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

We continue to pursue Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED™) certification for new buildings and large remodel projects, with a total of six LEED™ certified buildings and another six in the certification process.

This includes receiving LEED-NC (new construction) Silver certification for our 22,000 square-foot Grid Control Center. Highlights of the project included restoring nearly half of the five-acre site to native vegetation, recycling 70 percent of the construction waste, using drip irrigation and low-flow plumbing fixtures to reduce potable water use by 45 percent and incorporating sustainably forested wood and low-emitting carpets, paints, adhesives and sealants.

Last year, PG&E also made significant progress reducing energy and water use in our facilities. We reduced energy use in offices and service yards by 4.3 percent—or 16,200 MMBTUs—meeting our target for the year. To save energy, we made upgrades at a majority of our facilities, including cutting back building operating times and replacing and retrofitting lighting with more efficient fixtures and controls. In addition, we improved the efficiency of our heating and air conditioning energy use. In 2011, our goal is to achieve an additional 4.2 percent reduction at an expanded set of 168 sites.

We reduced water use by 7.1 percent—or 9.5 million gallons—at more than 90 offices and service yards, exceeding our 4 percent target. To achieve these reductions, we reduced landscape water use through "smart" irrigation controllers and other strategies. We also modified a high water use electron microscope and the water treatment of mechanical systems at selected buildings. In 2011, our goal is to achieve an additional 5.7 percent reduction at an expanded set of 125 sites.

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 enhance its Green Supply Chain Program. More than 45 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, co-founding the Electric Utility Industry Sustainable Supply Chain Alliance with nine other utilities.

To better understand the environmental life cycle impacts of the products and services we purchase, PG&E is collaborating on a multi-year project with researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and Climate Earth, a carbon accounting consultancy in San Francisco.

The project will yield greater visibility into the greenhouse gas emissions of our supply chain and help identify promising opportunities for emission reductions. We completed the project's first phase by identifying the top 50 products and services in PG&E's supply chain with the highest greenhouse gas emissions (excluding contracts for power generation). We then selected a short-list of the top five suppliers, for which we will complete in-depth case studies to identify detailed opportunities to reduce emissions.

Minimizing Waste

Last year, we increased the waste diversion rate by 7.8 percentage points at six facilities when calculated over the entire year of waste produced, exceeding our 6 percent target. These sites account for one-third of the waste generated by the buildings at the company's offices and service yards. In 2011, our goal is to achieve a 55 percent waste diversion rate at an expanded set of 48 sites.

Other examples of waste reduction efforts last year include the following:

• We recycled or reused our approximately 170 tons of e-waste, including approximately 5,700 CPUs, 1,360 monitors, 390 servers, 690 printers, and 200 copiers, fax machines and plotters.
• We recycled more than 21 million pounds of scrap iron, aluminum and copper from conductors, meters and miscellaneous material. We also recycled more than 5 million pounds of recovered meters, 11 million pounds of transformers and 180,000 pounds of plastic, including pipe and hard hats.
• We continued to recycle material from the decommissioning, demolition and remediation of PG&E's Hunters Point Power Plant in San Francisco. Last year, approximately 5,680 tons of crushed concrete was recycled from the site. An additional 435 pounds of steel and copper was recycled in 2010 from PG&E's Humboldt Bay Power Plant and Diablo Canyon Power Plant.

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 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 has also partnered with local water districts to help customers save water. We conducted a series of water-saving pilot projects—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 reduced "embedded" energy, which refers to the energy used to transport, treat and distribute water and wastewater.

PG&E has incentives to help customers conserve water, while also reducing energy consumption. PG&E also offers classes and workshops open to the public at our Pacific Energy Center that cover water conservation and energy efficiency. And we co-host an annual Water Conservation Showcase in San Francisco, where exhibitors display new technology for saving water in buildings and landscaping.

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 13,000 tons of bone-dry wood chips to facilities to generate renewable energy.