The 2009 Green Washington Awards

more than 100,000 free car wash tickets to schools and over 150 charity groups so they can hold fundraising events at Brown Bear's facilities, where effluent can be properly processed and disposed of, and prevented from reaching waterways.

 

Utilities

Puget Sound Energy

Bellevue | Employees: 2,500 | pse.com

 

Puget Sound Energy's Wild Horse Wind Project will soon include 2,400 solar panels as well as its wind turbines.

 

 

This year, the Green Washington judges happily noted that many major utilities were making strides in energy savings. Puget Sound Energy (PSE), however, breezed ahead by a nose due to its extensive investments in alternate fuel sources and its continued leadership in wind and solar project development.

PSE, the nation's second-largest utility owner of wind power generation facilities, meets the electricity needs of about 110,000 customers with the Hopkins Ridge and Wild Horse wind facilities. Next year, PSE plans to begin work on the Lower Snake River Wind Energy Project, which will serve 350,000 homes. PSE has also built a 2,400-panel solar project, the largest in the Northwest, at the Wild Horse facility.

In 2008, PSE's conservation programs saved customers a record-high $30 million on their energy bills and created 450 new local jobs, says PSE spokeswoman Rebekah Anderson.

The company says the completion of the $7.4-billion acquisition of PSE's parent company, Puget Energy, by a consortium of Canadian and American investors has given PSE the financial resources to maintain this long-term vision of greater sources of renewable energy despite the current economic downturn.

Runner-up:

Snohomish County Public Utility District

Farther north in Everett, the Snohomish County Public Utility District (snopud.com) was a close second to PSE in the judges' opinions, with its outstanding conservation numbers-6.2 megawatts reduced, representing $4.5 million in savings to customers in 2008-and its wide array of planned alternative energy sources through the next decade, including tidal power (powering 70,000 homes by 2011), wind energy (40,000 homes) and biomass/biogas facilities (25,000 homes).

OF NOTE: Electric utility Seattle City Light also shined brightly with a list of environmental achievements. As the first utility in the country to be "greenhouse gas neutral" via renewable fuel and purchasing offsets, City Light's conservation program has prevented 598,000 metric tons of CO₂ from being released and saved enough energy in 2008 to power 105,000 homes for one year.

 

Building

McKinstry

Seattle | Employees: 1,600 | mckinstry.com

Seattle-based McKinstry edged out a field of 20