Customer Energy Efficiency

Energy efficiency is at the heart of energy sustainability, which is why PG&E has worked for more than four decades to support customer efforts to reduce their energy usage. Today, our commitment to helping customers save energy is stronger than ever. These programs help keep customer energy bills affordable, reduce energy load on the grid and meet California’s clean energy goals.

Our Approach

PG&E’s energy efficiency programs are built on California’s pioneering energy efficiency model, which has helped keep the state’s per capita electricity consumption nearly flat since the 1970s. PG&E’s portfolio is designed to reach all of our customers using a variety of channels, from self-service software tools to PG&E’s business customer account representatives. To increase our impact, we also partner with state and local governments, community partners and third-party energy efficiency specialists.

We also operate two Energy Centers and support a Food Service Training Center, offering energy efficiency education and training programs for building professionals, including architects, designers, engineers, contractors and technicians.

Our energy efficiency priorities include:

Working to reduce financial barriers for residential, commercial and government customers.
Giving customers access to their data to support smart energy planning.
Collaborating with retailers, distributors and others to increase the availability of high-efficiency products
Advocating for stronger building codes and appliance standards and supporting compliance with existing codes and standards, while continuing to serve as California’s statewide coordinator for utility initiatives and analyses on standards.
Providing technical support for local governments that choose to exceed minimum requirements for state building codes.
Maintaining our longstanding role in the nation’s first interdisciplinary energy efficiency institute at the University of California Davis and in the best practices clearinghouse for energy efficiency and demand response at the Consortium for Energy Efficiency.
Engaging communities through proactive outreach.

Helping customers save energy through the power of data

Feedback can be a powerful tool to help customers change their behavior and reduce energy usage. PG&E offered a range of programs in 2019 that helped customers save energy through insights into their own energy usage:

Home Energy Reports, which are comparative energy usage reports for residential customers;
Business Energy Checkup and Home Energy Checkup, which are online assessment tools that help customers understand their energy usage and offer tips on how to save; and
Industrial Strategic Energy Management programs that involve industrial facility employees in tracking down energy savings opportunities and provide planning resources for future energy needs.

2019 Milestones

Highlights from our customer energy efficiency program in 2019 include:

Increased financial incentives for energy-efficient and resilient construction practices in homes rebuilt after wildfires. As part of our broader efforts, PG&E is encouraging customers to build high-performing homes that will result in lower energy bills.
Expanded our energy efficiency financing program, which provides commercial customers and government agencies with loans for energy efficiency upgrades with no out-of-pocket costs and zero interest. In 2019, the program funded 668 loans worth a total of $59 million. Most loans went to small and medium businesses, and public organizations.
Supported California’s goal for all newly constructed residential buildings to be zero net energy (ZNE) by 2020. To do so, PG&E experts advocated for strong state and federal appliance standards and conducted research to support California’s 2022 Energy Code rulemaking cycle. PG&E delivered training on existing codes and standards to more than 2,660 students and provided support to jurisdictions interested in adopting local reach codes that go beyond the state’s current Energy Code and help achieve local greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.
Offered education and training to architects and other building professionals to help them gain new skills and expertise in energy efficient design and construction at our three training centers, holding 580 classes, providing more than 100 technical consultations, and hosting more than 40 outreach events.

Fresno Grizzlies: Lighting the Way to Energy Savings

Chukchansi Park, home of the Fresno Grizzlies minor league baseball team, was experiencing a surge in their energy usage and needed help finding the source. Through PG&E’s online account tools, they were able to identify that 15,000 more people visited the park than the previous year. To provide fans the best game experience while remaining energy-efficient, they partnered with PG&E and Electric Motor Shop for a lighting upgrade.

With about 2,000 lighting fixtures needed, the right partners were critical to get the job done in time for the upcoming baseball season. PG&E’s zero percent financing option and the support of local partners made the upgrade a reality. This not only resulted in LED lighting and efficient fixtures throughout the ballpark, but a brighter guest experience and employee morale. The end result will save an estimated $100,000 in energy costs annually.

Measuring Progress

PG&E continued to deliver significant energy savings in 2019, through programs that support individual customers to upgrade equipment or change behaviors, as well as work to improve building codes and appliance standards. While PG&E’s total energy savings decreased in 2019 relative to the prior year, this was primarily driven by adoption of more-efficient equipment throughout our service area, as well as the success of long-term market transformation efforts in areas such as efficient lighting, which reduces the need for interventions to encourage customers to adopt efficient equipment.

Annual Energy Savings^{Footnote 1} from Customer Energy Efficiency Programs
	2018	2019
Gigawatt Hours (total)	1,288	1,253
Megawatts (peak)	343	253
Million Therms	30	27.6

1. Annual energy savings refer to the first-year impacts associated with installed customer energy efficiency projects. Savings are calculated on a net basis, which excludes savings that would have been achieved in the absence of energy efficiency programs. All data is as filed with the CPUC in Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s Energy Efficiency Program Portfolio Reports and available on the CPUC’s CEDARS website: https://cedars.sound-data.com/upload/confirmed-dashboard/PGE/2019/. Annual energy savings shown above include savings from codes and standards programs and savings from Regional Energy Network or Community Choice Aggregator programs in PG&E’s service area, which represented approximately 1% or less of total annual savings.¹

Annual Avoided Emissions^{Footnote 1} from Customer Energy Efficiency Programs
	2018	2019
CO₂ Avoided (metric tons)	698,505	638,110
NO_X Avoided (tons)	192	189

1. Annual avoided emissions refer to the first-year net impacts associated with installed customer energy efficiency projects, including codes and standards programs but not including savings from Regional Energy Network or Community Choice Aggregator programs in PG&E’s service area. Emissions avoided are calculated by the CPUC based on PG&E’s detailed energy savings reporting and are available at https://cedars.sound-data.com/reports/summary. In May 2020, the CPUC corrected an error in emissions calculations for program years 2018 and 2019; the figures shown above reflect that correction.¹

Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Report 2020