Awards

Through the ENERGY STAR^® Change a Light, Change the World Campaign, Reliant encouraged individuals to switch from incandescent bulbs to energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). This year we encouraged 23,582 consumers to pledge to change 33,258 incandescent light bulbs with CFLs by signing up for the Reliant Energy Power Pact. This will result in:

Visit the Reliant Energy Power Pact page to make your pledge.

*According to ENERGY STAR calculations

Reliant Energy is active in the following Galveston Bay environmental programs:

• Environmental Partners – program addresses habitat restoration, habitat preservation and environmental education needs.
• Wetland Plant Nursery – provides wetland vegetation to restore hundreds of acres of intertidal marsh.
• Marsh Mania – provides plants, funding, and volunteers for a number of wetland restoration sites around Galveston Bay.
• Beneficial Uses of Dredged Materials for Wetland Restoration – we partner with the Port of Houston, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to develop large-scale, intertidal marsh planting protocols.
• Bay Day – we have been a major underwriter and provided funding to allow the Texas Marine Extension to bring the floating classroom to the Kemah Boardwalk to teach students the functions and values of our precious wetland resources.
• Oyster Reef Construction – we have designed and constructed seven oyster reefs in Galveston Bay.
• Dickinson Bay Island Project – we provide support to create a productive intertidal marsh habitat, oyster reef, neotropic bird nesting habitat and recreational fishing destination.
• Columbia Bottomlands Carbon Sequestration Project – the project provides funds to preserve and reforest 1,170 acres in the Columbia Bottomlands with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released their top green power-purchasing local government entities. The City of Houston came in at number two. Houston bought 262.8 million kWh of green power (wind energy) from us, totaling 20 percent of the city's total demand. View the entire list of green-purchasing organizations.

We received this award from the EPA Gulf Coast Environmental Program, for the Bahia Grande Project in Brownsville, Texas. This project involved the restoration of the mangrove-lined coastal estuary and development of a public support group through educational materials and volunteer activities.

The Reliant Environmental Partners team has taken the first place prize at the Great Texas Birding Classic for the past four years. Presented by Texas Parks & Wildlife, our team has won more than $100,000 for use in environmental projects such as Dickinson Bay Island Restoration, Scenic Galveston Reitan Point Environmental Education and Observation Tower, Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge Prairie Restoration, and Columbia Bottomland Habitat Restoration.

We have been recognized for the fourth time by Coastal America with a Partnership Award for our efforts to restore valuable coastal wetland habitats. The most recent Partnership Award recognized our role in the Bahia Grande Wetlands Restoration Project in south Texas, the largest wetland restoration project in the United States. 

The Corporate Lone Star Land Steward Award is given by the Texas Parks & Wildlife for many years of land stewardship on private, state and federal lands. The award recognized programs such as the Galveston Bay Estuary Program and the creation of the Environmental Partners Program, which laid the groundwork for monetary and in-kind support of numerous environmental projects in Texas and other states where we operate.

The Delehide Cove Protection and Restoration Project conserved and enhanced approximately 400 acres of coastal habitat along Galveston Island’s West Bay shoreline. The project began with strong local support by the West Galveston Island Property Owners Association and developed into a diverse partnership of State and Federal agencies, local non-governmental organizations and industry.

The project installed 8,100 feet of breakwater to protect the area from the threat of continued erosion. The breakwater resulted in the protection of 173 acres of estuarine marsh, 7 acres of tidal flats, and 20 acres of uplands. Additionally, several critical areas within the cove were restored: 45 acres estuarine marsh; 3 acres seagrass; and 3 acres tidal flats.

Our 521-megawatt Seward Power Plant, a facility that utilizes state-of-the-art clean coal technology and waste coal as fuel, was named Plant of the Year by Platts’ POWER magazine in 2004.

This award goes to the best in the industry over the past year regardless of generation technology or size. The article announcing Seward’s selection for the award cites both the economic and environmental benefits of the project. “For turning lemons into lemonade in such an elegant and environmentally beneficial way, the Seward project is POWER magazine’s 2004 Plant of the Year.”

The Seward plant, located 80 miles east of Pittsburgh near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, is the largest waste coal-fired generating plant in the world and is the only merchant plant of its kind in the U.S. Seward was constructed on the site of an 82-year-old, coal-fired plant that was retired at the end of 2003. The facility produces two and one-half times as much electricity as the plant it replaces, while significantly reducing emissions.

In addition, Seward uses low-grade refuse from coal mines, which is abundant in Western Pennsylvania, as fuel. Removing this waste coal improves the environment, while removing a significant source of acid discharge from the local watershed. In all, more than 100 million tons of waste coal will be removed from the landscape during the life of the plant. Even the ash produced at Seward is used in a beneficial manner. This alkaline by-product is transported to waste coal sites in the area to help neutralize acids that remain in the soil.