Environmental Goals

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

New, Medium- and Long-term Science-Based Goals Aligned with the Paris Agreement

Short-term: Reduce absolute scope 1 and scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions by more than 40% by 2025 from a 2007 baseline.

*New* Medium-term: Reduce absolute scope 1 and 2 emissions by 50% by 2035 from a 2020 baseline.

*New* Long-term: Achieve net zero absolute scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2050.

The vast majority of energy consumed by water utilities is used to pump water. Our path to reduced energy consumption and emissions is driven by using water more efficiently and dependent on our energy providers meeting their clean energy transition commitments. By continuing to improve energy and water efficiency, increasing procurement of renewable energy, enhancing pumping and operational efficiency and increasing our electric vehicle fleet, we will reduce our scope 1 and scope 2 emissions.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions Profile & Goals

Water Use & Efficiency

By 2035, meet customer needs while saving 15% in water delivered per customer compared to a 2015 baseline.¹

American Water is committed to meeting customers' water needs while simultaneously saving 15 percent in water delivered per customer, by 2035, compared to a 2015 baseline. American Water has already accomplished a 5.0 percent reduction in water delivered per customer. In the future, expanding best practices from existing efficiency programs, utilization of innovative technologies like AMI and leak detection, leveraging the transparency that is gained through these programs to identify and eliminate sources of water loss faster, and benefitting from ongoing national trends of declining residential water use related to fixtures and appliances will continue to drive progress. By investing capital to improve system performance, water loss and non-revenue water can both be reduced, while additionally minimizing customer rate impacts.

¹Baseline is the 2014/2015 average delivery per customer. New York American Water was excluded from baseline and tracking anticipating divestiture. 

Water Efficiency One-Pager

Water Supply Resilience

By 2030, increase water system resiliency to respond to more extreme events by increasing Utility Resilience Index (URI) weighted average by 10% from 2020 baseline.

American Water is committed to increasing water system resilience to prepare for and respond to more extreme events. Recent history shows that the frequency and severity of weather events, as well as the stress on water supplies related to scarcity, flooding and contamination events makes the resiliency of our systems more important than ever. American Water spends approximately 8 percent of total capital investment on resiliency projects each year to address these risks and maintain continuous service to customers.

The URI is a part of the American Water Works Association's Risk and Resilience Management of Water and Wastewater Standard (J100 standard), made up of three categories: our people, our assets and communities. It calculates a utility's ability to respond to and recover from extreme events including severe weather, environmental incidents, cyberattacks, supply chain disruptions, and more.