Please let us know, raising hand or sending in the iPad, and we can look to work that in as we can. Matt, maybe we could start the conversation by just a bit of your history overall. Great. Thanks, Jerry. Pleasure to be here. Con Ed is actually, at this point, the oldest and longest-traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. Long history serving New York City. Our company, now at this point, after completing the sale of our clean energy businesses this year to RWE, has really refocused around regulated utilities. Two regulated utilities in Con Ed of New York, which is the company I work for and run. We run electric, gas, and steam service for New York City and Westchester County. Orange and Rockland Utilities, which provides electric and gas in Orange and Rockland. We have a competitive transmission developer focusing only on FERC-regulated electric transmission. With the refocusing around New York, that's really given us the opportunity to lean into New York's clean energy ambition. New York has very, very aggressive clean energy goals, full economy-wide decarbonization by 2050. Which really allows us to focus around climate change and the infrastructure that's going to be required to help decarbonize the New York State economy. That's gonna change a lot of things on how Con Ed works. We expect by sometime in the next decade, around the late 2030s, that New York City will go from being a summer peaking utility, where air conditioning load drives our peak load, to a winter peaking utility. That over the next 30 years, the electric demand capacity that we're gonna have to serve it will pretty much double as you think about decarbonization of both heating and how people heat their homes and buildings and transportation. That's significant growth opportunities for the regulated utilities in New York. In our current plan, we look to spend about $15 billion over the next 3 years, really on energy delivery infrastructure and really building some large projects, large interconnections to allow for the integration of offshore wind and for the electrification of transportation. Got it. That sounds like quite the sizable build-out to achieve such a change. Maybe kind of building on that a bit, Con Ed has a clean energy commitment that's gonna impact three services you provide: electricity, natural gas, and steam. Con Ed recently filed a 20-year GACP, Gas Long-Term Plan here. Could you walk us through some of the approaches that you're considering in decarbonization, in delivery of service, and kind of what are the next steps in this direction? Yeah. Today, we provide three commodities: electric, gas, and steam for Con Ed of New York, and gas and electric for Orange and Rockland. Really, the trajectory of all three are different as you think about decarbonization. As I mentioned before, for electric, really, this is more and more end-use energy being delivered through the electric delivery system. That means significant infrastructure build-out for electric delivery. That really is everything from transmission substations, distribution level, up to the customer, including things like electrification and of heating and transportation, and incentive programs to help customers adopt that. Significant growth on the electric side. As we think about gas, it's a little different story. Today, we deliver gas in CECONY to about $1.1 million gas customers. It's an incredibly important system, hugely important for how New York City, Orange, Rockland, Westchester counties function. As you think about decarbonization, how that system is utilized is going to have to change. Last month, we published our 10-year Gas Long Range Plan, which really looks at potential trajectories for the gas system and how we think about that system going forward. That study mapped out three pathways. was kind of a steady state pathway or a today case pathway. The next two were pathways that gave options for potentially achieving the state's climate goals and decarbonization goals, which really has 0 net carbon emissions from natural gas or from the gas delivery systems going forward. Those trajectories count on some different things, adoption of different technology, particularly the availability of low carbon fuels. Can we have low carbon fuels that flow through our natural gas delivery system? Alternatively, potentials for a hybrid pathway which would allow for both electric and gas utilization or a really deep decarbonization pathway, which essentially says that you would, over time, shrink the footprint of the natural gas system and essentially almost completely phase it out, except for a very small handful of very hard-to-electrify customers. These are really pathways. We do not have a strong view on one or the other. They're very much going to be driven by policy in New York State, and how policymakers continue to evolve this. It's going to require significant intervention by stakeholders, government, regulators on how we think about moving that system forward, because today it still is an incredibly important system, and the safety and reliability of it is really important how New York City functions. This next question, I'm particularly interested in, being a resident of Stuyvesant Town. I'm curious on the steam service, how you see that evolving over here? Similar path or what does that look like? Yeah. Steam system is a really interesting system. Con Ed operates what is the largest steam system in the United States, district heating system. Serves about 1,500 customers, a relatively small number of customers, a lot of really iconic buildings: Grand Central Station, Empire State Building, Chrysler Building. Our steam system, we think, provides a very important role in the decarbonization of New York City's energy economy. A lot of the buildings we serve with steam would be very hard to fully electrify. It's hard to go into some place like the Empire State Building and completely retrofit that building and remove it, remove all of the existing steam circulating heat that's in there and replace it with electric. We think the role of the steam system will be essentially to decarbonize back at the steam production facility, which, as a resident of Stuy Town, one of the biggest ones is right near where you live. Today, the