Five Santa Clara, California businesses are being honored by their local power company, Silicon Valley Power, for their energy-saving efforts. In 2007, these five businesses alone saved more than 500,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. The electricity saved by just three winners is enough to run almost 60 homes for a year.

SVP's new award is the SVP Energy Innovator Awards, a competition the municipal utility plans to repeat yearly. It recognizes both small and large businesses that have taken extraordinary steps to reduce their own energy consumption, as well as implementing the use of renewable energy. The awards are broken down into three categories: Environmental Innovator, Energy Efficiency Partner and Green Power Champion. Both a small company and a large one will receive an award in each category.

Echelon Corporation, a networking company, is the recipient of the first Environmental Innovator award for small businesses. The company completed an an energy-efficient retrofit that updated, among other things, an obsolete heating system at their plant. Santa Clara University was the large organization recognized in the Environmental Innovator category. This school not only installed an extensive solar panel system on its roof, it created educational programs to reach out to students, faculty and staff.

In the Energy Efficiency Partner category, PDM Steel Services Center won the small business award. The company distributes heavy carbon steel products and took advantage of a rebate available from SVP to replace their lighting fixtures with energy-efficient fixtures that has already saved over 89,000 kilowatt hours. Sierra Meat Company is the large business winner: by updating refrigeration controls alone, the company saved $15,000 on energy costs and 14,000 kilowatt hours each month.

This year, SVP awarded only one company the title of 'Green Power Champion.' The recipient is Applied Materials, a large company providing equipment, service and software related to semiconductors, solar photovoltaics and flexible electronics. Applied Materials  using a staggering amount of electricity but has made the decision to pruchase that electricity from renewable sources. The company purchases 2.6 times the annual output of one large-scale wind turbine. An added benefit is Applied Materials' lowered carbon footprint: their use of wind power releases over 3,277 less tons of carbon dioxide per year.

I hope that more utility companies roll out recognition programs for energy savings among their customers. Such programs have value in developing awareness, as well as providing a little extra incentive for businesses to improve energy use. They may not be a cure-all, but they can be vehicles to help coordinate improvements and educate companies on the possibilities.