Pacific Gas & Electric provides update on clean energy progress
In honor of National Clean Energy Week, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) provided an update on its initiatives to advance renewable energy.
“We are proud of our history as a leader in the industry and helping California achieve its bold clean energy goals,” Jason Glickman, executive vice president of Engineering, Planning, and Strategy at PG&E, said. “We are working every day to identify new ways to bring on more clean energy resources that will improve our environment while delivering safe and reliable energy to more than 16 million people in Northern and Central California.”
In 2020, more than 35 percent of the electricity PG&E delivered to its customers came from renewable resources including solar, wind, bioenergy, geothermal and small hydropower. When you include nuclear and large hydropower, roughly 85 percent of PG&E’s electric power mix was from carbon-free resources.
Solar energy accounts for the largest portion of the company’s renewable portfolio at about 45 percent. PG&E has connected more than 580,000 customers with private rooftop solar to the electricity grid. The rooftop solar in PG&E’s service area represents about 20 percent of all rooftop solar in the country. Also, through PG&E’s Solar Choice community solar program, customers can go solar without installing rooftop solar panels.
PG&E said it is also committed to increasing electric vehicle, or EV, adoption in its service area. California aims to have 5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2030 along with 250,000 charging stations. PG&E supports the large-scale electric infrastructure needed to incorporate EV charging systems onto the electric grid.
In addition, the company said it is investing in battery energy storage to enhance grid reliability and help customers save energy and money. The company currently has contracts for battery energy storage projects totaling more than 1,740 MWs of capacity to be deployed throughout the state through 2023. Further, more than 28,000 PG&E customers have installed and connected behind-the-meter battery energy storage systems that total more than 316 MWs of capacity.
