President’s Message
This past year has forced us all to temporarily change the way we live, the way we interact with each other, and the way we work. While this has been challenging, I could not be more proud of SaskEnergy’s team of employees who came together in 2020-21 to serve our customers and support them through the COVID-19 pandemic. SaskEnergy’s success as a company is a direct reflection of their efforts, and our accomplishments this year would not have been possible without our team across the province. For the most part, when SaskEnergy customers don’t know we are there, it is a sign we are doing our job properly. Thanks to the reliability of our natural gas system and the efforts of our employees, we keep gas flowing to homes, hospitals, businesses and industry in Saskatchewan, even during the coldest days, weeks and months of the year. In 2020-21, SaskEnergy added 3,001 net new customers to the distribution system — nearly 1,000 more than expected — and surpassed 400,000 total customers. As well, the record for provincial daily gas usage was broken once again on February 12, 2021. From an affordability standpoint, SaskEnergy’s commodity rate is the lowest it has been in more than 20 years, and our total residential natural gas utility rate is the third-lowest in Canada. These achievements
are testament to the importance of natural gas in providing Saskatchewan with essential energy — both for residential customers and for industry, including increased power generation from natural gas — and to the reliability of natural gas year round. Throughout the pandemic, our teams sought to do everything we could to put customers’ minds at ease, allowing them to turn their attention to the many other changing factors in their lives. Avoiding outages, attending to service calls while keeping customers, employees and communities safe, maintaining stable rates, providing additional flexibility in payment terms — these are just some of the many ways SaskEnergy stepped up for our customers last year. SaskEnergy also provided more than $2 million in rebates to homeowners and businesses that purchased high efficiency natural gas heating systems, and to homeowners who purchased carbon monoxide alarms. Our Tune-up Assistance Program assisted an additional 731 income qualified homeowners in 2020-21 by providing free home heating tune-ups, which help to make sure that customers’ furnaces are operating efficiently, effectively and safely. This program, which has been in place since 2017, was recognized with the Canadian Gas Association’s Michael Mulcahy Award for Excellence and Innovation in Customer Care and Service in June of 2020. Even with the additional demands of the pandemic, I am proud to say that SaskEnergy achieved its best-ever corporate total recordable injury frequency rate. Safety is an established priority at our company and continues to be top of mind, every day and in every situation. At the same time, we recognize our growing role in contributing to environmental protection, and assisting customers in meeting their environmental objectives, while supporting economic development and recovery in Saskatchewan communities. To minimize our impact on the environment, SaskEnergy has committed to reducing emissions from our operations by 35 per cent by 2030. This will be achieved through emissions reduction targets in our Corporate Plan, by improving the efficiency of our equipment and infrastructure, and by investing in projects that reduce operational emissions. In 2020-21, as part of this work, SaskEnergy enacted a corporate biosecurity policy, which seeks to prevent the transmission and spread of environmental and agricultural infectious diseases and invasive species. In addition, we reduced our overall greenhouse gas emissions by 12,900 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO 2 e) over 2019 levels. Our capital plan is aligned to customer demand and remains flexible in order to adapt to changing customer needs. That said, as a company, SaskEnergy is pivoting from an era of system growth to one of system sustainability. Plans to further increase delivery capacity in high growth areas are developed but on hold, pending customer forecasts. Throughout this changing business environment, we will continue to seek efficiencies and cost reductions as we make strategic capital investments to support customer demand and the provincial economy, maintain the safety of our system, and provide affordable rates to our customers. SaskEnergy’s future success will require us to be focused and flexible — in meeting customer expectations, in reducing our impact on the environment and meeting evolving regulatory requirements, and in continuing to play a critical role in delivering the energy the people of Saskatchewan need. The right organizational structure, along with technology and a talented workforce will be crucial for executing on our plans and meeting our strategic objectives. However, our focus on core priorities will not change — we will responsibly deliver natural gas to the residents, businesses and industries of Saskatchewan while supporting environmental sustainability and economic prosperity for future generations. My sincere thanks, once again, to all SaskEnergy employees and management for their efforts in 2020-21, as well as to the Board of Directors for their strategic governance and oversight.
Ken From President and Chief Executive Officer
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