Buildings and Operations

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PG&E is committed to reducing waste and using resources in the most efficient way, from improving the energy efficiency of our buildings and other facilities to recycling materials and reducing water consumption. For PG&E, environmental leadership also means being accountable by taking responsibility for our historic environmental impacts.

Greening Our Own Buildings

PG&E received the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED™) Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for our 245 Market Street facility in San Francisco. This important third-party designation is for maximizing operational efficiency while minimizing environmental impacts.

Areas that helped us achieve this include:

• Access to alternative transportation
  
• Water conservation
• Efficient heating, ventilation and cooling systems
• Recycling, composting and utilization of recycled materials
• Energy-efficient lighting
• Use of green cleaning practices

We have also registered four new buildings and large remodel projects for LEED™ certification, including a newly leased 135,000-square-foot office building in San Ramon.

Last year, we conducted a major lighting retrofit to reduce energy use at 32 different sites, which we expect will save 2.8 million kWh per year. We also completed numerous facility-specific improvements to save energy, including installing electronic thermostats and lighting controls at 60 sites.

We also completed a targeted water conservation effort at seven high-use facilities, working in partnership with local water agencies. We exceeded our target by achieving a 5.5 percent reduction in gallons per square foot over the prior year, saving approximately 1.7 million gallons.

We switched to using bio-based recyclable cups and food containers at our San Ramon Valley Conference Center, a certified "green business" in Contra Costa County. The center also continued its program upgrading to new energy-efficient lighting and controls, and expanded recycling with additional containers and signage.

And PG&E is implementing innovative measures to improve energy efficiency in our IT services function through new technologies and power-saving techniques. Last year, our data center operations reduced energy consumption by 120 kW through a variety of steps, including server virtualization, which consolidates IT workloads and uses less equipment and energy.

Helping Our Suppliers Go Green

PG&E understands the importance of creating partnerships and collaborating with our suppliers to integrate sustainability more fully into our supply chain. That is why PG&E continues to pilot its Green Supply Chain Program. More than 30 suppliers have voluntarily engaged in the program—implementing a variety of innovative projects to not only reduce the environmental impact of their operations but also to generate bottom-line dollar savings. PG&E is also working to make a positive impact across our industry, founding the Electric Utility Industry Sustainable Supply Chain Alliance with nine other utilities.

Minimizing Waste

Examples of waste reduction efforts last year include the following:

• We recycled or reused our e-waste, including approximately 4,530 CPUs, 4,250 monitors, 380 servers, 160 printers, and 450 copiers, fax machines and scanners.
• We recycled or reused more than 35 million pounds of scrap iron, aluminum and copper from conductors, meters and miscellaneous infrastructure from our waste stream. We also recycled more than 81,500 pounds of plastic piping, as well as used hard hats.
• We avoided more than 330 tons of paper through 13 million paperless e-Bill transactions for customer energy bills.

Taking Responsibility

At PG&E, we are accountable for all our own actions, including protecting the environment. We have taken responsibility for cleaning up historic or "legacy" contamination from past operations. We use a combination of policies, management systems, review processes and programs to ensure that our operations meet all applicable environmental requirements. We then seek to elevate our performance above and beyond the legal and regulatory requirements. Learn more about how we are taking responsibility.

Water Management Practices

Controlling storm water pollution associated with our operations is an important requirement. To meet our compliance obligations in a more sustainable way, PG&E now uses innovative reusable and recyclable fencing, which improves safety and retains twice the sediment at half the cost. We also use portable, closed-loop wash stations to clean vehicles and equipment on projects that traverse through sensitive areas.

PG&E is also partnering with local water districts to help customers save water. Last year, we laid the groundwork for a series of water-saving pilot projects that will run through mid-2009—ranging from installing high-efficiency toilets for low-income customers to exploring how new and emerging technologies can yield water savings at water utilities. The pilot program aims to reduce “embedded” energy, which refers to the energy used to transport, treat and distribute water and wastewater.

Closing the Loop with Biomass

PG&E's 52,000 acres of company-owned watershed lands are helping to achieve our renewable energy goals. Through timber harvesting, thinning and forest restoration projects, PG&E generates significant quantities of biomass—tree tops, limbs, cull logs and brush, which cannot be made into lumber. In response, we are closing the loop by sending this biomass to co-generation plants that generate renewable power for the state's electricity grid. Last year, PG&E sent more than 9,000 bone dry tons of wood chips to a biomass facility to generate renewable energy.