This report further develops our already strong commitment to publicly reporting on our social, environmental and financial performance in one fully integrated summary. In recent years it has been framed around our five ambitions, which are the focus for how we conduct our business. We measure our performance internally against our ambitions, so it seemed natural to adopt a similar approach in our external reporting.

The key audience for our reporting was expanded in 2005 from a mainly internal readership to include all key stakeholders: employees, business partners, customers, suppliers, public bodies and social and environmental NGOs. Last year, for the first time, we engaged a panel of advisers to formally advise and comment on the content of our performance report and to offer a comment on the content of the finished report. The feedback we received from this group of stakeholders and their statement on our report laid down a challenge to more fully address our carbon dioxide emissions. This feedback had an influence on the development of Our Climate Commitments and highlighted to us the potential value of more regular challenge and discussion with key stakeholders.

During 2006 we established a Stakeholder Panel comprising senior independent experts in fields which are relevant to our social and environmental responsibilities.

This panel now meets with the Chief Executive and the Executive team on a quarterly basis to discuss the strategic issues facing the company and how these impact on its corporate responsibility activities. The panel provides a healthy challenge to the Executive team and gives a voice to the interests of our key stakeholders and helps shape our business strategy.

As part of their role, the panel has helped define the content of Our Climate Commitments and provided a challenge to help ensure the goals we set for ourselves were ambitious but achievable. Through its Chairman, the panel has provided an assurance statement on Our Climate Commitments.

To ensure transparency in our communication and to reinforce the trust of our stakeholders, we have this year involved an external company to provide independent assurance of this Performance Report.
The report covers the activities of EDF Energy, and those of our subsidiaries and joint ventures where our ownership is more than 50%, for the calendar year 2006.

We strongly urge you to let us know what you think of this report and provide suggestions for our future development by clicking here.