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PG&E Highlights Importance of Reforming Wildfire Liability Policies as Part of California’s Focus on Clean Energy and Climate Resilience

PCG | May 22, 2018

PG&E Highlights Importance of Reforming Wildfire Liability Policies as Part of California’s Focus on Clean Energy and Climate Resilience

As Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) prepares to meet the “new normal” of climate change, working with state and local officials to find a comprehensive solution to California’s approach to wildfire liability remains a top priority, the company said today at the joint annual shareholders meeting of PG&E and its parent, PG&E Corporation.

“This is about more than PG&E. And it’s about more than one bad fire season. It’s about a growing threat to our communities, our economy, and our environment as climate change makes wildfires and other extreme weather events more likely,” said PG&E Corporation CEO and President Geisha Williams.

Williams stressed that PG&E is committed to meeting California’s clean energy goals, further improving the safety and reliability of its system, and hardening its infrastructure against climate effects, but the company’s ability to make the necessary investments will depend upon reforming the state’s “broken” wildfire liability rules.

Community Wildfire Safety Program

PG&E President and Chief Operating Officer Nick Stavropoulos presented the company’s new Community Wildfire Safety Program—a multi-faceted initiative with three major focus areas, implemented in light of the wildfires throughout the state last year:

Bolstering PG&E’s wildfire prevention and emergency response efforts in coordination with first responders, public safety agencies, and other community partners using the company’s own Wildfire Safety Operations Center, along with enhanced weather forecasting, monitoring and modeling.
Reducing fire threats by increasing the distance between overhead electric lines and surrounding vegetation, and developing protocols for proactively shutting off power when extreme fire conditions are occurring.
Hardening the electric system and integrating new technologies, including stronger power lines, non-wood poles in high-threat areas, and microgrids to establish energy resilience zones around hospitals and schools.

“All of this work reflects our continued commitment to our communities and, in particular, to their safety. Nothing is more important to us,” Stavropoulos said.

Progress toward California’s goals

Williams and Stavropoulos also gave several examples of the progress PG&E is making toward California’s clean energy and climate goals while providing safe and reliable service:

Clean energy: In 2017, nearly 80 percent of the electricity PG&E delivered was produced from sources that emit no greenhouse gas, with one-third coming from state-qualified renewables such as solar and wind — three years ahead of the California requirement.
Electric vehicle charging: PG&E is moving forward with a program to install 7,500 public charging stations for light-duty vehicles, the largest such public charging program in the nation. The company also won approval for a new charging-station program for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles.
Grid modernization: The California Independent System Operator has approved PG&E’s proposal for the Oakland Clean Energy Initiative, a first-of-its-kind project that will replace an outdated fossil-fuel power plant with a combination of battery storage, local distributed energy resources, and energy efficiency.
Advanced training facilities: At the operational level, PG&E opened its Gas Safety Academy in Winters, Calif., the third in a series of state-of-the-art gas safety facilities to open since 2013. And the company broke ground on a new training facility in Livermore that will focus on electric substation operations and maintenance.

“California has made a forceful commitment to cut greenhouse gases over the next few decades. We support that wholeheartedly. It’s one of the biggest factors shaping the direction of our business as we think about the future.” Stavropoulos said.

Shareholder vote

The meeting included a report on the preliminary results of the shareholder vote on the items of business. Preliminary voting results indicate that all nominated members of the boards of directors of PG&E Corporation and its utility subsidiary, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, will be re-elected for a one-year term; the re-appointment of the companies’ independent registered public accounting firm, Deloitte & Touche LLP, will be ratified; the companies’ executive compensation will be approved on an advisory basis; and proposals submitted by PG&E Corporation shareholders concerning customer approval of the company’s charitable giving program and enhanced proxy access will not be approved. Final voting results will be reported in a Form 8-K Report to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and will be available on the PG&E Corporation website.

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 energy companies 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.