majority of the steam we produce is actually produced in extremely efficient combined cycle units that make both steam and electric production. As we think about that system going forward, we think we can decarbonize at the steam production level by using different technologies, high-efficiency heat pumps, carbon capture, potentially, hydrogen and electric boilers that are fueled with renewable energy. The combination of those things gives us an opportunity to essentially decarbonize at the production facility, which we think is a lower total cost than decarbonizing at some of these hard-to-decarbonize buildings. Got it. Makes sense to try to take the optimal approach there. We've read a bit about CCS in the city-. Mm-hmm. Making concrete blocks, so excited to see. Yep. -how this all evolves. Maybe shifting gears a little bit, if you could talk about New York City's decision to ban gas hookups for new buildings. How should we think about parsing the impacts from decreased investment in your gas system versus value and growth that could accrue on the electric side at the same time? Both New York City and New York State at this point, have passed laws that essentially eliminate the ability for new customers to connect to the gas delivery systems. For New York City, New York City Council voted in 2021 to ban new gas connections for 7-story buildings or less, so buildings less than 7 stories in 2024, and then over 7 stories in 2027. The state passed a law for buildings over 7 stories in 2026 statewide and over 7 stories in 2029. Really, we're looking at the end of this decade, depending on the building type, all new construction would be all electric. And we have been supportive of that. It is easier to build new with fully electrified buildings. The technology is available. There are good options. We think if you really want to change the trajectory of fossil fuel use, one of the best places to start is don't build new. We have been supportive of this, and generally for our business, what we've been saying is that we believe that continued investment is going to be necessary in the natural gas system to make sure that we maintain the safety and reliability of that very important system that serves over a million customers today while we transition. Perfectly fine with not adding new customers, and those new customers will be served by our electric delivery system. How does this affect, I guess, gas investments overall in the plan going forward? You know, looking at electric versus gas, is this all kind of just net off, net out, or how should we think about that? In aggregate, there's probably more investment required overall. One of the key elements that we're going to have to continue to work with state regulators on is how we think about the value the gas system provides, the levels of investment that are still required. In our current rate plans, we're investing almost $1 billion a year in that gas delivery system, because in the short term and the medium term, it's still going to be necessary. Our gas delivery system delivered more natural gas last year than any time in our history. The transition is coming, but it's not here tomorrow. That said, we expect investments of probably close to $65 billion over the next 10 years in our energy delivery systems to maintain safety and reliability, and to build the kind of capacity that's going to be necessary as you think about electrifying transportation, heating, in addition to all of the other end-use energy uses that electric provides today. Got it. That's helpful. Thanks. Con Ed recently filed some Utility Thermal Networks. What is the investment potential, and how do these networks fit into a clean economy? Are there a possible clean energy solution for large business owners here? This was really an attempt by the state to look at piloting shared thermal energy networks, essentially shared heat pump networks. The state passed a law and directed the state Public Service Commission to essentially run some pilots to look at the possibility of a business model that would function around shared energy networks. These are a little different than the thermal networks for our steam system. These essentially would be circulating water that would be at constant temperature, that then buildings could tap into with a heat pump to run their heat pump. They really are kind of conjoined to electrification. It's using essentially the constant temperature of the ground or shared heat from waste heat from buildings or places like data centers to heat other buildings. We are gonna propose three pilots for Con Ed of New York and one pilot for Orange and Rockland. Sorry, two pilots for Orange and Rockland. Orange and Rockland pilots are about $45 million, and the CECONY pilots are about $260 million. So in total, about $300 million worth of investment opportunity to prove out these technologies. We have filed a petition for that, and it would be pending the New York's Public Service Commission to approve our petition. That's kind of the regulatory process we are following. If approved, we would expect the projects to start construction sometime around the Q1 of 2024. Got it. That's very interesting. We've been talking to some thermal energy storage operators in our research, and it seems like optimizing heat energy to reduce waste can be a really key way to optimize energy transition. Yeah. exciting stuff there. One of the key elements in this is that you really want to be as efficient. As you think about decarbonization, can you be as efficient as possible? Heat pumps are a very efficient way to produce heating, but they don't perform as well in cold temperatures. Being able to tap into waste heat from some other part of the city, and share it with somebody who needs it on the coldest days. That's helpful. Thanks. Moving along here, the Joint Proposal in your CECONY rate case includes significant CapEx plans important to your clean energy commitment. Can you talk about where these things currently stand with that rate case? Yeah. I get this question a lot. Our rate case, we have a Joint Proposal and have had a Joint Proposal pending final approval by the Commission for several months now. We anticipate it will be approved within the next month or two. Really, the