As I engage with our team on various initiatives, I am often struck by their excitement. Our people are filled with ideas and always looking for ways to turn those ideas into reality. It is clear to me that LS Power has never been more motivated and focused on our mission: to make lives better by developing a cleaner, more reliable, and affordable energy ecosystem.
In the face of extreme weather events caused or intensified by climate change, we must work to source energy more sustainably while ensuring we continue to provide the essential energy necessary for our modern lives in a reliable and affordable manner.
This is no small feat.
Fortunately, LS Power is driven by people who thrive on figuring out tough problems. In fact, this drive animates our purpose: to solve complex energy problems that improve the world.
We continued doing just that in 2022.
In the quest towards a clean energy future, our nation requires a significant buildout of physical infrastructure as well as robust economic policies that spur investment into the sector to advance decarbonization and make it sustainable for the long term. LS Power’s rare combination of expertise across development, operations, and investment in power and energy offers a unique perspective and ability to accelerate decarbonization thoughtfully. That’s why LS Power is working on multiple fronts to ensure we have sufficient resources for an energy transition that is reliable, accessible, and affordable.
In 2022, we acquired several power generation assets, including a portfolio of 41 hydroelectric facilities located across 11 states and a gas-fired generation project in Ohio. Our renewables portfolio expanded to 3,073 MW, enough to power more than 753,000 homes purely with clean energy resources. Our overall operating portfolio increased to 17,000 MW, capable of powering nearly 4.3 million homes through a combination of renewables, energy storage, and flexible natural gas that will provide affordable and reliable energy throughout the energy transition.
LS Power continually works to find ways to make our operating projects more efficient, thereby reducing emissions wherever possible. Through 2022, assets directly under LS Power’s operational control avoided a net 93.2 million metric tons of CO2e.
We also expanded our portfolio of industry leading Energy Transition Platforms through investment and acquisition. CPower, which helps customers monetize their distributed energy resources (DER), expanded to over 17,000 customer sites and now manages 6.3 GW of DER capacity, creating virtual power plants across America that help strengthen the grid when and where it is needed most. Additionally, Rise Light and Power advanced initiatives to replace its fossil fuel generators with renewables and create a gateway for offshore wind while retraining existing workers, transforming the site into a renewable energy hub. As the largest energy provider to one of the world’s largest economies, Rise Light and Power’s transition to renewable energy is critical to advancing clean energy goals not just for New York, but also for our nation.
New transmission is the essential backbone to a carbon neutral economy that will rely heavily on wind and solar generation that is more prevalent in remote areas. Thanks to our talented Transmission team’s dedication and ingenuity, LS Power was awarded two more projects that will help integrate new renewable resources, including one to develop and operate over 100 miles of new transmission that will bring clean wind energy to the people of Maine and neighboring states.
Perhaps our most important initiative, however, is our ongoing investment in a new generation of leaders in the energy industry. Besides adding more internships and training programs, each year we enlarge our recruitment pool to search for qualified candidates from traditionally underrepresented groups and educational backgrounds, as well as veterans. As part of this effort, LS Power is honored to join the White House Infrastructure Talent Pipeline Challenge, an effort that includes more than 350 organizations to create quality jobs in critical sectors like power and energy.
To further support future leaders in energy, LS Power contributed over $400,000 in 2022 to youth and education programs including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Our philanthropic initiatives are driven by employees empowered to support the organizations they care about the most. Through this work, LS Power contributed more than $1.7 million and over 400 volunteer hours in 2022 to food banks, crisis centers, youth and STEM programs, environmental programs, and more.
LS Power’s ranks expanded to ~315 people, a net increase of 45% since 2019. As we continue to grow as an organization, we are committed to maintaining our high retention rate. As of 2022, 25% of our people have surpassed the 10-year milestone and 10 people have been with LS Power for more than 20 years. I am grateful to each of them for helping to create the kind of culture where both people and ideas can thrive, and in turn, help us build a successful company for the long term.
2022 also marked an important extension of our commitment to responsible investing with a formal statement in support of human rights in our policies. LS Power is committed to being a responsible corporate citizen and we strive to uphold global standards for responsible business activities, including the freedom to bargain collectively and believe in the elimination of modern slavery.
Beyond finding ways to make our projects and investments more sustainable, it is also important to look internally. Driven by the suggestions of a dedicated group of employees, we established the Office of Environmental Impact Team (OEIT) to develop long-term solutions for sustainable operations within our corporate offices and project facilities. In June 2022, OEIT kicked off multiple campaigns to cultivate a company-wide culture of corporate, social and personal environmental responsibility. In just six short months, their efforts led to a more than 40% drop in our consumption of single-use items and a more than 20% drop in our consumption of plastic bottles and aluminum cans.
Looking ahead, I am more excited than ever about the opportunities for LS Power to help shape a sustainable future. There is a tremendous amount of work to do and I am thankful to everyone at LS Power for their contributions and impact every day. Relying on and supporting each other to amplify our individual impact is how we make every success a team success.