Duke Energy Corporation - ESG Overview Report, 2021

Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) at Duke Energy Corporation

The policies that impact environment, social, and governance, which are made by the companies, involving the consumers and the governments, is shaping the current trend in investments in an unprecedented manner.

Being a key leader in the energy industry, Duke Energy Corporation, is motivated by the idea of sustainability and has continued to promote eco-friendly products and empowering business operations through environmentally friendly methods of operations. In regard to this, Duke had made policies that define its core ethical values of governance, striving to make a positive impact in all the three areas of ESG and closely aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) to assess ESG impact.

Depletion of natural resources as well as the need for sustainable and renewable energy sources, has led the company to adapt to sustainable technologies and policies.

Key Trends

 Duke Energy Corporation creates a positive impact in terms of the environment, social and governance spheres by making effective policies and strategies. Being one of the key companies of the energy industry, it has created impact in terms of ESG, through promoting renewable energy sources products and services.

Since 2005, the company has reduced its carbon dioxide  emissions by 50%, sulfur dioxide emissions by 98% and nitrogen dioxide emissions around 83% generated from the electricity generation. The above gases are contributors the global warming and climate change and by reducing the emissions from the electricity generation, the company is promoting United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of climate action (SDG13).

The company has provided electric rates lesser than that of U.S nations average price, reducing the barrier and creating access to the renewable energy for all the customers (corporates and individuals) since past seven years thereby promoting affordability. Further the company has remained as one of the top leaders of the company in terms of safety with a total incident case rate of 0.33% which shows the company’s focus on employee health and safety.

Duke has incorporated policies regarding risk management, cybersecurity and code of ethics, which mandates the employees of the corporation to engage and adhere to ethical code. The company has mandated all the employees to compulsorily complete training in ethics and compliance and mandates all the employees to go through ethics refresher training program annually, reflecting the core ethics of the company, thereby promoting the UNSDG goals of institutions for peace and justice (SDG16).

Future of the Duke Energy Corporation

In 2021, the Duke Energy Corporation’s revenue was USD 25 billion. Being one of the key leaders of the energy industry, Duke has made initiatives and policies that create positive impact on environment and society in parallel and these policies reflect the core values of the Duke Energy Corporation.