Xcel Energy’s Scharmin Williams (right) worked with Metropolitan Council Environmental Services’ (MCES) Brad Gehring at a waste water treatment plant in St. Paul on process efficiency improvements. The efforts included retrofitting lighting in the plant’s five miles of underground tunnels. Overall, MCES achieved a 15 percent reduction in energy, saving $2.5 million annually. 

“I’m proud we’re making such an impact on our carbon footprint and that we’re going to continue this effort with a more aggressive goal as we go into the future,” Gehring said. 

## Taking advantage of investment opportunities 

In addition to investing in power plants such as Jones Station, we are taking advantage of investment opportunities in electric transmission and distribution as well as natural gas infrastructure. Besides building financial value for you, those efforts enable us to modernize our system and ensure reliability at a reasonable cost to customers. 

Over the next five years, for example, we will invest roughly $4 billion in our transmission system, which includes more than 18,000 miles and spans 10 states. Because we operate in different transmission regions, including planning, permitting and construction, we have developed valuable employee expertise and a broad industry perspective that make us particularly efficient and effective. In fact, on average, Xcel Energy is building transmission at a lower cost than the regional averages. 

Because we work closely with many stakeholders in making transmission decisions, we’ve established solid relationships that have resulted in satisfied customers as well as good recovery mechanisms across our service territory. In 2011, we put the first segments of major transmission projects in Minnesota, Colorado and Texas into service. Those projects create jobs, boost local economies and enable us to deliver more of the renewable energy that our customers want. 

In Colorado, our plan to meet the state’s Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act requirements represents another investment opportunity with many benefits. Over the next few years, we plan to retire older coal-fired units, add modern emission controls to newer coal-fired units, build new natural 

gas plants and switch other facilities from coal to natural gas. The effort will give us a diverse and balanced energy portfolio in Colorado, one that enables us to capture the advantages of coal, natural gas and renewable generation technologies. It will dramatically reduce emissions and allow us to meet current and anticipated federal environmental regulations cost effectively while we upgrade our system. 

Retiring and repowering Colorado generating facilities is possible in part because we brought our Comanche 3 coal-fired unit on line in 2010 at an excellent price for customers. The Comanche 3 project, which resulted in significant emission reductions at the plant site while more than doubling the plant’s capacity, gave us the reliable foundation we needed to balance and reduce emissions from the rest of our Colorado generating portfolio. It’s an excellent example of the far-sighted measures we’ve taken that put us in a strong environmental position. 

## Ahead of the environmental curve 

Xcel Energy is an environmental leader, and we plan to keep it that way. Our environmental strategy works for customers and communities because it’s balanced and reasonably priced. It works for you because of the investment opportunities it has created. 

Because we’ve been proactive about efforts such as reducing emissions and adding renewable energy sources, we are ahead of many state and federal environmental rules. That gives us flexibility to pursue environmental initiatives that maintain the value of our environmental leadership position while truly benefiting customers. 

