Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Report 2022

Our Approach

Energy, Water and Waste

Our Livermore Electric Safety Academy has achieved zero net energy status and earned recognition for its sustainable features, including photovoltaic canopies and drought-resistant native landscaping.

Photo credits: Tyler Chartier Photography

We work to use energy and water more efficiently and divert landfill waste from our office facilities and service yards. We’ve published a facilities sustainability standard for future workplace design, while remaining focused on building a more sustainable supply chain through environmentally preferable product choices and procurement strategies. We also power our service centers—nearly 100 buildings in Northern and Central California—with 100% solar energy through Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s Solar Choice program.

Hazardous and Other Waste

As part of our course of business, certain activities generate hazardous wastes. Waste is also generated during the remediation and cleanup of legacy sites. PG&E handles all hazardous waste in accordance with federal and state regulations. Our approach includes providing training and guidance to coworkers to ensure waste is properly managed from the point of generation to recycling or disposal.

Applicable federal and state hazardous waste management statutes include the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act under federal requirements and Title 22 of the California Code of Regulations and the California Health and Safety Code. California laws and regulations are more stringent and encompass broader waste streams than federal requirements.

Historical Impacts

PG&E remains committed to being a good corporate neighbor, which includes conducting our remediation projects in a safe and sustainable manner. Since 2010, we have partnered with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) to implement our sustainable remediation approaches, which include field testing and incorporating cutting-edge cleanup technologies to lower greenhouse gas emissions and minimize community impacts. These activities, in turn, deliver economic and social benefits to the communities we serve.

Involving the community early is a vital component of our remediation efforts. Locally, we communicate with city leaders, local businesses, community groups, and residents to promote awareness, solicit feedback, and identify issues of interest in our remediation projects. We partner on initiatives to address these issues, including workforce training and local school STEM initiatives; developing property disposition strategies that align with remediation efforts; and sourcing local goods and services.

2021 Milestones

Sustainable Facilities

• Compared to 2020, our electricity usage dropped by over 11%. Our natural gas usage, however, increased by 10%, mainly due to additional sites included in the data collection. Overall, aggregated energy use intensity, which includes calculations based on square footage, decreased by more than 6%.
• Our water usage decreased by 10%, while water intensity dropped by over 9%.
• We generated approximately 25% more municipal solid waste; however, we increased our waste diversion rate by 4% to a total of 84%.
• The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in continued remote work for office personnel and reduced administrative staff at service centers. We announced plans to distinguish between hybrid and onsite work so that mobile and remote work, in addition to other strategies, can improve facility sustainability performance in future years.

Other highlights include:

• Earned recognition for our Livermore Electric Safety Academy, which received the 2021 Design-Build Institute of America Award of Merit. The campus has achieved zero net energy status, meaning the facility produces as much renewable energy as it uses.
• Continued our commitment to expand on-site renewable energy through future solar installations. Two locations under construction include one new build at our future Napa Regional Center and a renovation at our Davis Service Center.
• Updated our design standards to match new Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) requirements, ensuring minimum Silver-level certification for new builds over 50,000 square feet and major renovations over $5 million.
• Developed a PG&E-wide communication process to encourage energy conservation at facilities during Peak Day Pricing and California Flex Alerts when energy usage is high. This resulted in over 487,000 kWh of load reduction during the 12 events called in 2021.

Historical Impacts

• We continued our progress to address over 40 Manufactured Gas Plant (MGP) sites previously owned or operated by Pacific Gas and Electric Company or its predecessor companies. To date, over 30 of these sites have been successfully remediated.
  • We completed excavations at our Merced MGP site.
  • We worked closely with the site developer at the former Potrero MGP and power plant site to establish an expedited approach to simultaneously address our historical impacts and accelerate site construction. The site will become a mixed-use development with several thousand housing units and nearly eight acres of open space, and will open up a portion of the San Francisco waterfront to the public for the first time in nearly 150 years.
• At our Shell Pond site near Pittsburg, we implemented a managed natural recovery program, which will treat an impacted former water pond using a natural process that includes new compost and vegetation.
• At the Topock Compressor Station, we are in the process of implementing a DTSC- and U.S. Department of the Interior-approved groundwater remedy to address impacts and ensure the long-term protection of the community and the Colorado River. The remedy is designed with an in-situ treatment approach, using natural bacteria to treat the chromium in the ground. Construction of the first phase of remedy facilities was completed in 2021, and the remedy is beginning operation.
• At the Hinkley Compressor Station, we estimate that about three-fourths of the chromium present in the groundwater was removed through 2021. We treat chromium in two ways at this site: using in-situ treatment to immobilize the chromium underground and pumping the water and using it for farming; the organic soils transform the chromium into an immobile form. We have partnered with local farmers to adjust irrigation pumping patterns in the area, to not only address our chromium objectives in a sustainable way by growing crops, but also to help with area-wide legacy nitrate pollution from historical farming and ranching activities in the valley. Our chromium treatment has simultaneously removed over 300 tons of nitrate from the local aquifer.

