You've seen the ads, lime colored and screaming from the sides of Muni buses, papered to the walls of BART stations, popping up on local news Web sites. "Let's green this city," they proclaim in a chummy, we're-all-in-this-together way. Like any good ad campaign, these broadsides, brought to you by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., are designed to snap your eco-consciousness into thinking, "Hell yeah! I'm going to get right on that!"
And like any good greenwashing campaign, they are also designed to distract you from what's really going on at the $12.5 billion utility company.
"There's an advertising rule that's based on the idea to advertise where you're weakest," says Sheldon Rampton, cofounder of the Center for Media and Democracy, which regularly tracks corporate greenwashing. "What typically happens with greenwashing is an attempt to create a superficial image without changing anything the company's doing that would affect their bottom line."
Yes, PG&E has the fourth largest alternative fuel fleet of any utility in the country.
(That's if you define natural gas as an alternative fuel, a resource in which this utility happens to have $9 billion already invested. It's still a fossil fuel and only burns 30 percent cleaner than oil and coal.)
Yes, PG&E is making environmental strides with increased investments in solar, biogas, and wind energy. (But the company will, by its own admission, fail to make the state-mandated goal of selling 20 percent renewables by 2010.)
Yes, PG&E has committed $1 billion over the past three years to energy-efficiency programs. (Actually, that money isn't a kindhearted gift from the shareholders. It's mandated by state law. And much of it comes from the ratepayers — see the "Public Goods Charge" on your monthly bill.)
Yes, PG&E has been donating solar panels to local schools and nonprofits. (Less than 1 percent of PG&E's power comes from solar energy.)
Yes, the folks at PG&E have been loudly announcing all their good deeds. Here's what else they've been working on, a little more quietly.
GREEN IS NOT A SUPERHERO
A recent PG&E television commercial shows children playing with Renewable Energy Man and chanting, "Sun, water, wind" as the future sources of power. But consider:
• PG&E's current power profile is 44 percent fossil fuels, 24 percent nuclear, 20 percent large hydro, and only 12 percent renewable.
• As of 2006, PG&E had planned to integrate 300 megawatts of renewable energy sources a year into its overall profile in an effort to make the state-mandated goal of 20 percent renewables by 2010.
• In 2006 Securities and Exchange Commission filings, PG&E projected it would miss that goal by a couple percentage points and is relying on the "flexible compliance" that the law allows.
• The utility is currently building 1,350 megawatts of fossil fuel–burning plants, which are permitted to emit up to 1,100 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour.
In December 2006, PG&E filed permit applications with the California Pubic Utilities Commission for 2,300 megawatts of conventional, nonrenewable power sources.
Renewable Energy Man is ...
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