Launched in 2007 as part of our further commitment to our community, E.ON SOURCE supported the development of efficient and sustainable energy measures for community organisations. It was replaced in 2009 by E.ON Sustainable Energy Fund as part of our further commitment to our community. E.ON Sustainable Energy Fund supports the development of efficient and sustainable energy measures for community organisations. http://www.eon-uk.com/about/sustainableenergyfund.aspx.

We’ve been actively integrating into the communities closest to our Robin Rigg offshore wind farm and Workington, where the team running the wind farm is based. We've donated funds towards the E.ON Spirit of Maryport life boat (named after a competition in the local area) and helped to raise funds for the RNLI. We also sponsored and got involved with the Paint the Town Red Festival- the largest free festival in the history of Workington.

In 2008 we submitted a planning application for our second biomass power station, at Blackburn Meadows in Sheffield. Throughout the process we made sure that the local community was kept informed and had the opportunity to give us feedback on our proposals.

Alongside our consultation process we were also involved with local community events, such as Sheffield is My Planet and the Tinsley fun day. These were particularly successful because they allowed us to access a broad spectrum of stakeholders in an informal environment.

Our Public Safety and Cablesafe provide a free safety advisory service for people whose work and leisure activities may bring them within close proximity to our distribution network. http://www.eon-uk.com/distribution/369.aspx.

We’re the only Distribution Network to operate two Power Discovery Zone trucks that visit schools across our distribution region free of charge to teach children about the dangers of electricity. We also provide a dedicated interactive website for primary School children.

The E.ON Energy Experience education programme is an innovative and interactive portfolio of primary and secondary school resources which help young people aged 5-16 understand the different sources of energy, their relative merits and what their future energy choices will mean in term of climate change, locally, nationally and globally. www.eon-uk.com/eneryexperience.

Through our Energy for Children Centre programme we to give investment and support to a small number primary schools. Each is given priority access to all relevant initiatives.

In February 2008, our Engineering Academy hosted four ‘Women Into Engineering’ (WIE) events at Tipton and Ratcliffe training centres. Every secondary school in our distribution region was invited to send up to four female pupils to experience life as a craftsperson and get ‘hands on’ with some of the typical duties carried out on a day-to-day basis in the field.

Linked to the need for improving the pipeline of talent joining our organisation, in November of 2007 a Government funded Young Apprenticeship programme was launched. Twelve 14 year-old students from two schools within our area began a two-year, 50-day Young Apprenticeship.

Following its launch in 2006, we were the first and remain the only DNO to offer live network information on our website: http://www.eon-uk.com/distribution/powercutmap.aspx

After carrying out market research amongst our ethnic minority customers, we’ve distributed a range of information leaflets to 30 Asian community centres across our region and have also advertised in a prominent Asian newspaper, to ensure our Asian customers are aware of who to contact in the event of a power cut.

Customers who require priority assistance during a power cut and/or have special requirements when communicating with us remain of paramount importance to us. We’ve set up two telephone numbers for our Priority Service customers, to contact us on. We also carry out proactive outbound calling during power cuts to offer information, help and advice.

We continue a doorstep crime prevention initiative aimed at our older, infirm and vulnerable customers, outlining what can be done to stay safe in their own homes and prevent being tricked by bogus callers.

Colleagues are encouraged to use our internal blog sites as well as join in the debate on our Talking Energy You Tube channel and take part in regular Changing Energy sessions which give them the chance to question senior managers including the CEO on our strategy choices.

We have a quarterly PRIDE survey which monitors our employee satisfaction and gives people the chance to question us on our approaches as well as highlight areas for improvement.

We’re members of key renewable trade associations, such as BWEA and SRF and participate in a number of groups such as the BEWA Economics and Markets Group and the AEP Renewable Energy Committee. We aim to play a leading role in driving consultation on major issues.

We’ve joined other global energy groups and international technology and engineering companies in becoming a full corporate member of the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI). The ETI is an important Government initiative supported by public funding and industrial bodies and aims to accelerate the innovation, development and commercial deployment of technologies in which investment could reach £1 billion over 10 years.

We are part of The Energy Research Partnership (ERP) a high-level forum, bringing together key funders of energy research and innovation from Government, industry, academia and others, to give strategic direction to UK energy innovation.

In engaging with the zero carbon agenda we have worked closely with the UK Green Building Council (UK GBC) as part of their Zero Carbon Task Group. We have also engaged closely with our industry peers to ensure consensus on the energy supply perspective.

We area member of the Safety, Health and Environment committee of the Energy Network Association which is committed ensuring the UK's energy networks are the safest, most reliable, most efficient and sustainable in the world.

We’re part of The National Joint Utilities Group, a UK industry association representing utilities on street works issues. The 38 companies deliver gas, electricity, water and telecommunications to both individual consumers and UK plc. The Group’s vision is based on safety, avoiding damage to underground assets, and working in partnership with local authorities to minimise disruption and deliver consistent high quality, to maximise the use of sustainable methods and materials and for street works in the UK to be regarded as world class.

We are active members of COCAA, the Carbon Monoxide Consumer Awareness Alliance, which is an industry working group, including any fuel burning organisations and our aim is to make people better aware of the dangers of CO.

We’ve met with wide range of NGOs, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and new players such as Christian Aid, Oxfam and the WI to discuss their position on climate change.

We’ve discussed Renewables with Friends of the Earth. The group agreed to endorse our Humber Wind project and host an online petition.

E.ON board executives presented at ‘Climate Clinic’ an NGO sponsored event at each party political.

We met with World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) in January 2008 and have collaborated with WWF on CCS Research.

Our Chief Executive Paul Golby met with the Chief Scientist and CEO of Greenpeace to discuss joint lobbying on CHP.

We’ve had discussions with the RSPB on the development of our marine offshore wind proposals and mitigating the risks to diving birds.

We met with the charity Christian Aid to discuss carbon capture and storage. The charity had a postcard campaign against us- we replied to all emails. Christian Aid agreed to host on their website an exchange of emails between Paul Golby and their Senior Climate Change Advisor. http://www.christianaid.org.uk/ActNow/Opinion/Kingsnorth_emails.aspx    

We have a working relationship with the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service (WRVS) to provide assistance to as many vulnerable customers as possible in the event of a power cut.

At Grain, where we’re building a new gas-fired power station, we work closely with Natural England, the Environment Agency and Medway Council to ensure that the site’s wildlife is fully protected. For example, we have completed environmental impact assessments for two protected species - water voles and great crested newts.

Following a Carbon Trust Audit across seven sites, we’ve upgraded the building management system at our HQ in Coventry to enable the control of lighting, and the air conditioning times to fit more closely with working patterns.

To ensure that we continue to meet the diverse needs of our customers, we’ve worked closely with the RNIB to produce a bespoke training package for all frontline customer-facing colleagues, exploring the issues faced by blind and visually impaired customers when interacting with our distribution business, as well as offering communication advice.

Our partnership with English Heritage will enable both parties to work together on a wide range of initiatives to better understand how the historic environment can inform the way we build for tomorrow, promote advice to customers on how to adapt their homes in the face of changing climate and make them energy efficient.

To ensure that we continue to identify as many customers as possible who could benefit from being included on our Priority Service Register, we’ve established a working partnership with Air Products, a regional oxygen distributor which provide oxygen equipment to over 95% of oxygen users in our region.

Following a significant increase in the number of foreign farmers working in our region, we recognised the need for our leaflets to be translated into the most widely used languages in our rural areas. Through our partnership with the East Midlands Language Agency, in addition to the wide range of foreign language leaflets previously available, we have produced our ‘Farming Safely: Advice about agricultural activities near overhead power lines’ literature in languages including Russian, Romanian, polish, Turkish and Latvian.

We’ve been working with Age Concern for 10 years to support our vulnerable customers through different initiatives such as EnergyRight our Age Concern Cold Weather payments.

We’ve also continued to collaborate with social enterprise, Action Sustainability, to explore more ways to consider social aspects of our supply chain for the wider community through considerate purchasing.

We are members of the Energy Institute (EI), the leading chartered professional membership body for those working in energy. We’ve been working with them on a range of projects including carbon capture and storage.

We’ve awarded grants totalling £4.2m to two university consortia, along with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the main UK Government agency for technical and scientific R&D funding. The projects aim to help people reduce their domestic carbon emissions with low-energy technologies for use in the home.

We’ve responded to Government consultations and continue to talk with key stakeholders, such as the Department of Climate Change, to look at how to address challenges such as planning and transmission related issues.

We provide funding to the Cambridge Electricity Policy Forum which supports world class academic research into energy policy.

Last year, we launched our Carbon Cost and Consequences Manifesto which provided the impetus for a public debate about the energy crisis facing the UK and the solutions available. We've worked to engage our key external stakeholders with our key messages included in the Carbon, Cost and Consequences Manifesto. This involved presentations to MPs and visits to the House of Lords. Since the Manifesto was launched, we’ve been busy sharing these key messages and encouraging the debate with key external stakeholders.

We've funded the ‘Green Alliance’ Think Tank, an independent organisation working to make environmental solutions a priority in British politics. We've contributed funding to their programme of work 07-09 on Climate Change.

We are part of a joint industry/university partnership, including Rolls Royce plc and the University of Nottingham, being funded by the Government to develop new low carbon energy technologies. Through the Technology Strategy Boar (TSB), £8 million is being spent on researching 14 separate projects to accelerate the development of new low carbon energy technologies, making them available within three to five years.

We’re members of the ‘Coal Forum’, a non-advisory body set up as an arena to discuss issues facing the industry, and have been working with them on Carbon Capture and Storage.

We are a member of PRASEG, the Associate Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group, the cross party group for UK politicians and senior industry stakeholders that exists to promote sustainable energy issues in Parliament and the wider political community.

We write quarterly to every MP in our distribution region to update them on the ongoing activities of our distribution business.

We will continue our collaboration with external stakeholders specialising in sustainable supply chains to increase opportunities in this area for us to reduce waste and increase re-use, and recycling. We are involving Government- funded (DEFRA and BERR) national centres of excellence such as WRAP, NISP and Action Sustainability to maximise opportunities in this area. We’re maintaining our leadership and in the supply chain area by role modelling to our suppliers and also learning from those who excel in this area.

We’ve been working with the Environment Agency to minimise the impact of our investments on the environment.

We were recognised last year by the industry regulator, Ofgem, for our excellent customer service. The annual award is decided by an independent stakeholder panel, and is presented to the Distribution Network Operator (DNO) that has best demonstrated excellent performance and a holistic approach to customer service

Work was undertaken in partnership with suppliers to reduce carbon emissions in the supply chain. We were involved in two initial one-day supplier engagement events for participating utility company suppliers. There’s been a good reception to these workshops by suppliers and more events were planned throughout 2009

We continue to collaborate with the social enterprise, Action Sustainability, over the past three years to explore more ways of becoming more sustainable and considering the social impact of our supply chain for the wider community through considerate purchasing. This includes our participation in Sustainable Solutions’ ‘meet the buyers’ events which support supplier diversity and innovation.