By Matt Nauman
Today, PG&E released its 2011 Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Report. The online report serves as a broad overview of PG&E’s commitment to the environment, its employees and the safety and economic vitality of the many diverse customers and communities it serves.
The comprehensive report features in-depth videos, interviews, stories, statistics and other content on PG&E’s progress as it works to improve its gas and electric operations and strengthen its relationships with customers and other key stakeholders.
In a video statement, Tony Earley, the chairman, CEO and president of PG&E Corporation, opens the report with his views on how sustainability is embraced and implemented at the company.
“Our core business strategy is back-to-basics and our focus is on operational excellence,” said Earley, who joined PG&E in 2011 after three decades of running utilities in Michigan and New York. “What could be more basic for our business than focusing on things like safety, on reliability, on economic performance for our customers and on working with the communities that we serve? The notions of sustainability are very consistent with the core business strategy that we’re developing.”
Sustainability is a key element as PG&E puts its focus on safe and reliable gas and electric service and improved customer service.
Earley noted that the roots of sustainability at PG&E come from the utility’s decades-long commitment to the environment. That includes actively helping customers save energy and money through energy efficiency, adding renewable energy sources to its power mix and exploring new ways to reduce the environmental impact of its buildings and operations.
“But it’s much more than the environment,” he said. “It’s really the environment, it’s economics and it’s the community.”
This year’s report continues a tradition dating back to the company’s first Environmental Report in 1990. The 2011 version released today is the first since Ezra Garrett, PG&E’s vice president of community relations, also became the company’s second chief sustainability officer earlier this year.
“As we get back to the basics, we will continue to integrate and drive a sustainability mindset across our business,” said Garrett. “This year’s report includes many examples of the progress we’re making.”
One highlight of the report is a series of videos that show:
- How PG&E is taking comprehensive steps to strengthen its gas system operations.
- How the company is increasing coordination with local first responders across its service area.
- How PG&E partnered to protect the endangered California condor on the Central Coast by placing a major stretch of power lines underground.
- How PG&E is training the next generation of electric line workers and building career pathways for under-served communities.
- How PG&E’s commitment to add more environmentally friendly work trucks brought jobs to a new facility in California.
“The sustainability report is one way we hold ourselves accountable,” Earley said. “Being very public about where we are and what our goals are forces us to really focus on how we’re going to achieve our sustainability goals,” he said.
The report follows the recent announcement of PG&E’s inclusion on the Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index for the fifth consecutive year, recognizing PG&E’s sustained commitment across the economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainability. PG&E was also recently named to the Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index for the fourth year in a row for the quality of the company’s reporting on greenhouse gas emissions and the business risks and opportunities from climate change.
Email Matt Nauman at matt.nauman@pge.com.