New York State has bitten off so much in its clean energy ambition that has showed up in the regulatory docket, that they are just really backed up at this point with significant proceedings as they kind of try to move some of these things through. Expectation is in the next couple of months, we should see a final approved Joint Proposal. Got it. At the same time, the steam rate case, if you could just update us on the status there. Yep. We're pending final approval on electric gas. Steam, we had not filed for steam rates in about nine years. We had stayed out for a very long time on steam. Really, it was time to file rates, really, in support of all the things we talked about a steam decarbonization plan and how we think about the steam system moving forward. We filed for rates in November. Working through the process, we filed our testimony, and staff filed their counter testimony along with the interveners. I think one of the main areas of contention between our filed testimony and staff's is around a revenue decoupling mechanism. Steam is the only commodity that we currently have, and I think the only service provided in New York State that is not revenue decoupled at this point. Our electric system and gas system both have rates that are revenue decoupled, essentially volumetrically decoupled. Steam doesn't have the same thing, and that is one of the main areas that we need to work to get to a consensus around. Got it. That's helpful. Going back to the Joint Proposal briefly, do you see any potential stumbling blocks or obstacles there, or it's just kind of a matter of time and process? I think it's timing and process. I don't see any stumbling blocks. Historically, New York State, once you get to a Joint Proposal, they move through. The regulatory docket in New York, with everything they've kind of bit off around decarbonization, what's called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, CLCPA, and how they implement the climate change requirements, have really backed up the regulatory docket and put a lot of pressure on the staff. Got it. That makes sense there. You provide service to the most densely populated city in North America. Can your grid handle this transition to the clean energy economy? You know, with all the electric vehicles, heat pumps, and other distributed resources, it just seems such a massive undertaking. How do you feel about, I guess, achieving this all? It is. It's a huge undertaking. I am confident that we can deliver on what the expectations are. It's going to require significant levels of investment, significantly above where we've historically been for our electric gas services in New York City. I said we're in the range of $65 billion-$68 billion of potential investment over the next 10 years. If I look at this point, in the last 10 years, Con Ed built 1 new substation. We're going to build 4 in the next 5 years. We just completed a new transmission feeder that was part of what was called our Reliable Clean Cities project, and we have 2 more pending. Those were our transmission feeders that were required inside the city to allow for the retirement of fossil fuel peaker generators inside New York City. These kind of investments, they're going to be coming much faster than they had in our history. It's going to require us to ramp up. We're actually in a, kind of a hiring spree right now, so we are going to add about 1,000 new employees in this year alone. Con Ed is about 14,000 people. We're looking to hire for 1,000 again this year. It's a significant step up in the level of activity, but it's all things we know how to do really well. I mean, I'm extraordinarily proud to work at Con Ed. The women and men I work with every day power this great city. We know how to get it done, but there's going to be a lot of work for the next decade and beyond. Got it. Sounds like if anyone in the audience has friends and family looking to enter the industry, now is a good time to get going, to join. Switching gears a little bit here, you received approval outside of your rate case for an $810 million Brooklyn Clean Energy Hub to address reliability needs and to ease a possible plug-in for offshore wind development. I believe your proposed $1.1 billion Eastern Queens project will address the needs of JFK as it electrifies much of its services. How do you approach meeting such needs, whether it's offshore wind development or a large commercial enterprise going all electric? Given your grid is comprised of 80-plus networks across New York and Westchester, it seems like there's a lot to undertake there. How do you guys go about it? Yeah, there is. We do a very base-up planning process. We have 80-plus networks that we serve, which are essentially local distribution areas that roll up then to substations, to transmission substations, and to the amount of both transmission and generation capacity inside New York City. That kind of bottom-up approach allows us to say, where do we see needs today, and where do we see needs in the future? Because these are not things that you can necessarily build quickly. Kind of that bottom-up approach and then an economy-wide top-down approach, and make sure that those two things converge. We are going to have, again, significant build out. One of the things for people who followed New York State historically in New York State, the vast majority of the CapEx that utilities deployed was approved in the rate case process. Increasingly, because of the speed at which this transition is happening, we are seeing things both inside and outside the rate case process. For Con Ed, that's meant that we have about a $810 billion substation in Brooklyn that's really a multi-value construction project that's going to both serve load for an increasingly dense electric load, particularly in Central Brooklyn. As Central Brooklyn has kind of built out significantly, we see increased demand for both electrification of heating and transportation in Brooklyn, need for more capacity, and the ability to integrate offshore wind. New York has a goal of nine gigawatts of offshore wind coming in, particularly into the load centers. That was a project approved outside of the rate case process, and we are pending another project for about $1.1 billion near Kennedy