Sophie Schneider


Portfolio         About         Contact

Comparative Sustainability Assessment of Electric Utility Corporations in the United States


I worked on a sustainability assessment of three of the largest electricity corporations in the United States as part of the Sustainability and Pollution Prevention course at The Cooper Union. This report evaluates the overall sustainability of three of the largest investor-owned utility companies in the United States: NextEra Energy Inc., Duke Energy Corporation, and Exelon Corporation. These investor-owned corporations were selected based on the annual generation from fossil fuel, nuclear, and renewable facilities in 2017.


The overall sustainability of each corporation was evaluated using a modified Sustainability Assessment and Fuzzy Evaluaation (SAFE) model. The SAFE model computes an overall sustainability measure for each company based on environmental, human, and financial indicators. The sustainability assessment considers the operation of each corporation during the time period from 2014-2018. The data was collected largely from annual performance reports, sustainability reports, and financial documents from each company’s website. Final project report can be found here.