Renewable Energy Provider Targeting Texas Businesses

Austin American-Statesman
May 13, 2003

Green Mountain Energy Co., the Austin-based clean energy marketer, is expanding into the commercial market in Texas, seeking to sell businesses on the idea that energy from renewable sources such as wind is good for business.
The company is setting up a sales office in Dallas, where it will launch the new initiative to attract small and medium-size businesses. One early customer is the Dallas and Houston stores of Whole Earth Provision Co., an outdoor retailer. Whole Earth also has two stores in Austin, but city utilities such as Austin Energy are exempt from the 1999 law that deregulated the retail electric market in Texas.

“Basically, we've seen a lot of success in the residential market, and we had a lot of interest” from businesses, said Andrew Prince, a Green Mountain spokesman.
Green Mountain is a reseller; it doesn't generate power but buys it from other sources and markets it to customers in seven states. The company sells only power generated from renewable sources.

In Texas, that means power generated from wind and hydroelectric facilities.
Green Mountain is targeting a fertile customer base. About one-third of eligible businesses and organizations in Texas have opted to switch to a competing provider. Among big industrial customers, such as manufacturing plants, the vast majority have switched providers.

By contrast, only about 6 percent of residential consumers have switched electricity providers. Prince said that in most cases, Green Mountain's prices for business customers will be lower than the so-called price to beat, the state-set benchmark price.

Green Mountain is one of Austin's best financed companies. It has raised more than $200 million in venture financing since it was founded in 1997. About half of that has come from Sam Wyly, the Dallas financier who started the company, originally in Vermont. The headquarters moved to Austin three years ago.

The company had $250 million in revenue last year, Prince said, three times as much as it had in 2001. It has 600,000 customers in seven states and 160 employees, most of them based at the Austin headquarters.

In Texas, the company has focused on the residential market. But it has business customers in some other states, including Pennsylvania, where it serves 13 Kinko's copy shops. Kinko's also buys Green Mountain power in California and Oregon.