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The electric utility company of the future will look much different than the utility company of today. At Pinnacle West our primary sustainability challenge lies in responding to this changing future to provide reliable and affordable energy service to our customers, while maintaining a high level of social responsibility, workplace performance and environmental stewardship. We realize we must maintain this level of performance while responding to issues such as global climate change. And as a regulated utility company, we must work cooperatively with our customers, Arizona and federal regulators, and our other key stakeholders in achieving the goal of a sustainable energy future for our customers and a successful business enterprise for our shareholders.
Despite the current economic slow down, our long-term projection for our service territory is for continued strong growth in both the number of customers and the amount of electricity used per customer. It took nearly 120 years for our company to add its one millionth customer. It will take a little more than 25 years to double that number. Detailed discussions on our projected growth and resource planning can be found in our Integrated Resource Plan at www.aps.com/resources.
By 2025, APS Customers and Electric Demand will nearly double
Our sustainability efforts are widespread and include efforts throughout our operations and in the communities we serve. We monitor and report on more than 200 different sustainability issues and associated metrics, which you will find throughout this report. All of these issues are important to us as part of our ongoing business operations. However, we have identified the following key issues as being particularly critical in responding to the challenge of a sustainable energy future at this time. These issues represent some of the greatest challenges, and competitive opportunities, for our company and industry, and each of these key issues is discussed in detail in this Corporate Responsibility Report.
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Climate Change
Climate change, and the move to a low carbon future, is one of the most critical issues facing the electric utility industry. The decisions we make in the near future will impact our customers and communities for decades to come.
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Integrated Resource Planning
The resource planning process plays an essential role in meeting future customer needs in an economic manner while minimizing impacts to the environment. The challenge is even greater for APS than for many other utilities due to the strong load growth that APS projects in the future. In planning for future resource needs, APS faces a number of challenges, including electric load growth, natural gas fuel price volatility, limited availability of regional generation capacity, transmission constraints, construction cost escalation and climate change issues.
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Demand Side Management and Energy Conservation
While we are taking many steps to reduce the environmental impact of energy generation and delivery, the other side of the equation is reducing the increasing demand for energy. We must help our customers understand and help implement ways to achieve energy conservation.
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Renewable Energy
Renewable energy is an crucial part of our energy future, helping to meet the challenge of climate change, while also being an important part of our fuel mix diversification. Done right, renewable energy can provide price stability and be a cost effective, reliable and non-polluting component of an utilities overall energy mix.
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Electric System Reliability
Providing reliable electrical service is vital to a successful utility company. There are many challenges to providing a high level of system reliability which APS meets in a number of different ways, including innovative new technologies that will help reshape the future of electric power.
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Customer Satisfaction
A high level of customer satisfaction is essential to our ongoing business success. In the face of rising energy costs, achieving high levels of customer satisfaction becomes even more challenging.
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Technology Innovation
Improvements in technology are necessary for us to meet evolving challenges, such as climate change and system reliability and efficiency. Future leaders in the utility industry must also be technology leaders. APS has an aggressive technology innovation effort that helps us meet these challenges.
- Employee Workforce development and maintenance
Our employees are our most critical asset in meeting our future challenges and achieving ongoing business success. Maintaining a safe workplace, and continuing to develop our workforce and meet the challenge of the retiring "boomer" generation is a critical sustainability issue for Pinnacle West.
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