Major reduction in carbon emissions a key highlight of CitiPower and Powercor’s first Sustainability Report

Electricity distribution networks CitiPower and Powercor have reported a 17% decrease in their greenhouse gas emissions over the past four years as Victoria’s clean energy transformation escalates.

This result, as well as better than targeted performance in network reliability and safety, are highlights reported by the holding company, Victoria Power Networks in its 2022 Sustainability Report.

The reduction in emissions puts the networks on track to meet their 2030 target of achieving a 30% reduction compared to 2019 baseline levels.

The report, released today, provides broad information on action taken in 2022 for a variety of sustainability key performance indicators under four areas – safe and equitable workplaces, environmental and climate resilience, empowering communities and responsible governance.

CitiPower and Powercor Chief Executive Officer, Tim Rourke, said the networks are making good progress on their sustainability commitments to customers, employees, shareholders and the communities we operate within.

“Expectations for our performance are changing, particularly as our communities experience the impacts of climate change,” Mr Rourke said.

“We are taking the actions needed to reduce our impact on climate change and mitigate the impact of extreme weather events on the network for our customers and their communities.”

The major contributor to CitiPower and Powercor’s carbon emissions is distribution line losses, which represent the energy lost as heat as electricity moves across the network.

Reductions in emissions from line losses over time reflect the increasing volume of renewable and distributed energy sources.

As at the end of 2022, there was 2.5 gigawatts of renewable energy generation directly connected to the CitiPower and Powercor networks. This included 208,000 household rooftop solar systems and more than 50 large-scale solar and wind farms.

In October 2022, parts of Victoria experienced record-breaking floods that affected power supply, while in 2021 two major storm events impacted large parts of our networks.

“The forecasts for more frequent extreme weather events are influencing our approach to asset management, maintenance and construction and we’re always working to minimise impacts of these types of events on our customers,” Mr Rourke said.

Not including major weather events, Powercor customers experienced 99.97% reliability of electricity supplies with 121 minutes off supply on average, below our 2026 target of 124 minutes.

CitiPower customers experienced 99.99% reliability, or an average of 15 minutes off supply during the year, below our 2026 target of 24.7 minutes.

The 2022 Sustainability Report is available at Sustainability | CitiPower & Powercor.

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Installed capacity by renewable generation type, 2022

Installed renewable generation, 2019-2022 (GW)