Affordability
This year, we extended the reach of our Operational Excellence (OpEx) initiative by taking a strategically aligned approach to drive a longer-term view of where we’ll allocate our resources to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Our Strategic Investment Plan, with 3-, 5- and 10-year projections, is helping determine where we need to ramp up, hold steady or ramp down to achieve our strategic goals.
We continued to focus on specific OpEx initiatives across the enterprise. In fact, 139 OpEx initiatives resulted in a combination of one-time and ongoing cost savings of about $50 million.
To bolster our commitment to environmental sustainability within our investor base, we sold $630 million of bonds that were certified as Green Bonds.
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We executed contracts for the grants we won in 2023, including $50 million from the Department of Energy’s Grid Resilience and Innovative Partnerships (GRIP) program for our Connected Clean PowerCity® application, $2.9 million from the California Energy Commission (CEC) through its FAST Grant to enable modernization of DC fast chargers at the Sacramento Airport and Amtrak station and $5 million from the CEC grant REACH 2.0 to install 400 charging handles in multifamily housing in under-resourced communities.
Continuing our commitment to our community, we prioritized SMUD’s financial health. Strong credit ratings, operational efficiencies and external funding have all helped us make our rates among the lowest in California, keeping about $1.8 billion in our customers’ pockets in 2024.