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California prisons to go ‘green’
WASCO October 9, 2008 12:23pm 
• May reduce energy costs by $3.2 million a year • Retrofit projects underway at 16 locations A new public-private partnership was announced Thursday that its participants claim will help pay for energy-saving building retrofits at more than a dozen prisons in California.
At a ceremony at Wasco State Prison in the Central Valley, representatives Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas Co. gave a check for $6.5 million to the state to jump-start the program.
The partnership was formed in response to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's “Green Building Initiative,” which requires state agencies to reduce energy use in their buildings by 20 percent by 2015.
The collaboration between the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the four investor-owned utilities will put into action energy-efficiency projects for immediate and long-term energy savings, as well as peak-demand reduction, the utilities say.
"Our agency launched 16 retrofit projects at a dozen sites across the state to meet the governor's ambitious energy-efficiency mandate," says CDCR Secretary Matt Cate. "We expect these improvements to reduce our energy costs by $3.2 million a year."
The projects also are expected to save more than 25 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, 650,000 therms of natural gas, and 22.5 million pounds of carbon-dioxide gases.
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