Supporting the places we all call home

Our Reconciliation journey is guided by our Statement of Indigenous Principles that we’ve used for almost 25 years. These principles help us build meaningful and respectful relationships with Indigenous Peoples through honest conversations and thoughtful actions.

We’re proud to have Silver-level certification in Indigenous relations from the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business’s PAIR program. PAIR certification is a multi-year process. It involves planning and meeting targets in business development, leadership actions, employment and community relationships. This certification represents our commitment to improvement in Indigenous relations.

We aimed to invest 20 per cent of our annual Community Investment Program funding to support Indigenous communities in 2024. We surpassed our target, with about 29 per cent of our total funding going to Indigenous community investment initiatives.

Providing opportunities for Indigenous contractors and supporting local, Indigenous-owned and Indigenous-affiliated businesses supports our mutually beneficial relationships with Indigenous Peoples. In 2024, we had 436 local vendors work on our major projects. This represents $214 million in local spending and about 333,000 local employment hours.

In 2024, we invested $5.6 million to support over 300 local initiatives in 76 B.C. communities—through donations, event sponsorships and our Community Investment Program. Focused on safety, education, Indigenous partnerships and projects that directly benefit the environment, these efforts help communities thrive.

Our Community Giving Days support initiatives that contribute to the well-being of British Columbians. In 2024, this included the Comox Valley Ground Search and Rescue. Our funding helped purchase advanced safety gear to support those who give their time to protect their communities.

By investing in the communities where we live and work, we’re supporting the people and initiatives that make a better B.C.

FortisBC street team members, Michelle Dixon, Justin Dixon and Jonathan Calvez, supporting The Happy Campers Fund. It provides grants for children to attend specialized summer camps throughout B.C., giving them the chance to build memories in an environment catered to them.

Energy safety and reliability matter. We address outages—whether planned for maintenance or unplanned due to emergencies—as safely and quickly as possible. Since 2020, we have responded to over 97 per cent of gas emergency calls in an hour or less and almost 90 per cent of electricity emergency calls in under two hours.

We will invest $4.8 billion in our gas and electricity systems from 2025 to 2029 to help keep our infrastructure reliable and resilient. This includes upgrading our gas customers to advanced gas meters, which will be able to remotely shut off gas in the event of an emergency. Upgrades like this are one of the ways we’ll be able to continue to deliver safe and reliable energy.

Our customers rely on our systems to deliver energy when they need it most. On the coldest day of the year in 2024, our gas system delivered roughly twice the energy as all the electricity systems in B.C. combined. This set a new peak demand record.

Peak demand in B.C.

*This includes the province-wide electricity systems. Sources: winter 21/22, winter 22/23, winter 23/24.

We’re taking action to increase our supply of energy to meet the province’s growing needs. In B.C.’s Southern Interior, we're exploring opportunities to increase our electricity energy supply, with a focus on wind projects that can directly connect to our electricity system.

We work closely with governments, emergency services, Indigenous communities and local partners to prepare for emergencies and extreme weather. In 2024, we ran 28 emergency exercises—including large-scale simulations—to strengthen our response.

With B.C.’s wildfire history, prevention and quick action are critical. Our Public Safety Power Shutoff policy is one of the tools we use to protect customers and communities during extreme wildfire conditions.

FortisBC crew repairing a fallen power line pole due to a storm in Kelowna.

We offer rebates for homes and businesses, while also giving customers information and options to help lower their energy bills, save energy and lower associated emissions. We are investing $690 million to help customers save 3.8 million gigajoules (GJ) of gas and 115 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity by the end of 2027.

In 2024, we invested a record amount in our energy-saving initiatives. This helped reduce our total customers’ emissions by 109,123 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.²

Another way to reduce energy use is through deep energy retrofits. These are upgrades to walls, windows, doors, insulation and heating systems in existing houses and buildings. We invested nearly $24 million in deep energy retrofit pilot projects in 2024, with the goal to reduce whole-building energy use by at least 50 per cent. One of the pilot participants—Forte, a 13-storey residential building in Vancouver—is expected to reduce its energy use by 58 per cent.³

Hawthorne Seniors Care Community in Port Coquitlam testing gas engine-driven heat pumps in commercial buildings, as part of our rebate and pilot programs.

We’re supporting the energy transition by investing in renewable and lower carbon gases.⁴ Renewable Natural Gas⁵ (RNG) is a lower carbon⁶ energy made from biogas produced by organic waste as it decomposes. Our suppliers capture and upgrade the biogas from sources like landfills, agricultural waste and wastewater treatment facilities to create RNG.

In 2024, we acquired 2.8 petajoules (PJ) of RNG for our customers, which is enough energy for more than 31,000 homes for a year.⁷

We believe that hydrogen—which emits no carbon dioxide when used for energy—can play a role in a lower carbon energy future and help support the province’s CleanBC strategy. We’re exploring the potential of hydrogen as a lower carbon energy source through research and pilot projects.

The transportation sector accounts for 42 per cent of total GHG emissions in B.C.⁸ This makes it a high priority to reduce emissions in this area. We offer customers renewable and lower carbon gas options like compressed natural gas (CNG), liquefied natural gas (LNG) and RNG. So far, we have helped convert more than 1,100 commercial vehicles to CNG.

We’re helping marine transportation customers have easier access to LNG.⁹ Using LNG at the Port of Vancouver instead of marine gas oil helps reduce air pollutants released from vessels in the Port of Vancouver airshed.¹⁰

In B.C.’s Southern Interior, demand for our electric vehicle (EV) charging network continues to grow. In 2024, drivers used our charging stations 43 per cent more than in 2023. Our 42 Direct Current Fast Charging stations saw just over 25,800 charging events that supplied 696,100 kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2024. That’s up from the 423,700 kWh of energy provided in 2023.

Number of charging events