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NEWS

Dec 2010 / Jan 2011 www.esb.ie/em

Corporate Business Continuity Forum

ESB’s CORPORATE Business Continuity Forum is comprised of business continuity co-ordinators from the business units and other contingency/crisis specialists. The forum, which is chaired by the Group BC Programme Manager, Cyril Loughlin, meets regularly to review progress and to plan various initiatives.

The October meeting was held off-site in the National Emergency Co-ordination Centre (NECC) in Kildare Street, Dublin. The NECC is a relatively new facility hthat was established as a key part of the Government’s evolving Major Emergency Management Framework (see www.mem.ie). ESB’s co-ordinators and guests were impressed with the accommodation and technology facilities on offer and gained a deeper appreciation of how a large-scale Irish incident would be managed.

Our thanks to the Office of Emergency Planning (Dept. of Defence) for being such welcoming hosts.

If you’d like to know more about Business Continuity in ESB please visit our Intranet site where you will find contact details for your local BC Co-ordinator.

John Campion hosts Japanese media visit to ESB ecars Project

ESB Executive Director for Sustainability John Campion hosted a visit of a group of journalists from Japan to ESB Head Office to meet with the engineering team responsible for the implementation of ESB’s ecars project. The media delegation was part of a Department of Foreign Affairs sponsored visit to Dublin. The group heard an overview of ESB’s renewable and ecar programmes and met with members of the ecars project team at Head Quarters.

Corporate Centre launches Sustainability Change Plan

At the Workshop. Back row (l–r): Tony Carroll, Sustainability Programme; Michelle Mullally, Group Internal Audit; Derek Fuller, ESB Energy International, Facilitator; Ronan Collier, Strategy & Governance; John Healy, Group Commercial & Risk; Steve Johnson, Corporate Centre Sustainability Manager; Lorraine Coffey, Group Legal); Mick Downey, Corporate Communications; Dave O’Dwyer, Group Finance and Justin Johnston, Treasury. Front row (l–r): Mary Collins, PIP; Fergal O’Donnell, Treasury; John McKiernan, Novus Modus; John O’Neill, Group HR; Colm Smyth, Partnership; Marion Quane, Group Finance and Kristin Quinn, Sustainability Programme.

IN NOVEMBER 2010, the Corporate Centre Sustainability Change Plan 2010–2012 was approved by the Executive Directors in Corporate Centre.

The plan is the product of a change workshop involving senior managers from across Corporate Centre. The workshop recognised that, “Corporate Centre has a unique role to play in helping to bring about the cultural transformation that is required to achieve our company’s strategic objectives”.

Leadership, brand, paper, waste, travel, energy, home and community were identified as areas where Corporate Centre could make a significant contribution to making ESB a truly sustainable company. The Sustainability Change Plan commits Corporate Centre to carrying out a number of key initiatives in these areas, including:

• Putting Sustainability Improvement Plans in place for each part of Corporate Centre.
• Including sustainability as a standard agenda item at staff meetings, covering areas such as STARS, the workplace travel plan and sustainability awards.
• Conducting peer audits of energy usage across all Corporate Centre locations.
• Ensuring that policy documents and other company-wide communications to staff are issued electronically to the greatest extent possible;
• Carrying out initiative to reduce amount of printing in Corporate Centre.
• Carrying out initiative to improve Corporate Centre staff usage of energy, water and waste in their homes.

Sustainability Report 2009 launched

ESB HAS PUBLISHED its Sustainability Report 2009. The report develops and extends previous ESB reports on environmental and corporate responsibility performance. Its purpose is to inform our key stake-holders in an understandable and meaningful way of our responses to those issues that will affect our longterm future and the way in which we will do business. To allow for comparison of our performance with that of other companies, we were guided by the general approach and principles set down by the Global Reporting Initiative.

This report primarily addresses performance in 2009, but also reflects some initiatives that started in 2008 and takes account of more recent organisational changes within ESB.

In their assessment of the report Business In the Community Ireland has said, “This report has many highlights; it is comprehensive in its content, gives an honest and balanced view of the challenges to achieving sustainability and provides a high degree of transparency into the activities of the ESB. The inclusion of the full results of employee surveys is very welcome in this regard and it points to an organisation that is mature and confident in itself in dealing with this great transformational challenge. We found the sections dealing with commitments made under the Sustainability Charter, the roll out of the HALO programme and the ongoing investments in renewables to be fascinating and exciting.”

The report provides information on ESB performance in respect of all aspects of corporate responsibility, in relation to the environment, working with communities, in the workplace and in the marketplace. The full report is available to view / download in PDF format from the company intranet and intranet sites. A limited number of summary reports will be available, on request, from stakeholders.