While each person follows a unique career path before joining the cooperative, it does not take long for the spirit of cooperation and collaboration to flourish once they start. SMECO employees share a mindset of service that permeates their day-to-day work and extends to their lives outside of the office. Many are deeply involved in their communities. You will often find members of the SMECO team volunteering, donating time and money, and doing what they can to improve and support Southern Maryland. When our members see the SMECO logo, they should know help is nearby.

Our employees care about what they do. They aren’t simply performing work in exchange for a paycheck, they are providing a critical service to their neighbors and friends. The teamwork and desire to help is never more apparent than during a storm or emergency, and it is alive and in action every day at SMECO.

Whether the cooperative attracts the type of people who have a service mindset, or the experience of working here awakens a drive to serve, SMECO’s employees are a unique group and they tend to stay with the cooperative for a long time.

A larger-than-normal amount of the cooperative’s long-term employees are eligible, or will be eligible, to retire within the next five years. With so many key employees at SMECO who have dedicated decades to the cooperative approaching retirement, a robust succession plan is more critical than ever. These individuals carry with them a wealth of knowledge, experience, and institutional memory that has been instrumental in shaping the cooperative’s success. A well-structured succession plan ensures that this legacy is not lost, providing a seamless transition of leadership and safeguarding the continuity of operations. It also empowers the next generation of leaders to step into their roles with confidence, equipped to maintain SMECO’s commitment to excellence and community service.

Equity in employment opportunities

SMECO completes an annual Affirmative Action Plan that shows the good faith efforts in the cooperative’s hiring and recruitment. Each January, the Diversity & Inclusion Director, with the input from the recruitment coordinators, reports on the previous years’ demographics, which include the full employee roster, new hires, terminations, promotions, transfers, and applicants, categorized by gender, race, location, veteran status, disability status, supervisor, and location. Demographics are categorized into executives, officials/manager, professionals, technical, office and clerical, craft workers, operatives, laborers, and service workers.

SMECO reports the completed annual Affirmative Action Plan for review and analysis to an objective, third-party law firm specializing in labor and employment law. Through this evaluation, the cooperative can easily recognize positive and negative trends that surface in any department and identify areas of focus for SMECO’s recruiting and outreach efforts for the upcoming year. This helps the cooperative determine which career fairs and job boards would be most likely to yield the types of employee candidates we are seeking.

The demographic information for 2023 revealed opportunities in our recruiting efforts, and the cooperative established four recruitment goals for 2024. The goals include increasing the numbers of women and minorities in the professionals category, and to increase the number of minority employees in the technicians, lineworkers, and operatives categories.

Potential employment candidates are chosen based on their fit for the position. The cooperative strives to increase accessibility and awareness of open positions to underrepresented categories, but we may not be successful in reaching our goals based on the qualified candidates interested in the position.

The Affirmative Action Plan requires compiling a lot of information, but we look forward to the insight of measuring the previous years’ successes and the help it provides as we continue reaching a diverse and talented workforce.

SMECO’s Capital Credits Refunds

One distinct aspect of being part of our cooperative is the allocation of capital credits. Based on various financial factors, SMECO’s Board may approve the distribution of a percentage of the cooperative’s operating margin—or Capital Credits—to its members. SMECO has issued Capital Credits for seven years over the past decade.

SMECO’s members help finance operations. One of the biggest benefits of being a member is receiving a refund through the capital credit program. Passing margins on to members is central to SMECO’s commitment to provide value to our members and the communities in our service area.

An electric utility affects the ecological environment through construction and operation of its system. We take great care to observe our interactions with the environment and limit that impact while ensuring reliability. Central to this ESG report is an accounting of the Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from SMECO’s operations. Further, this report will document material recycling efforts, energy efficiency, wildlife safeguards, and habitat and ecosystem protections. SMECO strives to harmonize its operations with the natural systems in every viable way.
GHG emissions are reported as Scope 1, 2, or 3, based upon the origin and accountability of the source. SMECO’s Scope 1 emissions refer to those resulting directly from SMECO’s operations. Scope 2 emissions are those resulting from SMECO’s power supply. Scope 3, which SMECO opted not to report due to data accuracy and availability concerns, would refer to emissions resulting from SMECO’s upstream suppliers and the downstream users of SMECO’s services.

Many different pollutants are considered GHGs, including methane, ozone, and water vapor, for example. Carbon dioxide is the most common. Each contributes to climate change differently. To more effectively communicate the findings and to make the results comparable across organizations, emissions are standardized as if they were CO2. The units in this ESG report are metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2e).

Previous SMECO ESG reports documented the GHG footprint in arrears. The 2021 report covered the 2020 footprint and the 2022 report covered the 2021 footprint. The section below includes both 2022 and 2023 emissions, which brings the accounting current. This change reflects the maturity of SMECO’s ESG program and the availability of the underlying data.

For Scope 1, SMECO is a low emitter. SMECO’s facilities are fully electrified. The Scope 1 emissions are from backup generators and vehicle fuels. The total number was 2,956 MTCO2e in 2023. The 2022 Scope 1 emissions are 3,023 MTCO2e.

Climate NOW Act

Serving Maryland brings the duty to abide by the laws and regulations of our state that has emerged as a leader in clean energy and combating climate change. Several of these measures put the state’s electric utilities, SMECO included, in the spotlight. The Climate Solutions Now Act of 2022 set a goal to reduce GHG emissions in Maryland 60 percent by 2031 from the baseline year of 2006, and to reach “net zero” carbon emissions by 2045. Reaching these goals will impact every part of Maryland’s economy and will require a collaborative and determined effort throughout the state. While the specifics of how these goals are to be reached have not been fully determined for SMECO and other utilities, ratepayers should expect an impact on their electric bill well into the future. The cooperative balances its efforts to support climate goals while also advocating on our members’ behalf as this law is implemented.

Saving energy saves money, and it also helps achieve the emissions goals mapped out in the Climate Solutions Now Act. Beginning in 2024, EmPOWER Maryland will shift from tracking the reduction in kilowatt-hours to tracking GHG reductions. EmPOWER Maryland, a collection of programs promoting energy efficiency and demand management for electric and gas utilities, was established with the passing of the EmPOWER Maryland Energy Efficiency Act of 2008 and set initial energy conservation goals for the state. Customers subsidize the programs through a public purpose charge on every utility bill in Maryland. The money goes to incentive programs and workforce development that reduces the amount of energy we need to power our lives and broader economy. The EmPOWER Maryland program runs in three-year cycles and provides a number of opportunities for cooperative members to save energy and money using various rebates and incentives. The fifth program cycle ended in 2023 and the continued impact of EmPOWER Maryland is evident in the energy savings being realized each cycle. The next cycle began January 1, 2024.