ComEd invested 43 percent of 2022 supply chain spending on diversity-certified suppliers

Diversity in ComEd’s supply chain continued to grow last year with the investment of $963 million – 43 percent of its total supply chain spending – into businesses owned by women, minorities, and veterans, with $651 million going to Illinois-based businesses, specifically.

This brought the company’s spending on diverse suppliers to $7.4 billion since 2012, according to a report submitted to the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) last week. The utility worked with 650 diversity-certified suppliers, including 159 partnerships begun last year. This also kept the company in line with the ICC’s performance targets set in September 2022 to strengthen the region’s infrastructure and economy.

“Recognizing the important and growing role that diversity-certified suppliers play in meeting the needs of our customers and making their communities stronger, we will increase our diverse spend to 45 percent of our total supply chain spend by 2028,” Gil Quiniones, CEO of ComEd, said. “We believe investing in businesses owned by people of color, women, and veterans is essential to creating an equitable clean energy transition.”

ComEd’s report noted that its diverse suppliers helped support construction, engineering, and materials projects, as well as ComEd programs meant to help customers reduce energy use and costs. Pulling from figures provided by the Illinois Utilities Business Diversity Council, ComEd also noted that spending on these diversity-certified suppliers from all Illinois utility companies contributed $11.8 billion to the state GDP between 2017 and 2020, including $4 billion in purchases from Illinois-based diverse businesses.