Essential Utilities, Inc.

Essential has long believed that sustainability is an important aspect of business operations. Successive generations of organizational leaders have worked to build upon our legacy of excellence in water and wastewater treatment, stewardship of our waterways, and provision of reliable and affordable energy.

We encourage you to explore our microsite, Sustainability.Essential.co, for full details of our initiatives.

Policies These policy documents are available on the corporate governance section of our website at https://www.Essential.co/ corporate-governance/documents:

• Sustainability and Environmental Policy • Human Rights Policy • Human Rights to Water Policy • Political Spending Policy • Code of Ethical Business Conduct • Conflict of Interest Policy • Equal Employment Opportunity and Anti-Harassment Policy • Labor Rights Policy • Corporate Governance Guidelines These documents are not incorporated by reference into this proxy statement.

Reporting

Essential’s reporting currently includes the following components, which are available at our microsite Sustainability.Essential.co:

• Sustainability Report–Our biennial flagship report that provides detail on relevant topics

• SASB and ESG Metrics Index–A concise document containing key metrics, primarily using the SASB framework

• TCFD Report–Concise climate reporting guided by the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures

• CDP Response–Detailed climate reporting via the CDP questionnaire

• AGA Sustainability Template–Technical GHG emissions data related to our gas system that is reported via the American Gas Association’s common industry template

Neither the microsite nor any contents thereof are incorporated by reference into this proxy statement.

Alignment with UN SDGs

Essential strives to support the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to address global challenges and achieve peace and prosperity for all. The following eight SDGs are most relevant to our business:

Corporate Governance | Sustainability Program

Environment

Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

In January 2021, Essential announced an enterprise-wide target to substantially reduce our Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. By 2035, we aim to reduce our emissions by 60% from our 2019 baseline. Our water and wastewater operations as well as our gas operations are each part of this effort. As of December 31, 2024, Essential has achieved 28% emissions reduction from our 2019 baseline.

The two most significant actions that are contributing to our efforts to achievethe 60% emissions reduction target are:

Board Oversight and Climate Risk Management

• Please refer to sustainability.Essential.co for more detailed climate change disclosure.

Corporate Governance | Sustainability Program

Human Capital Management

At Essential, we believe our 3,300+ employees are our greatest assets in delivering life’s most essential resources. Our goal is to build and retain a talented, skilled, and diverse workforce that values teamwork and embodies a steadfast commitment to our customers and to the environment. Essential is committed to providing professional opportunities for career growth and competitive benefits packages for our employees. Similarly, we are dedicated to creating a culture that empowers employees and where all feel welcomed, respected, and recognized for their contributions.

Board Oversight of Human Capital Management

Essential’s Board of Directors believes that our ability to attract, retain, and develop exceptional talent is a key strategic driver of long-term growth and success for our stakeholders. The Chief Human Resources Officer regularly presents updates to the full Board as well as to the Governance Committee, engaging in strategic discussion with the group regarding the topics outlined below.

Engaging our Employees

We believe our success depends on employees understanding how their work contributes to Essential’s overall strategy. We use a variety of communication channels to help them stay informed, including open forums with our executives, regular staff and team meetings, and employee resource groups. In addition, we use formal engagement surveys across the entire organization and implement thoughtful action plans for leadership based on specific feedback. In 2025 we introduced engagement goals for each and every employee in the organization. This increased focus proved to be successful yielding our highest engagement scores since 2021, with a 4 point improvement from the previous year.

Corporate Governance | Sustainability Program

At Essential we delivered on the following commitments to the employee experience in 2025:

Talent Management—Training and Development

We believe in an integrated talent development approach and understand that a balanced and holistic approach to learning makes it more likely that employees will learn and retain the workplace behaviors we expect.

2025 organizational and workforce development focused on increasing employee engagement in development to help the organization’s talent build the skills to be successful.

Through expanded marketing and offering more formal learning programs, employee learning hours increased by 13% to over 23,000 training hours completed. These formal programs included the following:

Our efforts on talent engagement and retention have had a positive impact on employee turnover as turnover has improved in 2025 by 8.6% over 2024.

We align our development model and activities to support our vision, mission, and competencies, with a balanced approach to developing our workforce and creating a confident, committed, and high-performance culture.

Succession Planning

Our succession planning strategy identifies leaders at different stages in their careers and customizes a development approach. In 2025 we conducted a talent review of managers and directors for succession planning. The Essential Utilities executive leadership development strategy for future executives is a combination of experiences that includes assessments and coaching, executive presentation skills, and formal learning programs.

Corporate Governance | Sustainability Program

Safety And Wellness

The Essential safety program focuses on identifying hazards, training our employees on the best practices to remain safe, and providing them with equipment and facilities to face hazards in the safest way possible. Our policies require that we follow OSHA reporting guidelines to identify, report and investigate any injuries to our employees.

The health of our employees is just as important to us as their safety. We provide access to a variety of innovative, flexible, and convenient employee health and wellness programs. Recognizing mental health as a central part of each employee’s well-being, we have added additional resources and counseling access for employees and their families.

To incentivize managers to promote a safe environment, we include safety metrics for Lost Time/Restricted Time Incidents, Responsible Vehicle Accident Rate, and Gas Damage Prevention Rate (20% collective weighting) into our executive compensation incentive plans.

Demonstrable Progress Through Program Improvement

Essential’s safety initiatives focus on several industry-accepted principles:

Strengthening Our Community

Essential operates in nine states across America, but as an important part of the communities we serve, our presence is felt locally. We do business with many local suppliers and build our team with members of those communities. Our employees take pride in the essential resources they provide for their families and neighbors. Our services better enable households to grow, commerce to bustle, and the health of our towns and cities to flourish. Simply put, we thrive when our communities thrive. For these reasons, our organization and team members enthusiastically contribute time and resources to further strengthen our communities. Working with incredible nonprofits throughout our service areas, we have formed some powerful partnerships to help improve the quality of life for our customers.

Perhaps the longest-standing tradition at Essential is our culture of giving, and we are proud of our team members for always going above and beyond for their communities.

To support their commitment to giving back, Essential invites all its employees to take advantage of a gift-matching program. Essential matches 100%, up to a maximum of $500 per calendar year per employee, for personal contributions made by an employee or their spouse or domestic partner to qualifying nonprofit organizations.

In addition, Essential hosts an annual giving campaign through the United Way that is also matched dollar for dollar through the Essential Foundation. For more than two decades, Essential’s partnership with the United Way has provided vital funds for the communities we service while offering team members a simple process for donating. Through its annual workplace giving campaigns, Essential builds collective impacts while inspiring employees to donate in a way that is meaningful to them. Each year, Essential team members give to a variety of initiatives, including health and human services, education, housing, hunger relief, the environment, and animal welfare.

Corporate Governance | Other Governance Policies and Practices