Measuring Progress

These figures represent electricity and natural gas usage at facilities managed by Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s Corporate Real Estate Strategy and Services department.

Energy Consumed at Facilities ^{Footnote 1}

• Electricity Consumed (gigawatt hours)
• Natural Gas Consumed (million cubic feet)
• Energy Intensity (thousand BTUs per square foot) ^{Footnote 2}

• 1. The data reflects the 12-month period from December to November. Between 175 and 197 sites reported electricity data for 2019 to 2021 and between 118 to 142 sites reported natural gas data between 2019 and 2021.¹
• 2. Figures are reported in the industry standard of KBTU per square foot, which incorporates all the energy used in a facility into one comparative figure.²

In 2021, we tracked water use throughout the year. Please see the Water section for additional statistics on PG&E’s water usage.

Water Consumed at Facilities ^{Footnote 1}

• Water Consumed (gallons)
• Water Intensity (gallons per square foot)

• 1. The data represents all sites managed by Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s Corporate Real Estate Strategy and Services department where water was consumed, and data was available for the 12-month period from October to September. In 2021, 147 sites reported water data.¹

PG&E strives to minimize the overall amount of waste we generate, while composting organic waste and recycling non-hazardous materials such as glass, paper, and certain metals.

Waste Diversion at Facilities ^{Footnote 1}

• Total Waste Generated (tons)
• Total Waste Diverted (tons)
• Waste Diversion Rate

• 1. The tonnage data reflects all of the non-hazardous municipal waste at 103 to 135 sites managed by PG&E’s Corporate Real Estate Strategy and Services department for the 12 months from October to September.¹

Other waste reduction efforts in 2021 included:

• Recycling 69.4 million pounds of scrap iron, aluminum, and copper from conductors, steel, meters, transformer oil, and miscellaneous material. We recycled 25.4 million pounds of transformers; about 1 million pounds of recovered meters; 170,800 pounds of high-density polyethylene plastic, including pipes and hard hats; 11,840 pounds of street-light fixtures; 1.6 million pounds of transformer oil; and 6.8 million pounds of miscellaneous materials such as glass and cardboard.
• Recycling 309 tons of e-waste, including consumer electronic devices, CPUs, monitors, servers, printers, and other equipment.
• Reusing 485 tons of furniture and other service center and office materials through the furniture asset re-use management warehouse.
• Recycling over 95 tons of paper with employee move-out activities at our former San Francisco headquarters and another large office in San Ramon.

Hazardous and Other Waste

The following table provides statistics on PG&E’s waste generation. While PG&E works to reduce hazardous waste, certain projects such as infrastructure upgrades or remediation of historical contamination may increase the amount generated in a given year.

• 1. Refers to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.¹
• 2. Refers to the Toxic Substances Control Act.²
• 3. These figures include polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) waste < 50 ppm PCB.³
• 4. Universal waste is comprised of seven categories: electronic devices, batteries, electric lamps, equipment with mercury, cathode ray tubes (CRT), glass from CRTs, and non-empty aerosol cans. Numbers shown here exclude electronic waste (electronic devices with or without CRTs).⁴
• 5. Universal waste recycling increased in 2021 due to the San Francisco General Office move-out.⁵
• 6. PG&E completed decommissioning the former nuclear unit at the Humboldt Bay Power Plant including site restoration and remediation efforts in 2020. ^{6a, 6b, 6c}

To comply with local air quality regulations, PG&E is focused on minimizing air emissions from its conventional sources of power generation. The following figures reflect emissions from PG&E-owned generation sources.

• 1. Amounts may not sum due to rounding. Additionally, there were no reportable mercury air emissions from PG&E’s facilities during 2019 to 2021.¹
• 2. Collective emission rates for Humboldt Bay, Gateway, and Colusa Generating Stations.^{2a, 2b}
• 3. Includes all PG&E-owned generation sources, including fossil fuels, nuclear, hydroelectric, and renewable energy.^{3a, 3b}

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Historical Impacts

By incorporating sustainable practices on our remediation sites, we reduced greenhouse gas emissions by more than 1,200 metric tons and liquid wastes by more than 27 million gallons in 2021. We achieved these results by:

• Using heavy construction and remediation equipment meeting Tier 3 and Tier 4 federal emission standards, reflecting the cleanest standards in the industry;
• Using alternative fuels and renewable sources of energy for equipment and vehicles; and
• Maximizing recycling, on-site reuse of materials, and reductions in liquid and soil wastes generated during remediation.

We also added $7 million to the local economies near our project sites by sourcing our equipment and vendors from the local community.