SMUD and the Sacramento Tree Foundation recently celebrated 25 years of partnership with the planting of a ceremonial willow oak at the southeast corner of SMUD’s Headquarters building. The partnership—known as the Sacramento Shade program—has delivered more than half a million free shade trees to residences and businesses since 1990.

“The Sacramento Shade program has been helping our customers cool their homes and save money for more than two and a half decades,” said Sacramento Shade program manager Misha Sarkovich. “We’re very proud to have helped Sacramento become the ‘city of trees.’”

Sacramento Shade provides a wide variety of benefits to homeowners and the community:

• Shade trees can reduce home cooling costs up to 40 percent after five years of growth.
• Shade trees help reduce the community’s peak electricity demand. This allows SMUD to purchase less power on the open market, helping keep rates affordable and improving grid reliability.
• The cumulative effect of the trees planted since 1990 has reduced Sacramento’s annual electricity use by about 15 gigawatt-hours. That’s enough energy to power approximately 20,000 homes.
• Shade trees help reduce atmospheric carbon as well as the urban heat-island effect.

SMUD was the first utility in the nation to establish a large-scale, utility-funded tree planting program. SMUD has also won the Tree Line USA award 14 years in a row. Tree Line USA is a national program recognizing utilities for practices that protect and enhance America’s urban forests.