Spotlight On: Brad Steber, Vice President – Minnesota Gas, CenterPoint Energy
April 2024 — Brad Steber, vice president of Minnesota Gas at CenterPoint Energy, sat down with Invest: to discuss the long list of priorities and opportunities that come along with providing energy in Minnesota, how innovation is shaping operations, workforce development and more.
How do your organization’s mission and objectives impact the work you do in the region?
In its simplest form, as a utility, it starts with how we deliver our services. We offer both natural gas and electric service in the Evansville, Indiana, and Houston, Texas markets, and provide natural gas service to other areas within Texas, as well as Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio, and Minnesota. We strive to deliver safe, reliable and resilient energy products for our customers and communities. In Minnesota, having consistent, reliable energy is especially critical during our really cold winters. The last thing anyone needs to be worrying or thinking about is staying warm on the coldest days.
What innovative practices are you implementing?
My background is in operations. I’ve worked with our team throughout my time at CenterPoint Energy to find innovative ways to optimize our operations and implement efforts focused on keeping natural gas flowing safely and efficiently. We are several years into using technology for methane detection that is 1,000 times more sensitive than traditional methods of detecting methane. Not only are we able to find the source of methane leaks faster, but we are also able to find the sources when they are at lower levels than through traditional detection methods. This helps us minimize the impact to our customers and helps us be better stewards of our environment, while maintaining the integrity of our natural gas system.
We are also investing in accelerating decarbonization technologies that are available through the Natural Gas Innovation Act, or NGIA, which was approved by the Minnesota legislature in 2021. This legislation provides an opportunity to collaborate with our regulators, including the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, to put innovative technologies into action in a cost-effective way for our customers to support Minnesota’s climate goals.
We submitted our first NGIA innovation plan in the summer of 2023. It includes investments in made-in-Minnesota energy, such as renewable natural gas and green hydrogen, expanding our already extensive energy efficiency programs, network geothermal systems and hybrid heating systems that include both electricity and natural gas. Our plan has been developed to support Minnesota’s energy future in a cost-effective way, with an estimated impact of less than $1.50 per month for a standard residential customer. This plan also proposes to have positive impacts on our local economy and environment by creating an estimated 3,000 full-time jobs and reducing 1.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions.
What initiatives have you undertaken to improve service delivery?
One of my passions is seeing the positive impact the investments in our infrastructure have on our customers and communities. We focus on safety-related projects and use modern materials and construction methods to increase the resiliency of our system. We have a strategic plan to upgrade facilities starting with legacy steel pipelines and then our legacy plastic materials.
We also work closely with local agencies and jurisdictions to relocate or replace our infrastructure to support public improvement projects, such as updates to bridges and roads. We have a great relationship with the city of Minneapolis and our more than 260 local communities we supply with energy throughout the Twin Cities and the outer-state region. Whenever an agency or jurisdiction gets funding for their development opportunities, we work closely with them on determining if we need to relocate our assets to help make their projects a reality.
In addition to the projects we complete for system integrity, safety and in collaboration with agencies, we are also updating service lines which directly provide natural gas service to our customers.
We are also focusing on a program to relocate meters from inside customers’ homes to the outdoors and investing in smart meters, which have advanced safety and communications features to optimize our operations. As of April 2024, we have nearly 60,000 smart meters currently installed with more to be installed over the coming years.
What is your approach to workforce development and talent management?
There have certainly been challenges across all sectors, especially in the past few years. We were fortunate coming out of COVID-19 through our regulatory filings to advocate and push for workforce development, specifically in energy efficiency. This feeds into our energy efficiency programs and the vital role energy efficiency efforts play in reaching the state’s climate goals and helping customers conserve energy. In 2022, we awarded $2.5 million in workforce development grants to local nonprofits and technical colleges to help build a diverse and skilled talent pipeline. This workforce is being built in the Twin Cities and is providing Minnesotans with access to careers in a growing industry.
We have also been working with what I call the “trades movement” where we are prioritizing skilled trades labor. We have seen this interest and investment in skilled trade labor as a great way for us to help meet the energy and infrastructure needs for our state. Nearly 70% of our 1,200 labor and skilled employees are represented by labor unions, and we are proud to work with them to deliver energy solutions.
What are your top priorities for the next five years?
In the next five years, we plan to continue investing in our system. Another key focus is identifying ways to enhance our proactive communications to customers and stakeholders about upcoming construction projects and planned infrastructure investments.
I am also focused on building on the work we are doing with our cities and local collaborators on sustainable, cost-effective and reliable energy solutions. CenterPoint Energy is a member of the Clean Energy Partnership with the city of Minneapolis and Xcel Energy. We meet quarterly to advance shared goals and efforts that support Minneapolis’ climate goals. We will also keep promoting innovation and programs that reduce customer emissions to advance Minnesota’s energy future.
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