Airport. Very similar, Kennedy Airport has aggressive goals to decarbonize and electrify a lot of their operations, that transfers out to some of the freight and other handling facilities that are just outside the airport property. That's going to require another $1.1 billion substation. Again, all of this is happening outside of the rate case process, which is different than what's historically happened in New York. Got it. That's helpful. Maybe picking up with offshore wind a little bit. I know Con Ed isn't a developer here, but there's been a lot of notable developments in the industry. It seems like the first wave is facing some growing pains, if you will. Yeah. with cost creeping and other issues. Just wondering, any thoughts you'd be willing to share with regards to how you think the industry matures, or even if there's renegotiation of rates, how, you know, that could impact your service territory, or any thoughts along those lines? Yeah, I think the offshore wind developers have run into some headwinds around, I think, issues that we've all heard about, supply chain inflation, some growing pains there. I don't see this as being a technical hurdle overcome. I mean, there are significant developments that have already happened in Europe. We're kind of following the development processes gone on there. I think it really is getting the economics of these straightened out with the regulators who approve them, figuring out ways that they can move forward. For a state like New York that is looking to fully decarbonize electric supply by 2040, offshore wind is gonna be a necessary component of how we think about doing that. For Con Ed and for Orange and Rockland, we are not the offshore developers, but it is important for us to work with them on the integration piece. We do see significant investment opportunity in how you develop some of the both transmission and distribution system that's going to be required to integrate the offshore wind into our system. On the transmission, do you see CECONY as an owner or just partnering, or how does that develop exactly? Probably both. For CECONY and Orange and Rockland, we see opportunities in the regulated portion of transmission that goes along with this. The Brooklyn Wind Hub is a very good example of that, you know, how you have inside the regulated utility, essentially regulated transmission, under the New York State Department of Public Service. Our competitive affiliate, Con Edison Transmission, also participates in competitive transmission development projects, both in New York State, generally through the New York Transco Consortium, which is the other New York State transmission owners, and then sometimes outside of New York State for other projects that are potentially available. Got it. That's very helpful there. And then how do the Reliable Clean Cities transmission projects address, I guess, changing needs of your grid specifically, for that project? Those projects were essentially envisioned to help facilitate the retirement of in-city simple cycle combustion turbines. New York State's energy delivery system still relied pretty heavily on peaker units that were located inside load pockets. They were the most efficient way to serve load going back to the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, when some of these were built. As New York State has looked to retire those for particularly NOx emissions limits in those load pockets, they looked to Con Ed to develop transmission solutions that would essentially maintain reliability. Over $800 million+ worth of investment to build 3 feeders. The first one is done. We're able to design and construct it in less than 10 years, place it in service, and allow for the first phase of the retirement of those gas turbines. We expect the remaining one will be done in two more years and allow for the remaining units to be retired. That's gonna put us kind of at a precipice where additional transmission is really gonna be required as you think about more and more fossil retirement inside New York City, and some of that is gonna have to bring new capacity into the load area. Wrapping all this together, I guess, and if you think about reliability in the city, how do you feel about security of reliability? Other parts of the country have stubbed their toe, if you will, a little bit. How do you think about the risk for NYC? This has to remain absolutely front and center in the conversation about how we move through this transition. New York City is a vertical city. You know, it is not a place where having no power in a high-rise building, you pretty much. You don't have water, you don't have elevator, you can't open your windows, so reliable energy is extraordinarily important in a city like New York City. Having that honest conversation about how we move through this process in an orderly way, essentially an orderly and thoughtful transition to decarbonization. For Con Ed, we are fully supportive of the clean energy transition. We are committed to making this transition, and we want to make sure we do it in a reliable way that continues to meet customers' needs. That is gonna mean certain investments, or we really are gonna need to make in advance so that we have the capacity in place as we go through a transition. Got it. That makes sense. Wrapping this equation together, I guess, with, you know, costs. Mm-hmm. obviously being a consideration here, we find that sometimes policies driven top-down, not bottoms up, when, you know, it comes into consideration as far as cost for the consumer who's gonna be paying for all this. How do you think about ratepayer pressures in this, in, you know, across different customer classes as well? Yeah. There are going to be increased costs in the system. I think it's important and for my role, to maintain our credibility in the conversation so that we continue to have an honest conversation about what's necessary for reliability, what do we have to do with the system, what investments to make, kind of have an honest conversation about this. There's gonna be a lot of capital investment required, both in utilities and others, to move this transition forward. As we look at it's also gonna kind of rearrange where the share of wallet of energy burden is kind of