SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) today announced that it spent a record $2.85 billion with diverse suppliers in 2016, accounting for 44 percent of its total procurement. For the fifth straight year, diverse suppliers accounted for $2 billion-plus of the company’s spend and more than 40 percent of PG&E’s total spend for the fourth consecutive year.

In addition, PG&E eclipsed the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) diverse spending goal of 21.5 percent for the 11th year in a row.

“For PG&E to effectively meet the needs of our customers in today’s evolving energy landscape, more than ever we need to work with our diverse suppliers to build a better California together. We’re ‘all in’ when it comes to building on the 36 years of success of our supplier diversity program,” said Pacific Gas and Electric Company President and Chief Operating Officer Nick Stavropoulos.

In 2016, PG&E achieved new spending records in the following reporting categories:

INCREASE

CATEGORY

2015

2016

FROM 2015

Minority Business Enterprise (MBE)

$1.591B

$1.828B

$237.6M/13 percent

Women Business Enterprise (WBE)

$723.1M

$797.7M

$74.6M/9 percent

Service Disabled Veteran (DVBE)

$154.6M

$223.8M

$69.2M/31 percent

Over the last 36 years, PG&E has been committed to supporting a diverse supply chain. The company has developed one of the leading supplier diversity programs in the energy industry. In addition to maintaining high levels of spend with diverse suppliers, PG&E has focused on elevating the quality of its supplier diversity program by addressing key success factors for suppliers.

For example, PG&E has held multiple workshops throughout the year to educate small and diverse businesses on how to compete for utility business. PG&E’s technical assistance and capacity building initiatives have helped businesses become more competitive.

The company has actively supported the development of its diverse suppliers through mentorship, scholarships, opportunity identification and value chain analysis. In addition, PG&E’s Supplier Development Program has matched 30 diverse suppliers with PG&E senior executive mentors.

PG&E’s Supply Chain Responsibility website contains more information about the program. The site also provides details on how to become a certified diverse supplier.

In 2016, PG&E received numerous national accolades for its supplier diversity efforts:

• The company received an “A” for its work in 2015 from the nationally-known Greenlining Institute, an organization dedicated to racial and economic justice.
• The enterprise was named as the Corporation of the Year by the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce for its support and dedication to ensuring fairness and equal opportunity for LGBT suppliers, customers and employees.
• For the third consecutive year, PG&E was named to the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s “Million Dollar Club” for its spend with Hispanic-owned businesses in 2015.
• PG&E was inducted into the Women’s Business Enterprise Hall of Fame for its support of supplier diversity and women’s business development.
• The company received the Gazelle Award from the National Minority Supplier Development Council for accelerating the growth of minority-owned business.

About PG&E

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 more than 20,000 employees, the company delivers some of the nation’s cleanest energy to nearly 16 million people in Northern and Central California. For more information, visit www.pge.com/ and www.pge.com/en/about/newsroom/index.page.

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What Diverse Suppliers Are Saying About Working with PG&E

“Blair, Church & Flynn Consulting Engineers has been able to continuously improve the quality and reliability of its business practices because of the support, education and mentoring offered by PG&E’s supplier diversity programs. I’m grateful for their commitment to supplier diversity. Today, we’re a safer, smarter and better team of professionals that consistently delivers cost saving infrastructure solutions to PG&E.”

-- David Mowry, PE – President and CEO, Blair, Church & Flynn
Blair, Church & Flynn is a Native American-owned professional consulting engineering firm offering comprehensive services including land surveying, planning, engineering, landscape architecture and construction management. Since 1958, Blair, Church & Flynn has advised clients throughout California on the development and operation of their most critical infrastructure and facilities.

“PG&E greatly values supplier diversity and the environment. From my experience with other utilities, implementing our program to recycle street lights has proved to be too much internal legwork and often turned down. PG&E has demonstrated the importance of utilizing small companies that offer better solutions, even if it means working with multiple vendors. PG&E stands by my small woman-owned business and makes sure the partnership is successful on both ends.”

-- Laurel Harrop, Founder and CEO, Laurel Environmental Group LLC
Laurel Environmental Group was founded on the concept of creating a more green way to recycle street lights removed for LED conversions. Laurel Environmental works with local metal and specialty recyclers to keep thousands of pounds of material from being sent to landfill. Laurel’s green concept of recycling street lights earned them an invitation to present their process with PG&E at last year’s Electric Utility Industry Sustainable Supply Chain Alliance conference.

“PG&E's commitment to supplier diversity has helped us grow over the past 10 years, enabling us to create dozens of new jobs and helping position ourselves as a leading regional environmental engineering firm. We’re one of four companies within PG&E’s Environmental Remediation Department's Alliance Partnership, alongside much larger national firms. This is further testament of PG&E's serious commitment to supplier diversity.”

-- Max Reyhani, Managing Principal, Terra Pacific Group
Terra Pacific Group provides a broad range of expert environmental services to the private and public sectors. Terra Pacific’s services include assessment and remediation of impacted sites to hydrogeologic studies, regulatory agency negotiations and construction management. The firm has worked with PG&E on remediation projects in Fresno and Santa Rosa.

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Source: Pacific Gas and Electric Company