“We want to be a safe and responsible company regarding our people, the environment and the communities we serve.”

Health and safety

The year was one of mixed performance; nevertheless, we saw progress in two out of three areas towards our ambition to be recognised as a fit, safe and responsible company.

We did not achieve the ambitious improvement in employee safety performance planned from 2004. Our number of recorded lost time incidents rose slightly which, although partly due to a more robust incident tracking system, alerted us to the need for new actions in this area. This point was further underpinned by the tragic death of a contractor working on our distribution system during the year. It led to a redoubling of efforts to ensure that we both understand, and properly manage, risks arising in the workplace. For example, in our Networks branch, where we have the greatest number of field staff, all of our senior managers now go out on site visits on one day in ten to reinforce our safety messages.

A new means of measuring the HSE management activity was adopted in 2005 and efforts over the year saw us move from around 19% at the start to nearly 62.9% by the year end.

A breakdown of the elements making up this HSE index is shown in the chart, top right. It can be seen that our main challenges relate to our risk identification activity and incidents. As we improve our proactive management we expect to see a reduction in the number of accidents, with a lag time of up to 18 months.

We have set our end-2007 HSE index target score to be above 90% in order to progress towards our overall ambition.

We started work on the complimentary Health and Safety Standard OHSAS 18001 with a target to achieve 100% coverage by the end of 2007.

Environmental management

In 2005, our ISO 14001 environmental management systems continued to cover 100% of our operations and sites. Our environmental performance significantly improved with the overall number of recordable incidents reducing from 589 in 2004 to 368 in 2005.

Tackling a wider range of environmental aspects was highlighted as a priority in 2005. We developed a biodiversity policy and framework with input from national and local Wildlife Trusts. We continue to improve our performance on Sulphur Dioxide emissions with the full operation of Flue Gas Desulphurisation (FGD) atWest Burton and phased implementation of FGD at Cottam.

In 2005, work was undertaken to agree specific 2006 onward improvement targets on company-wide transport emissions and building energy use, as well as the relative CO₂ emissions from our generation activities. The chart below shows CO₂ emissions from our generation activities.

Climate change

EDF Energy is committed to tackling climate change. We support the UK Government's ambition to move progressively to a low carbon economy and to play a leading role in the global effort to address climate change. In our view, the scientific evidence presented to date justifies action to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Our Climate Change Policy outlines our approach to tackling climate change through:

• helping our customers become more energy efficient
• developing local sustainable energy solutions for power, heating and cooling needs
• reducing our emissions from our own energy use and from transport use
• Increasing our renewables portfolio with physical assets and purchased power
• Investing in our stations to maximise their efficiency and minimise their impact on the environment
• Understanding the physical impacts of climate change on our business and developing appropriate responses
• Undertaking research and development in carbon-free technologies through our parent company.

Corporate responsibility

Corporate Responsibility (CR) describes a model of business success that considers the needs of all stakeholders. Within EDF Energy our approach to CR is shaped by our five ambitions, which reflect the needs of a range of stakeholders. These ambitions are at the heart of our business activities, are how we measure business success and determine individual financial bonuses.

CR within EDF Energy ismanaged by a dedicated team, with all branches of the business responsible for delivering relevant actions. We have set ourselves the target of ranking top amongst our peers in the BITC Corporate Responsibility index by 2007.

Key challenges for EDF Energy relate to climate change, fuel poverty, environmentalmanagement and health and safety.

Energy review

In late 2005 EDF Energy prepared for the forthcoming launch of the Government's Energy Review by establishing a project team tasked with compiling our response. We also consulted internally to identify the topics our response would need to address and conducted some preliminary work to establish our position on some of these topics.