In collaboration with the National Public Utilities Council, Visual Capitalist has released its Decarbonization Index, which tracks the comparative decarbonization progress of the 47 largest investor-owned utilities (IOUs) in the United States.
The index uses 2021 data (the most recently available at the time of collection), and the following six metrics to rank utilities:
- Fuel Mix: The share of low-carbon sources in a utility’s owned net electricity generation.
- CO2 Emissions Intensity: The amount of CO2 emitted per MW-hour of owned and purchased net electricity generation.
- Total CO2 Emissions: The absolute amount of CO2 emitted from owned and purchased net electricity generation.
- CO2 Emissions Per Customer: The amount of CO2 emitted per retail, commercial, and industrial customer served.
- Decarbonization Goals: An evaluation of the company’s interim greenhouse gas reduction and net-zero targets, with a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 and net-zero by 2050 as baseline targets.
- Low-Carbon investment: The share of planned capital expenditure for electricity generation dedicated to low-carbon sources.
The data for these metrics comes from company sustainability reports, quantitative ESG reporting templates from the Edison Electric Institute, and the Climate Disclosure Project’s Climate Change Questionnaire filings.
Rankings
The IOUs are scored on a scale of one to five for all six metrics, indicating whether they are trailing or leading compared to their peers. The utility’s final score is an average of all six metric scores. A score of five does not mean the utility has fully decarbonized, but rather the utility is leading compared to its peers.
| Rank | Company | Decarbonization score |
|---|---|---|
| #1 | Constellation Energy (Exelon) | 4.8 |
| #2 | Avangrid | 4.8 |
| #3 | Public Service Enterprise Group | 4.6 |
| #4 | Pacific Gas and Electric | 4.5 |
| #5 | Edison International (EIX) | 4.5 |
| #6 | Avista Utilities | 4.2 |
| #7 | NextEra Energy | 4.2 |
| #8 | Algonquin Power & Utilities | 4.0 |
| #9 | Puget Sound Energy (PSE) | 4.0 |
| #10 | Consolidated Edison | 3.9 |
Constellation took first place among the 47 IOUs, with 80% of its owned net electricity generation coming from nuclear power plants. The company also had the lowest CO2 emissions intensity of all utilities in the Index.
Avangrid ties for first place thanks to its low-carbon fuel mix and its decarbonization targets to achieve carbon neutrality in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030.
The full report is available here.
