Xcel Energy’s  Scharmin Williams  (right) worked with  Metropolitan Council  Environmental  Services’ (MCES)  Brad Gehring at  a waste water  treatment plant  in St. Paul on  process efficiency  improvements. The efforts included  retrofitting lighting in  the plant’s five miles  of underground  tunnels. Overall,  MCES achieved a 15 percent reduction  in energy, saving  $2.5 million annually.  “I’m proud we’re  making such an  impact on our  carbon footprint and that we’re going to continue  this effort with a  more aggressive  goal as we go into the future,” Gehring said. In addition to investing in power plants such  as Jones Station, we are taking advantage  of investment opportunities in electric  transmission and distribution as well as  natural gas infrastructure. Besides building  financial value for you, those efforts enable  us to modernize our system and ensure  reliability at a reasonable cost to customers.  Over the next five years, for example,  we will invest roughly $4 billion in our  transmission system, which includes  more than 18,000 miles and spans 10  states. Because we operate in different  transmission regions, including planning,  permitting and construction, we have  developed valuable employee expertise  and a broad industry perspective that make  us particularly efficient and effective. In  fact, on average, Xcel Energy is building  transmission at a lower cost than the  regional averages.  Because we work closely with many  stakeholders in making transmission  decisions, we’ve established solid  relationships that have resulted in satisfied  customers as well as good recovery  mechanisms across our service territory.  In 2011, we put the first segments of  major transmission projects in Minnesota,  Colorado and Texas into service. Those  projects create jobs, boost local economies  and enable us to deliver more of the  renewable energy that our customers want.  In Colorado, our plan to meet the state’s  Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act requirements  represents another investment opportunity  with many benefits. Over the next few  years, we plan to retire older coal-fired  units, add modern emission controls to  newer coal-fired units, build new natural  gas plants and switch other facilities from  coal to natural gas. The effort will give us  a diverse and balanced energy portfolio in  Colorado, one that enables us to capture  the advantages of coal, natural gas and  renewable generation technologies. It will  dramatically reduce emissions and allow  us to meet current and anticipated federal  environmental regulations cost effectively  while we upgrade our system.  Retiring and repowering Colorado  generating facilities is possible in part  because we brought our Comanche 3  coal-fired unit on line in 2010 at an excellent  price for customers. The Comanche 3  project, which resulted in significant  emission reductions at the plant site while  more than doubling the plant’s capacity,  gave us the reliable foundation we needed  to balance and reduce emissions from the  rest of our Colorado generating portfolio.  It’s an excellent example of the far-sighted  measures we’ve taken that put us in a  strong environmental position.  Xcel Energy is an environmental leader,  and we plan to keep it that way. Our  environmental strategy works for customers  and communities because it’s balanced and reasonably priced. It works for you  because of the investment opportunities it has created.  Because we’ve been proactive about efforts  such as reducing emissions and adding  renewable energy sources, we are ahead  of many state and federal environmental  rules. That gives us flexibility to pursue  environmental initiatives that maintain  the value of our environmental leadership  position while truly benefiting customers.  XCEL ENERGY  ! . . 5 ! , 2 % 0 / 2 4 s Ahead of the environmental curve Taking advantage of investment opportunities 