We’re building a clean energy future for our customers, communities and our own families here at Eversource. It’s why we’ve made one of the most ambitious goals of its kind – to have our operations be carbon neutral by 2030.

Reaching our carbon neutral goal will require significant work ahead as we evaluate all opportunities for emissions reduction. We're focused on working collaboratively and fostering innovation to enhance efficiencies, introduce new technologies, and drive our emissions as close to zero as possible. 

Our Path to Carbon Neutrality: 

We plan to achieve our goal of carbon neutrality by eliminating or reducing our emissions in five key areas.

Line loss refers to the loss of electricity as it travels across the grid, and is one of the electric industry's biggest sources of indirect emissions. We're improving the efficiency of our grid to reduce the amount of electricity lost, and partnering with states to incorporate more sources of clean energy, which will minimize emissions from line loss.

We expect emissions from line loss to be our greatest challenge in achieving our carbon neutral target. However, as our region integrates more carbon free energy sources, the carbon intensity of the energy in our grid will decrease, thereby reducing the impact of line loss on our GHG footprint.

Methane emissions can leak out of aging natural gas pipes and release into the atmosphere. Since 2018, we have replaced more than 700 miles of this old pipe. We plan to replace 143 more miles in 2023, and we've increased our pledge to the EPA to now target a 6% replacement rate, which we then exceeded in 2023.

Plus, we're focused on long-term solutions to decarbonize our natural gas customers that include exploring clean technology alternatives like networked geothermal, clean hydrogen and renewable natural gas.

Our facilities are constantly undergoing upgrades to reduce electricity and fuel use. We're upgrading heating and cooling systems, installing LED lights, installing building control systems, piloting a geothermal installation and partnering with our Energy Efficiency teams to develop plans for further improvement.

We also continue to procure renewable energy for electricity demands that we can't eliminate. In 2023, we purchased over 34,000 MWh of renewable energy credits. 

Our fleet is a key tool in keeping your power and gas running safely and reliably, and we're focused on reducing it's fuel consumption. In 2023, we continued to adopt hybrid vehicles, and replaced more than 41% of our fleet diesel with a biofuel blend. We have also partnered with experts who specialize in emissions reduction, and are exploring emerging fuel sources like renewable diesel and hydrogen. Over 28% of our bucket trucks utilized hybrid technology by the end of 2023, and we aim to have a 100% hybrid fleet by 2030. 

Sulfur-hexafluoride (SF₆) is a chemical we rely on to insulate high voltage switches in our transmission system, but it can leak into the atmosphere. We're making great progress reducing this greenhouse gas through strong maintenance and improved internal tracking, which has supported a 14% reduction of SF₆ emissions from 2022 to 2023.

In 2023, we also worked with industry partners to pilot SF₆ free equipment, including a project which introduced the first-ever application of an EconiQ 345 kV circuit breaker at a substation in East Haddam, Connecticut. This new breaker uses an eco-efficient gas mixture as the insulating medium in place of SF₆. In anticipation of additional non-SF₆ solutions coming to market, we have designed certain equipment, including a substation in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to be ready to accommodate these alternative gases.