Powering up the future: PAETEC sponsors 2010 sustainable opportunities summit.

• Position: 2010 SUSTAINABLE OPPORTUNITIES SUMMIT - Arunas Chesonis of PaeTec Corp. speaks about the services and award - Interview

PAETEC Holding Corp. delivers data and voice services in 84 of the top 100 metropolitan areas in the country, including Denver, San Diego, Miami, Phoenix and Washingon, D.C.

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The New York-based telecom company is sponsoring the 2010 Sustainability Champion Awards in partnership with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment's Office of Environmental Integration and Sustainability and the Colorado Environmental Partnership, Connected Organizations for a Responsible Economy (CORE) and ColoradoBiz magazine.

CEO Arunas Chesonis says he considers sustainability a major part of the 11-year-old company's business strategy.

ColoradoBiz: Why did you choose to sponsor the 2010 Sustainability Champion Awards?

Chesonis: It revolves around our longer term vision of where PAETEC's products and services are headed. We believe that over the next 10 years, many of the energy purchasing decisions, energy efficiency decisions and sustainability decisions will be made by the office of the CIO (chief information officer.)

If you just think about what issues they're dealing with today, whether it's backup power or business continuity and weather-related issues, whether it's power consumption at their data centers, whether it's building efficiency projects, real estate decisions, remote workers--more and more CIOs are getting into the sustainability responsibility within companies.

We see ourselves continuing to market to the CIOs in the world. And sustainability is one way for us to approach them in a more creative way.

ColoradoBiz: You've come up with a concept to drive sustainability with your clients. Explain how that program works.

Chesonis: We have probably funded over the last 10 years several hundred million dollars worth of telecom systems and IT equipment for our customers in exchange for longer-term voice and data contracts. We're planning to do the same thing for people on the sustainability side, whether it's wind turbines, solar panel arrays, geothermal projects, whatever that organization needs.

We can utilize not just the telecom purchasing power they have, but we are entering into electricity and natural gas resale business as well. We already have several customers in New York state that we broker energy for, and we plan to expand that over the next several years into many more states in the country that allow competitive electricity suppliers. When you take a look at those two revenue streams, we can fund...