Entergy 2015 Annual Report Download - page 28

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28
Clear vision, clear progress.
2015 Integrated Report
Utility
SOCIAL
Many people live in poverty in the states served by our utilities. We created our low-income customer
assistance initiatives both to help our customers in need and to manage the financial risk to Entergy
when customers can’t pay their bills. The goals of these initiatives are to increase the flow of funds
from all sources to help low-income customers achieve economic self-sufficiency, to educate low-
income customers on managing their bills and to help low-income customers pay their bills. Through
fundraising and advocacy efforts in 2015, we helped our customers pay more than 200,000 bills, avoid
disconnections and reduce write-offs.
ENVIRONMENTAL
Our utilities own 21 GW of generation, 15,500 miles of transmission and 100,000 circuit miles of
distribution lines in the Gulf Coast region – susceptible to storms potentially made worse by coastal
wetlands loss. Entergy manages physical risks by storm-hardening of its transmission and distribution
system, technical conferences with customers on resilience, investment in emergency preparedness
and research into adaptation. For example, we are partnering with Tierra Resources to help restore
and preserve more of Louisiana’s wetlands through aerial planting of mangroves. Wetlands play a
crucial role in storm protection and economic prosperity for many Entergy communities. Entergy is
also engaged with The Lowlander Center to revisit the 2010 Building a Resilient Energy Gulf Coast
report and data, and the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Resilient Community Forums conducted
in 2011-2012 in partnership with America’s WETLAND Foundation. Recent reports and data on
businesses in coastal communities are being reviewed to ascertain the impacts of the previous
efforts, as well as to identify additional opportunities to promote resilience.
RECOGNITION
The Edison Electric Institute honored Entergy with the EEI Emergency Recovery Award and the
Emergency Assistance Award, recognizing outstanding power restoration efforts on behalf of our
customers and for assisting a neighboring utility company in recovering from severe summer
storms. This is the 18th consecutive year Entergy has received an EEI storm restoration award.
Including this year’s honor, Entergy has received 24 awards from EEI for our restoration and mutual
assistance work, and we are the only utility in the country to be recognized every year since the
inception of the awards.
ECONOMIC/ENVIRONMENTAL
We are benefiting our customers in our local communities through our online, self-service tools.
Self-serve transactions now represent 55 percent of our customers’ transactions. In 2015, we met
our target goal of approximately 450,000 customers opting for paper-free electronic billing, meeting
customers’ needs, reducing environmental impact and representing more than $13 million in
operational savings.