NEW ORLEANS, April 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Entergy
Corporation (NYSE: ETR) today announced its 2020 Integrated Report,
an annual overview of the company's performance and a detailed look
at its continuing actions to build the premier utility and power
life for its customers and communities.
Report highlights Entergy's preparedness to deliver critical
services despite the unprecedented challenges in 2020
"The energy we supplied in 2020 was essential and
life-sustaining," said Leo Denault,
chairman and CEO of Entergy Corporation. "Our customers rely on us
to energize their homes and businesses while we help power the
health and well-being of our communities. Everything we set out to
accomplish is firmly grounded in our commitment to deliver
long-term, sustainable value to all our stakeholders. We believe
that is more important now than ever."
The report, titled "Forward Together," reflects on 2020 as an
extraordinary year in which Entergy's 13,400 dedicated employees
delivered critical services for its customers and communities in
the midst of unprecedented challenges: the COVID-19 pandemic,
social and political unrest and the largest restoration workforce
mobilization in the company's history during a record-breaking
storm season. The report also details the company's commitment to
providing reliable, affordable and increasingly clean energy, while
creating a more sustainable future for Entergy's customers,
employees, communities and owners.
Key indicators of our 2020 performance include:
- Leading in the recovery. Our comprehensive business
continuity plan allowed us to lean in and play an essential role in
helping our customers and communities manage through and recover
from the COVID-19 pandemic. Employees quickly adapted to new
working arrangements, with much of our workforce telecommuting.
Field employees and others, for whom telecommuting was not an
option, were equipped with tools and resources to ensure their
safety while keeping electric power and gas flowing for customers.
We also temporarily suspended service disconnections for nearly a
year and designed flexible payment plans for our customers.
- Starting with the customer. Reliable power at the
flip of a switch is just the beginning of our relationship with
customers. We are striving to understand the outcomes that
customers need in their personal lives, in their manufacturing
plants and in their retail businesses. We are developing new
customer solutions, including customer-sited backup generation and
beneficial electrification opportunities, that match our customers'
desired outcomes and make their lives better.
- Leading on environmental stewardship. Entergy is
actively working toward a carbon-free future. We outperformed by 8%
our ten-year voluntary climate pledge to reduce carbon emissions by
20% below 2000 levels. Our utility carbon emission rate has
decreased approximately 37% since 2000. We enhanced our climate
action strategy in 2020 with a commitment to reducing carbon
emissions to net-zero by 2050. As part of this plan, we are
partnering with Mitsubishi Power to develop emerging technologies
and explore the use of hydrogen as a realistic generation
resource.
- Investing productively. We are investing in the
future for the benefit of our customers. We provided power and
natural gas safely, reliably and efficiently, while also making
significant investments in distribution, generation and
transmission systems to improve customer outcomes and drive
customer solutions. We also spent in excess of $1.1 billion in 2020 with more than 5,200 local
and diverse suppliers.
- Empowering our workforce. Our relentless focus on
safety placed us in top-decile safety performance when benchmarked
against industry peers. Despite new preventive safety measures, the
pandemic's challenges did not stop our employees from raising our
five-year total for volunteer service to more than 500,000 hours.
We also achieved near top-quartile results in our annual
organizational health index while navigating the challenges of a
new remote work environment for many employees.
- Including everyone. Our people and our culture are
critical to our success. Building a diverse, inclusive culture
where every employee belongs and contributes is imperative to
building the premier utility. It's a culture that makes us more
competitive and closely aligns us with the needs of the communities
we serve.
- Being a great community partner. Our success is
inextricably tied to the success of the communities we serve. Our
generous shareholders contributed nearly $19
million in philanthropic grants and community support last
year, including more than $3.3
million for COVID-19 pandemic relief and $1.3 million for hurricane and disaster relief.
Working with our community partners, our social initiatives
delivered $115 million in benefits to
our communities in 2020 and, despite the challenges imposed by the
pandemic, our employees and retirees still managed to contribute
more than 95,000 volunteer service hours to a variety of charitable
causes.
- Delivering financial results for shareholders. Our
economic objective is to produce steady, predictable growth in
earnings and dividends. Our strong financial results in 2020 proved
our ability, in the face of adversity, to deliver on our
commitments. We are well-positioned for continued value creation
that benefits all our stakeholders.
- Never stop improving. Our utility companies provide
power to customers at some of the lowest retail rates in the
country, and we're on a journey to continuously optimize our
business. We successfully lowered our 2020 operations and
maintenance expenses by approximately $150
million, which exceeded our $100
million cost-savings target. By working smarter and more
efficiently, we invest more for our customers, resulting in even
higher levels of service and reliability without significantly
affecting their bills.
This is the eighth year that Entergy has published an integrated
report. Entergy was the first U.S. electric utility to voluntarily
combine its annual shareholder report with its sustainability
report in 2013. Today, the company is one of only a few leading
U.S. companies to consolidate these reports into a single
integrated report that documents the company's advancements in
energy and innovation, sustainability and environmental
stewardship, and social responsibility and community investments.
This report also details how Entergy's strategies are aligned with
the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which were
adopted in 2015 as a blueprint to achieving a better and more
sustainable future for all.
View the 2020 Integrated Report and learn how Entergy powers
life for all its stakeholders at integratedreport.entergy.com.
About Entergy Corporation
Entergy Corporation is an integrated energy company engaged in
electric power production, transmission and retail distribution
operations. Entergy delivers electricity to 3 million utility
customers in Arkansas,
Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Entergy owns and operates one of the
cleanest large-scale U.S. power generating fleets with
approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity,
including 8,000 megawatts of nuclear power. Headquartered in
New Orleans, Louisiana, Entergy
has annual revenues of $10 billion
and more than 13,000 employees. Learn more at entergy.com and
follow @Entergy on social media.
Forward-Looking Information
Entergy's statements concerning its environmental plans, goals,
beliefs and expectations, including statements regarding its
greenhouse gas reduction goals, and other statements of Entergy's
plans, beliefs, or expectations included in this presentation are
"forward-looking statements" which apply only as of the dates
indicated. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of
risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual
results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in
such forward-looking statements, including, among other things,
uncertainties associated with regulatory proceedings and other cost
recovery mechanisms, operation and relicensing of nuclear
facilities, major storms and other catastrophic events, risks
associated with executing on our business strategies, effects of
changes in laws, regulations or policies, the effects of
technological change, including the costs, pace of development and
commercialization of new and emerging technologies, uncertainties
and other factors discussed in Entergy's most recent Annual Report
on Form 10-K and subsequent reports and filings made under the
Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
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SOURCE Entergy Corporation