The impacts of climate change—like extreme temperatures, drought, and weather events—made themselves felt in 2022 across Eversource’s service areas. We’re putting more attention than ever before into adapting to these changes and doing what we can to mitigate our impact on the climate. We also remain focused on the broader environmental, social and governance matters that underpin our business and guide our way in strong corporate citizenship. This work is described in detail here in our Sustainability Report, but I’m proud to tell you about some of the highlights.

In 2022, we made significant progress toward our goal to reach carbon neutrality from our operations by 2030 with a quarter of the emissions cut from our baseline year of 2018. We also built on this strong foundation by deepening our emissions reduction efforts through a commitment to adopt an ambitious science-based target, which will align with the most current climate science to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. 

While our carbon neutrality goal focuses on emissions from our own operations, the science-based target will incorporate these and other, more focused measures to reduce indirect emissions from our value chain, such as emissions associated with our customers’ energy usage. Committing to a science based target is a best practice that places us among industry leaders, and we plan to have this finalized by 2024.

In addition to our own emission reduction efforts, Eversource remains focused on supporting our states on their climate goals by serving as a catalyst for clean energy in the Northeast. In 2022, we invested in clean energy including offshore wind, battery storage, electric vehicle charging, solar, and a networked geothermal energy pilot. Although we announced our plans to divest our offshore wind assets, Eversource remains committed to continuing to support this clean energy solution. We proposed transmission projects that would enable more carbon-free energy to interconnect with our grid and are working to raise awareness of the need for system investments to support increased electrification and distributed generation. We are also committed to doing what we can to enable the move to cleaner energy in a just transition that protects communities, industries, and people that could be at risk of being disadvantaged by the shift.

Energy affordability emerged as a major issue for our customers in 2022. Significant increases in the cost of wholesale natural gas, driven by global factors, led to price increases for both electricity and natural gas supply. We expanded our programs and increased our communications with customers, making sure they were aware of the options available to help them— such as payment assistance, budget billing, and our #1-in-the-nation energy efficiency programs.

Within our company, we continued our efforts to operationalize equity and make it a part of every business decision and action. This included the creation of companywide Equity Fundamentals training, which rolled out near the end of 2022 and will continue in 2023. We also maintained our commitments to environmental and social justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion, surpassing our Board-level goal for hiring women and diverse employees. Consistent with previous years, we have produced a separate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report, and I encourage you to review that report for a detailed roundup of our efforts in this vital area.

Recognizing the changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic—which, thankfully, ebbed in severity in 2022— we adopted a hybrid work environment that provides eligible employees with additional flexibility while ensuring that our customers continue to receive best-in-class service and reliability. We retain our commitment to Safety First and Always for all our 9,600 employees, no matter what role they hold with the company.

Finally, Eversource and its people maintained our strong commitment to supporting our communities through volunteering and charitable giving. We again held our successful signature events and United Way campaign and took advantage of the opportunity to return to in-person volunteering to help underserved and vulnerable communities. Our dedication to sustainability and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) resulted in numerous independent national recognitions, which are listed in more detail in this report.

Thank you for your interest in sustainability at Eversource. I hope this report conveys the depth, focus, and significance of our commitments in this area.

Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer