Press Releases

Suppliers

Suppliers

 

INCREASING SUPPLIER DIVERSITY AND SUSTAINABILITY SUPPLIER DIVERSITY

Avangrid's Supplier Diversity program has established ambitious goals over the next three years to increase supplier diversity spend to $300 million in 2025. Efforts to increase our annual spend with diverse suppliers include (but are not limited to) businesses owned by the following groups:

• Ethnic Minorities: defined by the National Minority SupplierDevelopment Council (nmsdc.org)
• Women: WBENC Women-Owned Business Certification Eligibility (WBENC.org)
• People with Disabilities: Supplier Diversity - Disability:IN (disabilityin.org)
• Veteran/Service: Disabled Veteran: Certification Eligibility (NVBDC.org)
• LGBTQI+: LGBTBE Certification (NGLCC.org)

In 2022, our annual spend with diverse suppliers totaled $195 million. To move forward in achieving our supplier diversity goals, we are taking the following actions:

• Building awareness within our purchasing community at Avangrid.
• Growing Avangrid's external presence and visibility.
• Continuing to review best practices in Supplier Diversity.
• Engaging with certifying organizations to aid in building strong relationships.
• Reaching a target spend of $300 million with diverse suppliers by 2025.
  Avangrid's commitments to our communities, our people, and the environment make us one of the most sustainable, socially responsible energy companies in the country. Studies show that working with diverse suppliers stimulates fresh ideas, brings us closer to our local communities, and drives increasingly innovative and creative services to Avangrid.

SUPPLIER SUSTAINABILITY
 

Our suppliers are an essential part of our business, and we set high expectations for them to understand and adhere to our sustainability policies and standards. We assess our suppliers against our ESG criteria (43 factors total) and use these assessments to arrive at each supplier’s ESG score. We also work to help our suppliers meet our sustainability expectations, providing those who need assistance with additional resources, including recommendations to make improvements. In 2022, we set a goal to have at least 58.5% of our suppliers meet our sustainability standards, and we exceeded that goal by achieving 67% compliance. In 2023, our new sustainability goal will measure the percentage of total awards given to sustainable suppliers. To achieve this, we will continue to assist and support our suppliers.

To date, our Supplier Sustainability program has helped several of our suppliers identify and implement changes that have led to improvements in their internal policies and across their operations. These improvements include measures to improve environmental practices, develop and implement a code of ethics, and more. Many of our suppliers have shared how, by working with Avangrid, they are bringing new policies and practices to become more sustainable. Some examples include:

• A turbine and maintenance repair supplier, after engaging in our Supplier Sustainability program, set up a meeting with their C-suite to discuss how to improve their company’s sustainability program, including ways to improve documentation and tracking of efforts they already have in place.
• A construction services supplier engaged a third-party expert to help establish new policies and a training program to address areas where their company was falling short. Here, our supplier requested feedback from Avangrid that was shared with their third-party expert.
• A maintenance services supplier (and small business) expressed how their team was moving quickly to implement new sustainability policies that, while resource-intensive for a business of their size, they still see as essential. Here, the supplier utilized the resources Avangrid provided to help move this effort forward.