward achieving it. Across the clean energy landscape, we are seeing real measurable results. These results are reverberating throughout our broad stakeholder base, resulting in cleaner air for customers, broader economic benefits for disadvantaged communities, and sustainable returns for our investors. I'm really excited that you joined us today and that the team will talk through the actions we've taken, the progress we're making, and our plans for the future. So now I'll turn it over to Jen Hensley, our Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs, to walk through some of that. It's all yours, Jen.

Thanks so much, Tim. Very happy to be here today. As Tim mentioned, New York State continues its strides toward the target spelled out in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, the CLCPA. New York has among the most ambitious climate goals in the country and the CLCPA sets aggressive targets. 40% emissions reductions across all sectors statewide by 2030 and net zero by 2050. Meeting these goals requires significant market transformation in all sectors, particularly in energy, buildings, and transportation. Continued policy action is necessary to achieve the level of change required. And achieving these goals would require reducing the use of natural gas, exploring new ways to use our gas infrastructure to serve customers' future needs, making the electric grid ready for increased electrification and clean energy resources, and working to reduce the carbon footprint of our steam system. Addressing customer costs, technical complexity, and regulatory and policy action will drive customer adoption levels. In addition, state policy requires that at least 35% with a goal of 40% of the benefits of the clean energy transition accrue to disadvantaged communities, including spending and resulting energy efficiencies, all contributing to more vibrant neighborhoods with cleaner, healthier air throughout our service territory. It has been nearly five years since the CLCPA was enacted in 2019, and we've seen progress, but there's still so much more to do. Overall, the state is more than halfway to the target of 70% electricity source from renewables. But in the downstate region, in the more densely populated service areas of Ciccone and O&R, natural gas remains the principal fuel source for electricity. And we'll need an all hands on deck approach to address this. This is one reason why we're advocating for the state's utilities to build renewable energy projects for customer benefit. We also believe it makes economic sense from a customer standpoint. New York City's density also poses unique challenges in terms of citing clean energy alternatives. For that reason, the state is turning to technologies such as offshore wind and battery storage to achieve its goals. Later in this presentation, you'll hear from Kirk Andrews about our approach to supporting offshore wind development. But transportation is another key area where we need to think outside the box, particularly when it comes to converting heavy duty vehicles to electric. The New York State Public Service Commission has initiated a proceeding on a proactive planning for electric infrastructure to meet the requirements of EVs and building electrification, where lead times needed for infrastructure are proving to be much shorter than previously anticipated. This new approach would represent a significant departure from the current infrastructure planning process. For example, the new process would allow for timely building of electric infrastructure to support EV chargers and commercial transportation hubs like Hunts Point or the MTA bus depots to get ahead of decisions to electrify fleets. Knowing that the infrastructure will be in place is a powerful inducement for fleet owners and buildings to electrify. The CLCPA is one of several laws that the state and local level aimed at the clean energy transition. Like the state, New York City has one of the most ambitious plans for reducing emissions in the nation. Local Law 154, which bans the installation of natural gas in new buildings in the city, with certain exceptions, took effect at the beginning of this year, and the ban for new larger buildings takes effect at the start of 2027. Separately in New York City, Local Law 97 requires most existing buildings over 25,000 square feet to meet certain new energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions limits by 2024, with stricter limits coming in 2030. The goal is to reduce the emissions produced by the city's largest buildings by 40% by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2050, while allowing for exceptions for certain businesses. And New York City Mayor Eric Adams' Plan YC Getting Sustainability Done plan lays out further strategies to reduce buildings emissions. Con Edison continues to publicly support the City of Yes policy initiative which will accelerate New York City's building decarbonization plans. And Tim mentioned our own climate change mitigation efforts. The city also has major initiatives underway to protect against coastal storms. In May, the city broke ground on the latest leg of this effort, the Battery Coastal Resilience Project, part of the Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency Strategy. New York State also has laws similar to the city's Local Law 154 that bans the use of fossil fuels in new buildings. The state law targets smaller buildings starting in 2026 and new larger buildings starting in 2029, two years later than the city's effective dates for each building classification. Clearly, our own clean energy commitment is in step with the goals of the city and the state, and it will take such a unified effort to accomplish the transition to a clean energy economy. Now I'm gonna pass it over to Matt Ketchke, president of Con Edison of New York, who will talk more about how research is informing our long-term planning as we build the grid of the future. Matt.