Connecting with our Communities

In Houston, we’re working with the city to convert all 165,000 of its streetlights to more energy-efficient LED lights. We’re also partnering with the city to construct hike and bike trails in and along CenterPoint Energy’s rights-of-way. In Arkansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Oklahoma, we awarded more than $14 million in rebates in 2014 for energy-efficient natural gas appliances through our conservation improvement programs.

In all of the communities we serve, we partner with the United Way. Together, the company and employees last year gave $2.8 million that will directly benefit local nonprofit organizations.

We recognize that education is one of the keys to creating a brighter future. We work with Junior Achievement to foster work-readiness, entrepreneurship and financial literacy skills. We also provide energy educational resources to teachers, and many of our employees volunteer in the classroom or mentor students.

To promote a balance between environmental responsibility and reliable electric service, we educate consumers about tree-planting practices to help minimize the number of outages caused by tree interference. In 2014, CenterPoint Energy donated more than 4,100 powerline-friendly trees in the Houston region.

Last year, our employees and retirees, along with friends and family, generously donated more than 215,000 hours of their time to worthy causes throughout our service territory. This volunteer service has an estimated value of $4.8 million, according to the Independent Sector organization.

In December 2014, CenterPoint Energy was named one of the nation’s 50 most community- minded companies, and the top U.S. utility, by Points of Light in partnership with Bloomberg, LP. The Civic 50 award is a tremendous honor, one made possible by the extraordinary dedication of our employees and the constructive relationships we’ve built over the years with our regulators, local governments and community organizations.

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