O&R to Make Ops Center Into a Model of Energy Efficiency; $800,000 Plan to Pay for Itself in Four Years

PEARL RIVER, NY April 21, 2008 — O&R today announced plans to turn the company's 90,400-square feet administration building at its Spring Valley Operations Center into a demonstration project designed to serve as a model for better ways its business customers can save energy, cut their energy costs and reduce the amount of harmful greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere.

O&R plans to invest $800,000 to introduce a number of improvements including new, more energy-efficient lighting and more lighting controls, window replacements, added insulation and upgraded air conditioning and heating systems.

These projects will be completed before the end of 2008. The result will be an annual projected energy savings of a little over $200,000, per year. That means the project will pay for itself in about four years. Those improvements represent a carbon dioxide reduction of 2,756,544 pounds per year.

The plan emerged from an energy audit commissioned by O&R of its three largest operating facilities which are located in Spring Valley, Middletown and Blooming Grove. After an internal review of the audit's results, O&R decided to pursue the improvements listed in the audit with accelerated plans O&R already had on the drawing board to upgrade the Spring Valley facility as the best short-term return on its investment.

The audit was developed as a result of an innovative O&R initiative called GoGlobal.

That effort marshaled the collective wisdom of the O&R workforce through a series of 55 brainstorming sessions, attended by more than 800 employees, designed to elicit the best possible thinking about how to take personal and company steps to combat climate change.

The result: nearly 2,000 ideas on how individuals and the company can become leaders in energy efficiency and environmental responsibility.

O&R also has assumed a leadership position in the electric utility industry's drive to promote customers' switching from incandescent lightbulbs to energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs or CFLs.

The new bulbs last longer, use less electricity and lower emissions.

O&R has replaced 300 incandescent light bulbs throughout its facilities with CFLs.

That switch is projected to save over 300,000 kWh (enough electricity to power 35 homes for an entire year) and to prevent over 500,000 pounds of greenhouse emissions (the equivalent of taking 49 cars off the road for one year).

But that's just inside O&R.

O&R has been promoting the switch to compact fluorescent lights through the national "Change a Light, Change the World" program.

During the 2007-2008 campaign, O&R has collected 2,211 pledges from individuals who used 14,328 CFLs. That means those individuals saved more than 4 million kWh of electricity at a cost of over $350,000. O&R's efforts in rounding up those pledges means that 5.8 million pounds of greenhouse gases never reached the earth's atmosphere.