Sustainability is a core driver of our strategic thinking at FortisBC. We want the decisions we make to improve the long-term success of our company and our ability to provide energy to British Columbia today and into the future.
Our sustainability framework lays out the priority areas we need to consistently address to be successful. We must serve the evolving needs and preferences of our customer base and continue to expand our offerings while maintaining our infrastructure and providing appropriate financial return for our shareholders. Our decisions must also be guided by a commitment to support the communities where we operate and live. We must consider the needs of our workforce by seeking ways to enrich their careers and build an inclusive workplace that brings the full potential of different individuals to bear on the challenges of tomorrow. And of course, we have an obligation as the province’s largest energy provider to advance an energy system that is cleaner and affordable.
Ensuring our customers have the energy they need
Last year marked another successful year for FortisBC. We continued to grow our customer base, gaining 13,600 new natural gas and electricity customers throughout the province, including the addition of the Ts-ouke Nation as a new community we serve. Everything we do has our customer at its centre. We’re in the business of providing the energy our customers need in ways that are reliable, affordable and meet their individual priorities. A key part of this is ensuring our delivery infrastructure is capable and dependable. Last year, we completed the gas line construction of our Lower Mainland gas line upgrades – a project that ensures the safe and reliable delivery of natural gas to more than 210,000 customers.
For our electricity customers in the Southern Interior, we’ve continued to upgrade and modernize our hydroelectric power facilities, with work continuing at both our Corra Linn and Upper Bonnington dams. These upgrades will ensure decades of clean electricity for homes and businesses across the Okanagan and Kootenays.
Strengthening communities through collaboration
Helping communities prosper is critical for the future of both the province and our company. We understand that when communities have the opportunity to thrive, every individual benefits and British Columbia becomes stronger. That’s why last year we continued to invest funds, hours of collaboration and the time and effort of our employees in communities we serve.
In 2019, we awarded three organizations with our annual Community Giving Fund grants, gifting $15,000 each to Hulitan Family and Community Services Society in Langford, the Parent Advisory Council of Len Wood Middle School in Spallumcheen and the West Creston Fire Protection Society. And while I’m proud of our donations to these worthwhile organizations, I’m even prouder of the contributions of our people. Our Community Giving Days program sees our employees working with community organizations to make a direct positive change – whether it’s making traditional drums with the Beecher Bay Youth Drum Group or helping to landscape the grounds at a seniors’ residence in Coquitlam with the SHARE Family and Community Services Society.
Last year also marked another year of successes working directly with municipalities to help them improve energy efficiency and lower energy costs. Through initiatives like our Climate Action Partners program, we’re helping towns and cities across BC accomplish their climate action goals. Working with the City of Surrey, we brought forward energy solutions that will eliminate more than 154 tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions annually. In Kelowna, we worked with the City to replace old high-pressure sodium streetlights with energy-efficient LEDs and provided the single largest rebate to a municipality in our history of $670,000. This is money well spent as the switch is expected to save the City an estimated $16 million over the next 15 years.1
Taking bold steps to reduce emissions
Looking to the future, we rolled out a bold new target to reduce GHG emissions in 2019. In the fall, we announced our 30BY30 target – an ambitious direction to reduce our customers’ emissions by 30 per cent by the year 2030. Building on the momentum of our Clean Growth Pathway strategy and the province’s CleanBC program, we will pursue aggressive reductions in GHG emissions through:
- pursuing greater energy efficiency through rebates and innovative technology
- increasing the amount of carbon neutral renewable gases in our infrastructure to 15 per cent of our supply
- investing heavily in no- and low-carbon transportation, including building out the province’s electric vehicle charging network and promoting compressed natural gas as a lower emission option for medium and heavy duty vehicles
- working towards establishing British Columbia as an international liquefied natural gas (LNG) hub, both for marine shipping and export
The future of British Columbia is a greener one and we are committed to being a part of it. While 30BY30 may be ambitious, it is only the first step towards even deeper reductions in GHG emissions. We appreciate this is an ambitious target that will take significant effort to achieve, but we believe focusing on environmental action is a necessity for our business.
Empowering employees to solve the challenges of tomorrow
Undertaking initiatives of this scope are impossible without dedicated and talented people making it happen. We proudly employ more than 2,400 British Columbians across the province and we strive to create a workplace where each of them can bring their full talents to bear. In 2019, we joined other Fortis companies in taking steps toward creating a more inclusive and diverse workplace. We know that creating a more diverse workforce will provide new perspectives to help solve the challenges of tomorrow and that developing a more inclusive work culture will empower employees with the opportunity and confidence to bring those solutions forward. A great move forward last year was hiring our first dedicated Indigenous talent specialist who works primarily on finding opportunities for Indigenous candidates to help bring their important viewpoints into the organization. We invest billions of dollars in the province but I believe the investment we are making in our people and in our culture may be the most important moving forward. I’m excited to see the changes 2020 brings as we start to advance inclusion and diversity training across the organization.
Sustainability in all we do
While being a more sustainable company clearly involves a lot of hard work, understanding how we ensure sustainability is much easier. Our sustainability framework mirrors our corporate values and lays out the cornerstones of enduring success for FortisBC. Looking out for our customers. Partnering with municipalities and Indigenous communities for mutual benefit. Investing in our employees. Protecting the environment. These are the things that we base our approach to sustainability around and how we work – every single day.
We are proud to present to you our 2019 corporate and sustainability report and demonstrate how FortisBC is succeeding today while preparing for tomorrow.
Roger Dall’Antonia
President and CEO
FortisBC