going. Today, as we look across our service territory, Con Ed does have some of the highest rates, you know, the unit volume rates in the country, but your average New Yorker is actually extraordinarily energy efficiency. Our actual bills are low. If you're an in-city, New York City customer, today, you pay about $95 a month on average. Our bills are actually relatively low. One proxy for overall, you know, cost of the energy delivery system is to look at what Con Ed's revenue requirement is, to essentially provide all of the service we provide. Today, that's about 1% of the GDP of the area that we serve. We think that will increase. It's gonna go from about 1% to about 1.3%. It's not insignificant, but it's still a relatively small percentage of the overall economic activity that's generated, and there'll be investments that are necessary because you're not asking the system to do the same thing they used to do. These investments are gonna be necessary because you're actually asking the system to do something different. Your electric system is gonna provide heating and cooling and transportation, so the kind of the share of wallet for customers is an important piece. Most important is to think about vulnerable customers. Today, somewhere around 12%, 13% of Con Ed customers are essentially what we would define as vulnerable customers. They're on some form of public assistance, low-income customers. New York State has a policy in place that caps the energy burden for low-income customers at 6% and allows us to provide bill discounts for those low-income and vulnerable customers. Their overall burden is essentially maxed at 6% of income. Got it. That's helpful. Thanks. Just one last question from me, I guess. We've covered a lot of ground here, exciting energy transition, you know, goals in New York, just wondering, what are you most excited about, or what risks do you see, I guess, to this whole process? I am most excited about all of the change in technology that's coming to do this. This is an incredibly exciting time to work in the industry. Our industry is, you know, changing faster now than, I think, any time in our history. For us, that's a pretty long history. Con Ed has been around for 200 years, and things are changing rapidly. It's a very interesting time to work in the industry. I think the challenge is to make sure that we get it right, make sure that you engage a wide variety of stakeholders. It's historically been one of the things that utilities have not done a great job at, is, you know, thinking they know the answers by themselves and don't engage the community that we serve and the solutions we're gonna provide. I think that is one of the things we have to make sure we get right, thinking about the communities we serve with a particular eye toward disadvantaged communities and how we make sure that this is an equitable transition going forward. Got it. That's really helpful. I think we're down to our last couple of minutes or so I don't know if there are any questions in the audience. Looks like we do. just wanted to follow up. Right in the New York Transco, right, they proposed, like, the two or three projects in which we were the preferred bidders. Do you know when that decision on those projects comes out? It was posted yesterday by the New York ISO, the announcement actually came out late yesterday. Propel Five, which was one of the New York Transco projects with an approximate price tag of $230 million, this was for the LIPA PPTN, LIPA Public Policy Transmission Solicitation, to essentially integrate Long Island, increase the delivery capacity from Long Island to the rest of the state. That project was selected and awarded by the New York ISO. How much is Con Ed's share of that? A little less than 40%. Of the $230 million? Of the $3.20. 320. Thank you. Do we have another question? I just wanted to ask about some of the technology you're talking about. I guess heat pumps are gonna be pretty important going forward. About your confidence in their ability to function in a low-temperature environment. There's been some concern about that, especially if you completely disconnect from gas in a cold temperature environment. I think the concern has historically been around air-source heat pumps. Ground-source heat pumps, which are a piece of what are being deployed today, really don't have that concern. Heat pumps that use a shared thermal energy network essentially provide that heat sink. They don't have that concern. Air-source heat pumps' performance at low temperature historically wasn't as good. The performance has significantly improved in the last several years. Today, we have deployed about 25,000 heat pumps through our Clean Heat Incentive program. In that program, that program now actually incentivizes customers to fully disconnect from their fossil fuel supply. They've been running on that and running pretty well. I think if you are extreme cold weather environments, I think there's still some concern. If you're in northern Minnesota, I think that might be a little bit different. In our service territory so far, we're seeing generally good performance. Two-part question. What's your view of the role that the New York Fire Department is playing regarding the energy transition? Is it fair to say that lithium-ion batteries as a issue going in buildings is a settled issue, that that won't happen? I think New York City Fire Department plays an incredibly important role in the health and safety of New Yorkers and respect the role that they play in that conversation. We've been actively involved in conversation with the New York City Fire Department around what the code standards and requirements are gonna be. I'm not sure that it's a completely settled matter it, you know, for how all lithium-ion batteries will be deployed. Generally speaking, a lot of those are more industrial applications, we have deployed a number of them in substation-type facilities and worked with the fire department on fire protection requirements for those. I think it's still a matter for discussion on how they can be safely deployed on customer premises, particularly inside buildings. I think that does it for us. We got the red dot beeping. I want to say thank you very much. We greatly appreciate it.