Decreasing the amount of fossil fuels Hydro One’s vehicle fleet consumes will help us to reduce our overall carbon footprint. That is why we are planning to convert 50% of our fleet of sedans and SUVs to electric vehicles or hybrids by 2025. We are also developing a GHG metric tracker to better monitor carbon dioxide emissions and we are working to reduce the number of vehicles we use. In fact, since 2017 we have removed 1,200 vehicles from our fleet.

Hydro One is actively exploring building automation technologies to help reduce our overall energy consumption. These technologies could ultimately make our facilities’ energy use carbon neutral, extend the life of our assets and reduce our costs.

In 2019, our Real Estate team began piloting new sustainable energy management solutions for potential deployment across our facilities. Hydro One’s Connected Buildings Pilot is testing a new web portal at four Hydro One sites – Perth, Sudbury, Markham and Barrie – that uses enhanced web-enabled thermostats, sensors and controllers to allow for real-time monitoring of electricity consumption and performance at these buildings. This remote-control command system generates automatic alerts should there be excessive energy consumption in building heating and cooling systems, baseboards, lighting panels or main building service.

In 2020, the pilot is running in Perth and Sudbury and initial results indicate the system is generating savings and insights on GHG emission reductions. The pilots in Markham and Barrie are in process but delayed due to COVID-19.