Financial company BBVA Compass signed a 10-year fixed contract with Choice! Energy Services to bring renewable power to more than 300 of the bank’s branches, offices and ATMs in Texas. The facilities will get solar and wind-generated electricity from Choice, a Houston-based retail energy consultant and broker. The contract runs through May 22, 2023, and will provide BBVA Compass with an about 41 million kWh of green power annually. BBVA Compass awarded the energy supply contract to AP Gas & Electric based on its credit quality and deal structure.

Pear Energy announced it is offering renewable energy nationwide to both homeowners and businesses. Pear Energy works with customers’ existing utility relationship and arranges for clean energy to be pumped into the electric grid in the amount exactly equal to each customer’s electric usage. Pear Energy sources clean energy from small, cooperative wind and solar farms throughout the United States. The cost is 2 cents per kilowatt hour more than the customer pays with his or her current utility, a price that decreases to 1.5 cents more per kilowatt hour above 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. Pear Energy provides each customer with a combined bill detailing:

• A side-by-side comparison of what would have been paid for conventional energy and what was paid for clean energy.
• The cooperative wind or solar farm where the energy was sourced.
• Confirmation that Pear Energy contributed half of the profits from the bill to non-profit organizations.

The Cincinnati-area paperboard packaging company Zumbiel Packaging joined the EPA’s Green Power Partnership (GPP) and committed to purchase five percent of its electricity from renewable sources. As part of GPP, Zumbiel purchased Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) for wind energy.