Spotlight On: Rudy Garza, CEO, CPS Energy
June 2025 — As San Antonio is one of the fastest-growing markets in the country, CPS Energy’s Horizon 2050 seeks to guide more than $10 billion in investments to create the electric, natural gas, and other energy supply resources for the region’s future needs. In an interview with Invest:, Rudy Garza, president and CEO of CPS Energy, details current and future investments the utility is making to support the growth of San Antonio.
What makes San Antonio a key destination for CPS Energy’s operations?
The cultural diversity of San Antonio is what sets it apart from other markets. The ability to come together and the collaborative spirit of our community are what make San Antonio special. CPS Energy is one of the largest municipally owned utilities in the country; everything we do adds value to our community in some form or fashion. Our regional footprint is expanding, and there is immense value in public power.
What have been some key milestones for CPS Energy over the last 12 months?
Over the past three years, we have been focused on our Vision 2027 strategy. In large part, this has been driven by the need to execute our community-approved power generation plan. We have been busy adding different kinds of energy capacity, and we believe in the diversity of our generation fleet. We need all the generation that we can get to serve our growing community. Every megawatt counts. We have added additional wind as well as solar resources, and we are well underway with our battery storage portfolio development. We also added 1,710 megawatts of natural gas capacity in Corpus Christi and Laredo. CPS Energy has been purposeful in how we are executing our Vision 2027 strategic plan, especially when it comes to our generation plan. Our team has done an amazing job in moving our community forward in this regard.
How does the Horizon 2050 plan align with San Antonio’s future energy needs?
We have to be prepared for what the future may hold. We have significant investments that are going to take decades to execute. The Horizon 2050 plan is about anticipating the pathways and business needs that will be ahead of us and how we are going to pivot and transform to meet the needs of our community. This process has also grounded us in what we know – our customers value two factors above all: reliable, resilient service and affordability. We have to think about the needs of the future and ground them to these two key factors.
How is CPS Energy modernizing the grid and improving the reliability of the utility?
We have worked to modernize every aspect of our operation. We have made significant investments in our natural gas systems. We were previously limited in our gas supply, but we were able to strategize with our partners to tap into gas supplies south of San Antonio, which we had not been able to do before. As such, making those investments has been key, and we plan to continue to expand these investments. Our gas system needs to be resilient if we are going to rely on natural gas as a driver of our overall energy generation portfolio. We have also invested in a multi-year plan to increase what are known as reclosers, smart switches that allow us to interconnect our distribution system in different ways to limit outages for our customers. We have invested in more than 115 new switching devices that have made our systems more resilient. We will need to invest close to $1 billion a year over the next decade. This year, we have a $1.5 billion transmission capital plan. We are about halfway into executing our approved generation plan, but we have about 3,000 megawatts to go. We are going to have to add new capacity. All of this is going to take targeted, strategic investments. We have a $15 billion overall capital plan that will take us there, but we will have to remain strategic and focused on pushing the plan forward while continuing to communicate with our customers.
How are CPS Energy’s investments fostering economic growth in the region?
When it comes to the procurement process, it is becoming harder to work with some suppliers. We are intentional about working with local as well as small suppliers. Within that framework, we are also focusing on giving opportunities to new partners. This will make sure that local businesses are ready to do business with us. We are investing $1 billion of buying power back into San Antonio. We have a responsibility to make sure that we are maximizing the value to our local business community, with a specific focus on small businesses. On the economic development side, San Antonio is the fastest growing community in the country within one of the fastest growing states. As a state, we are challenged to readily have the energy resources to be able to serve all this growth. We are challenged when it comes to building the transmission infrastructure that we are going to need across the market to make sure that our power system remains reliable. San Antonio’s growth has outpaced ERCOT’s estimates (the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid operator). Thanks to our focused strategy, we have been able to stay ahead of this growth, but we have to remain proactive and strategic over the long term.
In what other ways is CPS Energy partnering with the local community?
Our process for community and stakeholder engagement is well established. We do thousands of events every year around the greater San Antonio area, talking to our customers. For our Horizon 2050 outreach campaign, we had nearly 9 million touchpoints, from community fairs to partner events, social media engagement, and more. I believe we do a good job in presenting our thought process to our community and leveraging their input. We try hard to ensure the community is aware of what we are doing and the why behind it. This presents the community with the opportunity to give us feedback and see what is done with this feedback. This informs where we end up with our strategies, which matters for a publicly owned utility.
What are the top priorities for CPS Energy moving forward?
The focus is to remain on top of the various capital investments that are currently happening. We are ahead of our intended pace in implementing our generation plan. However, we will have to continue to invest in these plans, which will take time. Also, one of the top priorities is investment in transmission. Over the next two years, we have some key transmission lines to build south of San Antonio, going into South Texas, to get a lot of the wind capacity out of South Texas into the other markets. We have to stay focused on completing these projects. Another key priority is our massive, multi-year enterprise resource planning system overhaul to replace our 20+ year legacy technology. As such, it is imperative to leverage the community and cement the importance of all these different projects, as they will impact the ability of San Antonio to continue to grow. We are going to keep our foot on the gas because we have a decade of investments that we will need to remain focused on.
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