PG&E Employees Receive Annual Environmental Leadership Award for Protecting Natural Resources, Raising Awareness About Compact Fluorescent Lamps

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) announced the winners of its seventh annual Richard A. Clarke Environmental Leadership Award. The award acknowledges the top individual and team efforts for demonstrating PG&E’s ongoing environmental leadership, focusing on areas such as environmental protection, energy efficiency and renewable energy.

“Each year, the Clarke Award recognizes environmental leadership across all aspects of PG&E’s operations, and these winners reflect that,” said Jack Keenan, senior vice president and chief operating officer of PG&E. “We are proud of the contributions made by this year’s Clarke Award winners Kadi Whiteside and the ‘Change a Light Campaign’ Core Team and will continue to recognize employees for their environmental leadership.”

This year’s Clarke Award winner for individual effort is Kadi Whiteside, water quality supervisor at PG&E. Whiteside is honored for spearheading the development of innovative practices and techniques to protect water quality, plants and animals at construction sites. Because of Whiteside’s leadership, PG&E now uses such model designs as reusable fencing for construction sites to prevent sediment from entering streams and waterways and biological fencing to prevent sensitive species from entering construction sites. These management practices have helped protect natural resources at construction sites, thereby reducing potential environmental impacts.

Receiving the Clarke Award for best group effort is the “Change a Light Campaign” Core Team. This team of 22 employees came together during October and November of 2007 to encourage PG&E customers to buy and use compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). Over the course of the campaign, PG&E gave away more than one million CFLs — the largest promotion of its kind by a U.S. utility.

The Change a Light team worked collaboratively across PG&E’s service area, engaging more than 1,000 PG&E employee volunteers at more than 600 events in northern and central California. The campaign helped save customers more than 400,000 MWh of electricity — enough to power almost 60,000 homes for a year – and avoid 200,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of taking 31,000 cars off the road for one year.

PG&E will make a $10,000 charitable donation on behalf of the individual and team Clarke Award winners to the environmental or environmental justice nonprofit organization of their choice. Whiteside selected the California Oak Mortality Task Force, and the Change a Light team chose the Californians Against Waste Foundation.

Clarke Award finalists also demonstrate environmental leadership through efforts such as advancing PG&E’s Solar Schools Program, “greening” the San Ramon Valley Conference Center, developing an innovative new “restoration license agreement” to allow Audubon California to restore 30 acres of native habitat in Yolo County and creating PG&E’s first Safe Harbor Agreement with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

PG&E developed the Richard A. Clarke Annual Environmental Leadership Award in 2002 to honor employees who demonstrate a commitment to, and accomplishment in, environmental leadership. The award is named after the late Richard A. Clarke, chairman and CEO of PG&E from 1986 until his retirement in 1995. Clarke championed a variety of environmental initiatives at PG&E — from energy conservation, to clean air programs, to natural resource stewardship.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE: PCG), is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric utilities in the United States. Based in San Francisco, with 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of the nation’s cleanest energy to 15 million people in northern and central California.

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