Vectren 2009 Annual Report Download - page 7

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Vectren 2009 5
Sustainability
We’re quite proud of Vectren’s continued progress in
sustainability and environmental stewardship. Our most
recent emissions-control project, the Warrick 4 scrubber,
which came online very early in 2009, concludes total
investments of more than $410 million over the past
several years. As a result, Vectren’s generation eet
is now 100 percent scrubbed for sulfur dioxide, 90
percent controlled for nitrogen oxide and substantially
controlled for particulate matter and a signicant
portion of mercury. This sets us apart from many other
electric utilities in Indiana as we are part of only 35
percent of Indiana’s generation expected to meet all
the proposed air pollutant limits to be nalized in 2011.
These investments make Vectren’s generation eet one
of the cleanest in the Midwest and directly improve the
air quality for our communities.
Two other key projects came online in 2009 that further
exemplify our focus on sustainability. In July, we cut
the ribbon on the Blackfoot Clean Energy Facility in
southwestern Indiana. This landll-gas-to-electricity
effort, which is Vectren Energy Delivery’s rst renewable
energy plant, provides enough electricity to power
more than 2,000 homes annually for 20 years by using
methane harnessed from decomposing trash to power
two 1.6 megawatt (MW) turbines. This project, done
in partnership with Veolia Environmental Services, was
spearheaded by our wholly owned subsidiary, ESG,
which also has helped design similar plants across the
country that gather landll methane and turn it into
useable natural gas.
Furthermore, the second phase of Fowler Ridge, a
Benton County, Ind., wind farm through which we have
a 50 MW wind power purchase agreement, began
generating electricity in late 2009. These projects,
combined with another 30 MW wind power purchase
agreement, allow our electric utility to meet nearly
5 percent of our customers’ energy needs with a
renewable energy portfolio of almost 85 MW.
Another “green” project, which recently became fully
operational, represents a unique coal ash recycling
venture. The $20 million-plus investment will send up
to 200,000 tons of y ash per year to Geocycle US,
a wholly owned subsidiary of Holcim (US) Inc., for use
in cement manufacturing. The storage and conveyor
system allows us to load nearly all of the y ash
produced at our Culley and Brown plants on barges
and send it to the Geocycle facility in Missouri rather
than placing it in local ash ponds.
Vectren’s Nonutility Companies
Our nonutility group continues to focus its efforts on
providing products and services closely related to our
core utility operations. Proudly, we can say that the
majority of our operating companies are homegrown.
Energy Marketing and Services
The Energy Marketing and Services segment provides
quality energy management products and services
to end-use customers – ProLiance to industrial and
institutional customers, and Source to residential and
small commercial end-users. The difcult economic
conditions, which triggered lower energy demand
across the country and caused natural gas prices to be
less volatile than in recent years, negatively impacted
ProLiance’s 2009 performance. However, the company
rebounded solidly toward the end of the year, and,
thus far, is off to a good start in 2010 with the help of
improved seasonal storage spreads.
ProLiance continues to add new services, more
analytical tools and assistance to customers in areas
such as helping them understand and report their
carbon footprint. These services helped ProLiance
retain 96 percent of its customers in 2009 – 4 percent
better than the prior year – and have further aided in
increasing total customer count, which grew nearly 10
percent to almost 1,600 customers. As a testament to its
commitment to customers, ProLiance was recently ranked
third out of 37 companies in the 2009 annual Masteo
Survey, which is the leading customer service survey in
the gas marketing industry.
Logging a record year from a nancial performance
standpoint, Source added nearly 20,000 new customers
in 2009, more than a 10 percent increase, through