Press Release

Company Hosts First Annual Environmental Leadership Forum

NEW YORK, Oct 25, 2002 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. (Con Edison) hosted its first annual environmental forum at its Learning Center in Long Island City yesterday. The forum, Commitment to Excellence: Practical Approaches to Environmental Leadership, brought together environmental leaders from major corporations in the Northeast to discuss environmental excellence and successful practices in environmental management and leadership.

"We at Con Edison believe that companies such as ours should collaborate to make our world environmentally sound. This forum allows all of us to share what we have learned as we strive to reach that goal. It is our hope that bringing new insights and success stories to the table will help us meet the challenges of protecting and improving the environment with the same commitment that we apply to managing large corporations," said Kevin Burke, president and chief operating officer at Con Edison.

The keynote speaker for the event was James L. Connaughton, chairman of President Bush's Council on Environmental Quality, who spoke about the major motivating principles of the Council's environmental strategies. He stressed the importance of improving the curricula of traditional business and management courses to include environmental decision-making issues and examples, as well as the broadest possible individual involvement to create positive environmental changes.

"The future is about everybody -- stockholders, customers, employees, communities -- being part of the ongoing environmental and natural resources protection equation, each in their own way. You can change the face of world just through a modest addition to and reorientation of our professional educational establishment. We have to get environmental, social, health and safety out of the expert silos and just integrate them into standard curricula," Connaughton said.

In addition to Connaughton, the conference was also addressed by Carl Frankel, author and senior columnist from Green@Work magazine. The day's events included break-out sessions and discussion panels on topics such as environmental strategic planning and company culture issues aimed at facilitating an open exchange of ideas on key corporate environmental questions.

Randolph S. Price, vice president of Environment, Health and Safety at Con Edison, closed the conference by thanking the participants for contributing their expertise to the event, and remarked, "We hope that what we have learned here today will enrich our perspectives as we strive to meet our environmental goals."

Con Edison is a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, Inc. (NYSE: ED), one of the nation's largest investor-owned energy companies, with more than $8 billion in annual revenues and $18 billion in assets. The utility provides electric, gas and steam service to more than 3 million customers in New York City and Westchester County, New York. For additional financial, operations and customer service information, visit Con Edison's Web site at http://www.coned.com.

SOURCE Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc.

CONTACT: Joseph Petta, +1-212-460-4111, for Con Edison URL: http://www.coned.com