PG&E and The PG&E Corporation
Foundation Grant Programs Support Climate Action Key Investments
for Local Communities
OAKLAND,
Calif., Oct. 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Whether it's
wildfires and unseasonable heat in the west or destructive
hurricanes in the southeast, current climate impacts demand action.
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and The PG&E
Corporation Foundation (PG&E Foundation) have awarded
$900,000 through two grant programs
to support climate resilience efforts in PG&E's hometowns,
while also protecting and restoring land, water, and air in
habitats and communities across California. Both grant programs prioritize
projects that address the needs of disadvantaged and/or vulnerable
communities.
- Through the Better Together Nature Positive Innovation grant
program, the PG&E Foundation has awarded a combined
$500,000 to five grantees —
$100,000 in each of PG&E's five
Northern and Central California
regions — that preserve California's unique biodiversity, focusing on
land, air quality and water stewardship.
- Separately, through the Resilience Hubs grant
program, PG&E is providing a total of $400,000 to seven grantees — three $100,000 and four $25,000 grants to support communities in building
a network of local climate resilience hubs.
"PG&E is committed to working with our local partners to
develop new and innovative ways to build resilience amid the
increasing impacts of climate change, as outlined in our Climate
Strategy Report. We are all in this together and we simply
cannot do this important work without these partner organizations
helping to increase climate resilience and supporting equity in the
communities we are so privileged to serve," said Carla Peterman, Executive Vice President,
Corporate Affairs and Chief Sustainability Officer for PG&E
Corporation and Chair of the Board for The PG&E Corporation
Foundation.
Better Together Nature Positive Innovation Grants
As one of the largest landowners in California, PG&E has a long history of
responsible stewardship of the natural environment. Through the
Better Together Nature Positive Innovation grant program, the
PG&E Foundation is reinforcing its focus on environmental
stewardship and investing in partnerships that will protect and
restore land, water, and air in habitats and communities across its
service area.
For 2024, the Better Together Nature Positive Innovation grant
program has awarded five $100,000
grants. These grants are funded by The PG&E Corporation
Foundation. Charitable donations come from PG&E shareholders
and other sources, not PG&E customers.
The following organizations are this year's Better Together
Nature Positive Innovation grant recipients:
- Land Partners Through Stewardship / LandPaths
(Sonoma County) — supporting
workforce development in forestry and fire management while
building a sustainable forest management and prescribed burning
program.
- El Dorado Fire Safe
Council (El Dorado County) —
providing financial assistance to help seniors, veterans, disabled
individuals and low-income households make their homes more
resilient to wildfires by performing defensible space work.
- Canopy (San Mateo
County) — providing paid internship positions to BIPOC
(Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) students who live or
attend high school in East Palo
Alto as part of the Teen Urban Forester program supporting
expansion of the area's canopy cover.
- Kitchen Table Advisors (Santa
Cruz and Monterey Counties)
— supporting small-scale, socially disadvantaged regenerative
farmers to adopt and implement conservation and climate smart
agricultural practices on their farmlands.
- Sierra Foothill Conservancy (Mariposa County) — expanding capacity for
cultural prescribed burn facilitation, interpretive elements and
public outreach, Tribal placemaking, Indigenous workforce
development, and increasing community resilience against natural
disasters.
"The PG&E Better Together Nature Positive Innovation Grant
award will provide valuable resources to Sierra Foothill
Conservancy and the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation to advance
restoration, reduce wildfire risks and create outdoor spaces for
people along the Mariposa Creek Parkway. This grant will be
integral in supporting partnership development, community
engagement, and ensuring that the maximum benefit for natural
and human communities can be achieved through inclusive
ecological restoration. PG&E's support is helping realize
essential triple bottom line benefits of a healthy
environment, community and local economy," said Bridget Fithian, Executive Director, Sierra
Foothill Conservancy.
Resilience Hubs Grants
Recognizing that communities across California face growing threats from extreme
weather events such as coastal and inland flooding, heat waves,
wildfires, and more powerful storms, the Resilience Hubs grant
program aims to fund and establish physical spaces, or a set of
resources, that support community resilience — such as access to
power, shelter and information — in the face of these
climate-driven events. Once developed, these hubs can also be
accessed year-round to build and sustain community-adaptive
capacity in a trusted location.
For 2024, the Resilience Hubs grant program has awarded
$400,000 to the seven organizations
listed below. These grants will be funded by PG&E shareholders
as part of the company's investments in statewide wildfire
resiliency and response, in accordance with a mandate from the
California Public Utilities Commission.
The program awarded $25,000
each to four Feasibility Projects to fund an assessment of
resilience hub needs and/or conceptual ideas for a resilience
hub:
- Empowering Marginalized Asian Communities (San Joaquin County) — for a feasibility
analysis to assess the needs of a resilience hub at its offices,
including staff training and assembling emergency preparedness
kits.
- A. Philip Randolph Institute, San
Francisco: Resilient Bayview's Community Resource
(San Francisco County) — creating
an extreme heat and poor air quality strategy to prepare local
organizations for disaster preparedness and response roles.
- Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministries
(Fresno County) — creating a
comprehensive, community-driven plan for a resilience hub in one of
California's most disadvantaged
communities that provides a safe haven during climate emergencies
(particularly extreme heat and wildfire smoke events), while
serving as a year-round resource center.
- California Interfaith Power & Light (Alameda County) — determining the requirements
and scope of a congregational climate resilience hub at the First
Unitarian Church in West Oakland
to best serve the community.
Additionally, the program awarded $100,000 each to three Design and Build
Projects toward the design and/or creation of a resilience hub.
Through these projects, the organizations will either plan and
design new physical spaces or mobile resources, or retrofit
existing buildings or structures to support community
resilience:
- New Season Community Development Corporation
(Yolo County) — creating a
resilience hub at the new Yolo Food hub in unincorporated western
Yolo County serving the county's
600 small farms, farmworkers and other rural food system workers
during extreme weather, power outages and other emergencies.
- Merced Community Development Corporation (Merced County) — creating a mobile resilience
pantry project to serve dual purposes as a regular food
distribution pantry and as an emergency supply hub during
climate-related and other emergencies.
- Sonoma Applied Villages Services (Sonoma County) — developing a mobile
resilience hub to bring a minimum of 3,000 meals and weather
protection to unhoused people living outside in Sonoma County during extreme weather
events.
"We are thrilled that the PG&E Resilience Hubs program has
chosen to support the new Yolo Food Hub. This grant will allow us
to provide key resilience features to benefit Yolo County's 600 small farms, as well as
local food businesses and food system workers, during extreme heat,
smoke, power outages and severe weather events, increasing economic
and community resilience in our rural region," said Jim Durst, Board President of New Season
Community Development Corporation.
The next applications window for the Resilience Hubs grants will
open later this year for grants to be awarded in 2025, the
program's final year of funding.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a
subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE: PCG), is a combined
natural gas and electric utility serving more than 16 million
people across 70,000 square miles in Northern and Central California. For more information,
visit pge.com and pge.com/news.
About The PG&E Corporation Foundation
The PG&E
Corporation Foundation is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit
organization, separate from PG&E and sponsored by PG&E
Corporation.
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SOURCE Pacific Gas and Electric Company