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Helotes County's First Green Power Partner with Windtricity®
05/12/2008

Helotes Mayor Thomas A. Schoolcraft announced today the City of Helotes has committed to offset 100 percent of its energy use in city buildings with clean, renewable Windtricity from CPS Energy, thus becoming the first Bexar County municipality to achieve U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Green Power Partner status.

“We are a unique community with both country-style living as well as the conveniences of city life,” said Schoolcraft.  “It takes energy to run this community, so why not use green power to do it?”
 The City of Helotes is now a CPS Energy Windtricity Partner and is challenging its residents and business community to sign up for Windtricity also in an effort to become an EPA Green Power Community, a higher level of commitment than Green Power Partner.

“To reach that goal, about 1,400 Helotes residents would need to sign up for our Windtricity program,” explained John Saenz, CPS Energy vice president of retail energy.  “Customers can go to cpsenergy.com where an online calculator helps them realize how much energy their homes use, and how much of that energy they would like to offset with wind-generated electricity.  It costs a little bit more, but it helps us invest in more renewable energy, and that’s the key, all of us working together to make a difference for the good of the environment.”

The City of Helotes is the first suburban municipality in Bexar County to offset all of its energy needs with Windtricity.  County Commissioner Lyle Larson, whose precinct serves part of Helotes, praised the city for its environmental leadership role and challenged other Bexar County suburban cities to do the same.




CPS Energy is the nation's largest municipally owned energy company providing both natural gas and electric service. Acquired by the City of San Antonio in 1942, the company serves approximately 690,000 electric customers and almost 320,000 natural gas customers in and around America's seventh-largest city. CPS Energy ranks among the nation's lowest-cost energy providers, owns the highest financial ratings of any electric system in the U. S., and stands number 1 in wind-energy capacity among municipally owned utilities across the country.