SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--PG&E Corporation Chairman, CEO and President Tony Earley and three additional top company leaders will participate in events surrounding the upcoming COP21 international climate talks in Paris to represent California’s success in clean energy and call attention to the need for global action to reduce the effects of climate change.
PG&E’s leaders will speak during multiple events at the two-week summit, which begins Nov. 30, highlighting how California and its utilities have become models for curbing carbon emissions while improving quality of life and expanding the economy. (Follow PG&E’s Paris activities on www.pgecurrents.com and www.twitter.com/pge4me.)
“Our participation in the Paris conference gives us the opportunity to show the world how California is making the transition to a low-carbon future. As the state’s largest energy utility, PG&E is committed to doing our part to enable that transition. But we also know that California can’t solve the problem of climate change by itself. Success will require collaboration from every nation across the globe,” Earley said.
In addition to Earley, PG&E will be represented by Senior Vice President, External Affairs and Public Policy, Helen Burt; Senior Vice President, Regulatory Affairs, Steve Malnight; and Chief Sustainability Officer and Vice President, Federal Affairs and Policy, Melissa Lavinson.
Joining PG&E in the discussions will be government, academic and business leaders, including Administration officials, California legislators, fellow utility leaders, investors and technology innovators. The conversations will explore a broad range of topics, from the EPA’s Clean Power Plan to carbon markets and the growth of electric vehicles. Of particular interest will be California’s new goal to achieve 50 percent renewable energy by 2030, which PG&E supports.
The events are organized by a host of PG&E partner organizations focused on energy and the environment: the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, Climate Action Reserve, The Climate Registry, Ceres, Edison Electric Institute, Environmental Defense Fund, International Emissions Trading Association, and the United Nations Foundation.
PG&E’s leaders will highlight a number of ways the utility is enabling a more sustainable future. In recent years, PG&E has:
- Delivered increasingly cleaner electricity, with more than half coming from greenhouse gas-free resources.
- Led the way by connecting more than 200,000 solar customers and by becoming one of the fastest utilities in the nation at connecting solar customers to the grid.
- Helped customers save millions of dollars on their energy bills through energy efficiency, which also avoided substantial carbon emissions.
- Pioneered new low-carbon vehicles in its fleet, including the utility industry’s first plug-in electric utility truck that can also provide power for up to 100 homes.
- Aggressively reduced energy, water and waste in company offices and service yards.
- Made significant investments to both modernize the grid to make it more resilient and lay the foundation for PG&E’s vision of the Grid of ThingsTM—a grid that will integrate distributed solar, energy storage, electric vehicles and other low-carbon technologies.
- Worked with suppliers to encourage excellence and innovation in sustainability.
- And engaged its employees through discounts for rooftop solar installation and the purchase of electric vehicles.
Last month, PG&E pledged its commitment to make further progress in these areas and others in the climate pledge it submitted for the White House’s American Business Act on Climate initiative, aimed at rallying support from U.S. companies ahead of the Paris conference.
For more information on PG&E’s sustainability leadership, see the 2015 Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Report at www.pgecorp.com/sustainability.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric utilities in the United States. Based in San Francisco, with more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of the nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in Northern and Central California. For more information, visit www.pge.com/ and www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/index.page.
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