In the past five years alone, NSTAR's Energy Efficiency programs have helped customers save 6.5 million therms of natural gas and 800,000 megawatt hours of electricity. This is the equivalent of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by half a million tons. Such programs are available to both electric and gas customers, and designed to not only save on your monthly energy bill, but also help the environment.
In the same spirit, NSTAR is taking a closer look at the way we conduct business on a daily basis to ensure our environmental impact as a company is as minimal as it can be. In fact, NSTAR has already taken a number of steps that are beneficial to the environment.
For instance:
- NSTAR recycles more than 7,000 gallons of waste motor oil a year. It is reused as fuel at various steam plants, paper mills and asphalt plants.
- NSTAR owns more than 5,000 acres of land in the Commonwealth to support our electric and gas systems. Sometimes this land is no longer needed. In those cases NSTAR works carefully to demolish all concrete structures, cleanup the land and prepare environmental closure reports. Recently, old substations in Chelsea and Somerville were cleaned up, with the Chelsea land becoming a new children's playground and the Somerville land being developed for residential housing.
- Over 2,360 tons of utility poles and other wood waste are recycled each year. This wood is processed into chips and recycled as an alternative fuel source for cement kilns. NSTAR is also looking at the possibility of having poles reused as rail-road ties and highway guard rails.
- NSTAR is always looking at ways to make our vehicles more environmentally friendly. In 2004, NSTAR began replacing V8 and V6 powered light duty pick-up trucks with 4-cylinder powered models. To date, almost 300 of these vehicles have been replaced with more fuel efficient models.
- Several hundred traditional computer monitors in our Call Centers have been replaced with new LCD monitors. These use a lot less electricity.
- Our computer room has been updated with two-tier servers - using less power and needing less light and air conditioning.
- NSTAR also recycles a number of other materials. Annually 1.2 million pounds of copper, 623,000 pounds of aluminum, 2.5 million pounds of cable lead and 1.1 million pounds of steel are recycled.
