ComEd – as part of a longstanding effort to advance equity in the communities it serves – announced it spent $963 million, or 43% of its total supply chain spend, with businesses owned by women, people of color, and veterans in 2022. And this brings the spend with diversity-certified suppliers since 2012 to $7.4 billion. To also maintain its commitment to local investment, ComEd spent $651 million of its total diverse spend last year with Illinois-based suppliers.
The company’s commitment to further increase its spending with diversity-certified suppliers also aligns with the performance targets adopted by the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) in September 2022 and is reflected in its multi-year grid and rate plans filed with the ICC in January to strengthen the region’s infrastructure and economy and increase access to the benefits of clean energy and decarbonization.
In a 2022 report submitted to the ICC, ComEd detailed its partnership with 650 diversity-certified suppliers, including 159 new partnerships. And diverse suppliers support departments and workstreams across ComEd, including construction, engineering, and materials, among others. The diversity-certified suppliers also play key roles in ComEd programs to help customers reduce their energy use and costs, which are expanding as a result of increased funding from the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act of 2021.
ComEd’s report had profile several diverse-owned business partners like Intren LLC. And the Illinois-based contractor supports many ComEd initiatives, including the interconnection of community solar projects, which are expected to double in northern Illinois to over 150 by the end of this year. Once known as the largest woman-owned utility specialty contractor in the nation, Intren was acquired in 2021 by MasTec, the nation’s second-largest Hispanic-owned company with over 20,000 employees in North America.
Illinois utility companies’ spending with diversity-certified suppliers contributed $11.8 billion to the Illinois GDP from 2017-2020, with $4 billion in purchases from Illinois-based diverse businesses, according to the Illinois Utilities Business Diversity Council (IUBDC) – which was formed in 2015 to help utilities establish and share best practices for diverse supplier participation and development. The members include Ameren Illinois, Aqua, ComEd, Illinois American Water, Nicor Gas, North Shore Gas, and Peoples Gas.
ComEd is a unit of Chicago-based Exelon Corporation, a Fortune 200 energy company with about 10 million electricity and natural gas customers – the largest number of customers in the U.S. ComEd powers the lives of over 4 million customers across northern Illinois or 70% of the state’s population.
KEY QUOTES:
“Recognizing the important and growing role that diversity-certified suppliers play in meeting the needs of our customers and making their communities stronger, we will increase our diverse spend to 45% of our total supply chain spend by 2028. We believe investing in businesses owned by people of color, women, and veterans is essential to creating an equitable clean energy transition.”
– Gil Quiniones, CEO, ComEd
“We are proud of our continued partnership with ComEd and our work towards increasing the number of local and diverse-owned businesses who can provide energy-efficiency services to ComEd customers. Energy efficiency is key to fighting climate change and facilitating decarbonization, and we look forward to supporting ComEd efforts to create business opportunities for diverse suppliers in this important sector.”
– Carla Walker-Miller, CEO of Walker-Miller Energy Services, which recently opened an office in Oakbrook, Illinois, to support diversity-certified supplier development in northern Illinois
