Parent organization Citizens Corporation | Founded 1979 | |
Subsidiaries Citizens Wind, Rehoboth Solar Llc, Citizens Sunrise Transmission LLC | ||
Citizens Energy Corporation is a non-profit organization that primarily aids the poor in the United States and throughout the world by organizing projects to provide discounted and free home heating services and supplies.
In 1979, using oil-trading ventures in Latin America and Africa, Citizens Energy began taking revenues from commercial enterprises to channel millions of dollars into charitable programs in the US and across the world.
Citizens Energy has grown into seven separate companies, including one of the largest energy conservation firms in the U.S. It became one of the nation's first energy firms to move large volumes of natural gas to more than 30 U.S. states. As a precursor to market changes under electricity deregulation in the late 1990s, Citizens was a pioneer in moving and marketing electrical power over the grid.
Citizens Energy currently provides free home heating oil for the elderly and the poor, lowers the cost of prescription drugs for millions of Americans citizens, and has started solar heating projects in Jamaica and Venezuela. Citizens creates these social ventures through financing by various businesses. In February 2014, Citgo and the Government of Venezuela launched its ninth annual Heating Oil Program in partnership with Citizens Energy; since its inception in 2005 the program has covered the donation of 235 million gallons of heating oil to 1.8 million Americans.
Its founder and chairman is former Massachusetts Democratic Representative Joseph Patrick Kennedy II.