PPL Montana is helping low-income Montanans facing higher-than-normal heating bills this year by donating $50,000 to Energy Share, a statewide energy assistance program.
An additional $57,294.94 in Universal System Benefits funds has been donated to Energy Share by the owners of the Colstrip power plant, which includes PPL Montana. Universal System Benefits funds are state-mandated contributions that companies can choose to designate for energy conservation, renewable resource projects and applications, or low-income energy assistance.
“This combined donation will make more than $100,000 available to help our neighbors meet the critical and basic need to keep their homes and families warm,” said David Hoffman, director of external affairs for PPL Montana.
This marks the third year in a row that PPL Montana has contributed funding sufficient to help more than 256 households statewide stay warm, said Dennis Lopach, president of Energy Share’s board of directors.
“We greatly appreciate PPL Montana’s continued support of Energy Share,” he said. “People who live on the edge of poverty, and people below poverty, cannot make it through our winters without a helping hand and the emergency bill assistance Energy Share provides.
“PPL Montana has played a significant role in helping those families stay warm since 2006,” Lopach said.
Based in Helena, Energy Share of Montana is a private nonprofit organization whose primary purpose is to help Montanans who don’t qualify for other programs or have exhausted that assistance with emergency home-heating assistance. Since its inception in 1982, Energy Share has distributed $9.3 million dollars in energy assistance to more than 30,000 families. Energy Share is funded solely with private and corporate donations and usually is only available once in the life of the recipient. For more information on Energy Share, call 1-800-777-7589.
PPL Montana provides safe, reliable energy from coal-fired power plants at Colstrip and Billings, as well as 11 hydroelectric plants along West Rosebud Creek and the Missouri, Madison, Clark Fork and Flathead rivers. It has a combined generating capacity of more than 1,200 megawatts and has offices in Billings, Butte and Helena. PPL Montana and its 500 employees are dedicated to Montana and its communities, supporting educational, environmental and economic development programs across the state. PPL EnergyPlus operates a trading floor in Butte that markets and sells power for PPL Montana in wholesale and retail energy markets throughout the western United States. PPL Montana and PPL EnergyPlus are subsidiaries of PPL Corporation (NYSE: PPL).