Corporate History
Beginning in 1979 with oil-trading ventures in Latin America and Africa, Citizens has used revenues from commercial enterprises to channel millions of dollars into charitable programs in the U.S. and abroad.  Whether heating the homes of the elderly and the poor, lowering the cost of prescription drugs for millions of Americans, or starting solar heating projects in Jamaica and Venezuela, Citizens has created social ventures as innovative as the businesses that finance them.
Oil
Citizens Energy signed its first crude oil contract with Venezuela in November 1979. Joseph P. Kennedy II arranged storage deals with major terminal operators and contracted with hundreds of retail dealers to deliver the oil to needy Massachusetts families at 40 percent below market rates. By the end of its first 18 months of operations, Citizens Energy had acquired and delivered more than 13 million gallons of home heating oil from Venezuela to elderly and poor families in Massachusetts. In addition, Massachusetts itself purchased oil from Citizens Energy, using state and federal energy assistance funds, saving the state $4.1 million. Read More...
Natural Gas
With the nation facing alarming increases in natural gas prices in the early 1980s, Citizens Energy Corporation began exploring opportunities to enter into the natural gas market. Citizens Energy believed that the same business model used in its Oil Heat Program – the use of for-profit opportunities to drive down the price of heating oil – could be applied to the natural gas industry. Read More...
Electricity
In 1985, Citizens Energy began its electricity industry operations by buying power from utilities with surplus generating capacity, reselling the excess power to other utilities, and using the profits to help low-income families pay their electricity bills. This initial experience ultimately led Citizens to win a landmark federal decision that foreshadowed the deregulation of the electricity industry and the formation of an independent Citizens Energy electric power marketing company. Read More...
Conservation
Citizens Conservation Corporation was created in 1981 to augment Citizens Energy’s fuel assistance programs. Recognizing that the least expensive form of energy is the energy saved through conservation and efficiency, Citizens Energy saw that its subsidized home heating oil often was wasted in poorly weatherized apartments with inefficient heating systems. By providing design, engineering, and construction management services, Citizens Conservation reduced energy waste in tens of thousands of housing units and made rental housing more livable and affordable.

Federal and state-funded weatherization programs existed at the time to provide conservation services to the poor, but Citizens Energy tried another approach. By appealing to the business concerns of building owners, Citizens sought to provide conservation and efficiency savings based on the performance of the improvements, rather than as a giveaway. Citizens Conservations’ strategy – to invest against projected savings – led to the company helping to reduce energy demand in thousands of housing units throughout the country.

Unlike most other energy service companies, which focused on retrofitting single-family homes or commercial and industrial facilities, Citizens Conservation concentrated on the most challenging segment of the energy conservation market – multi-family rental housing for low- and moderate-income residents. Citizens Conservation worked with building owners, real estate management companies, and utilities to provide a maximum level of investment to improve the building’s energy efficiency, generating long-term energy and building maintenance cost savings.

Citizens Conservation conducted rigorous building-specific energy audits and then created state-of-the-art engineering designs and financing arrangements to implement the recommended building improvements. Citizens Conservation also managed the construction process and provided educational programs for building managers and residents. In this manner, Citizens documented average energy savings for heating and hot water that reached 40 percent, with some energy reductions as high as 75 percent. Tens of thousands of apartments received Citizens Conservation retrofits, reducing energy demand and delivering millions of dollars in energy savings to taxpayers and residents.

In 1983, Citizens Energy formed a related company, Citizens Heat and Power Company, to provide similar energy conservation and efficiency services at major industrial and commercial properties. That company built a client portfolio of 170 separate buildings in four states, including hospitals, nursing homes, school departments, and municipal, county, and state government office buildings.

Citizens Heat and Power was sold to a major utility in 1986, while Citizens Conservation Corporation was sold in 1995 to Eastern Utility Corporation.

Health Care


Citizens Medical
Citizens Medical began working with the pharmaceutical industry in 1985, coordinating the donation of relief supplies to Ethiopia during a widespread famine. Soon after, Citizens Medical established a joint venture with Medco Containment Services Inc., the world’s largest mail order pharmacy and leader in cost-containment programs for prescription drugs.
Citizens Medical negotiated price discounts for large employee and union groups, including Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Massachusetts, NYNEX, and the National Association of Letter Carriers, with manufacturers and pharmacies. The company offered integrated mail service, prescription card and drug reimbursement programs, and tailored each prescription benefit plan to meet its client’s budget. Citizens Medical also offered professional services that focused on the customer’s direct needs, including a 24-hour toll free number for participants, specially trained customer service pharmacists to answer questions regarding medications, drug education materials to help familiarize patients with their medications, and various counseling programs to support the elderly.
Citizens Medical’s customers received an average savings of over 40% on drug delivery. In its second year Citizens Medical reached a 20% increase in the company’s market size from the previous year, with 1.2 million people eligible for its service.
By 1988 Citizens-Medco became the largest broker of mail service prescriptions in the United States, with annual sales of $90 million. In 1993, Medco was taken over by Merck Co., a pharmaceutical manufacturer, and since 1999, Citizens Energy has continued to help market Merck-Medco’s prescription services.
The Citizens Medical model paved the way for a new industry of pharmacy benefit managers to negotiate discounts for buying groups from drug manufacturers and pharmacies.
Citizens Health
In 2001, Citizens Health was launched as a discount pharmaceutical program for the uninsured. The company negotiated with drug companies and pharmacies to give its customers the same discounts received by families with insurance. Benefits included discounts for medications purchased at over 1,000 pharmacies or by mail order.
Citizens Health subsequently began to provide discounts on not only prescription drugs, but on a wide array of such medical services as vision, dental, hospital and doctor visits. The principle remained constant - to provide uninsured senior citizens and working families with the same level of discounts available to those with insurance.

The expansion of Medicare drug coverage to senior citizens and the broadening of access to health insurance through state and federal programs resulted in Citizens Health winding down operations after close to 10 years of providing the uninsured with more affordable health care.