PPL Montana is once again inviting teachers to get involved in its annual Project Earth Environmental Education Grant Program and submit ideas that will inspire students to preserve and protect Montana’s environment.

“Exciting the imaginations of children and young adults and getting them thinking about the world they live in, that’s what this program is all about,” said Lisa Perry, PPL Montana’s community affairs manager. “PPL Montana is proud to help provide teachers with resources that inspire student creativity and practical programs that can improve Montana’s wildlife habitat and its rivers and streams.”

This past year, PPL’s Project Earth Environmental Education Grants Program helped students get started on a variety of interesting and educational projects:

• Building a greenhouse to study, plant, nurture, market, and sell vegetables and flowers.
• Purchasing a biodiesel starter kit, which students will use to build a biodiesel lawnmower and learn about how the technology can help the environment by using renewable fuel sources.
• Helping students investigate how to reduce air pollution in the Kootenai Valley by researching how different kinds of wood, different methods of house cleaning and different heating sources can alter particulate matter in the air.

“It’s always exciting to make learning about the environment fun and interesting and enhance programs for the students,” Perry said.

Through the program, educators are awarded up to $1,500 to help teach students the important role they play in maintaining a healthy environment.

Teachers can receive grants for school projects that focus on issues such as watersheds and wetlands, air quality, renewable resources, energy conservation and the greening of schools. The projects can enhance established classroom curricula and academic standards, or support extracurricular activities of school organizations and clubs.

The program is being offered to all public, private and parochial schools in Montana. A school may partner with an organization, association or business, but the school must have primary responsibility for the project. Applications will be accepted until Jan. 30, 2009. A team of PPL Montana employees and environmental experts will choose the winning projects.

For more information about the PPL Montana Project Earth Environmental Education Grants Program or to apply for a grant, click here.

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).