Sunrun Urges San Francisco Giants To Part Ways With PG&E

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

Originally published on Solar Love

Sunrun, the foremost US residential solar company, has called on the San Francisco Giants baseball team to cut sponsorship ties with local utility PG&E.

“Dear San Francisco Giants,” Sunrun wrote in its letter. “If you are serious about your commitments to sustainability and respect for the law, you must cut ties with PG&E.”

PG&E’s dishonest media campaigns claim that it’s a “green” company, but the truth is that the monopoly utility is currently asking the California Public Utilities Commission to eliminate rooftop solar. At the same time, the utility is facing criminal charges.

Sunrun Senior Vice President Bryan Miller signed the letter, explaining how “PG&E’s illegal activities have been widely reported” in the San Diego Union-Tribune and the LA Times. According to the LA Times, PG&E’s safety performance has only deteriorated since the 2010 gas pipeline explosion that killed eight people in San Bruno: “The 2011 report of the PUC’s independent review panel on San Bruno suggested that management’s safety efforts were focused more on PR than a genuine devotion to safety — its priority was ‘financial performance,’ not ‘operational safety and performance.’”

Bryan Miller also claimed that PG&E has been trying to eliminate California’s “booming rooftop solar market” by proposing a bill “to the California Public Utilities Commission to make California the first state in the country to eliminate net metering and levy discriminatory fees on solar customers.”

Athletes routinely lose sponsorships for far more minor infractions. If a baseball player were to be indicted for the same things that PG&E has been indicted for, it is inconceivable that the Giants would continue a sponsorship contract with that player.

“PG&E proudly supports the Giants and their efforts to create the greenest ball park in the nation,” said Ezra Garrett, PG&E’s vice president of community relations and the utility’s chief sustainability officer, back in October of 2012, following several green improvements to the Giants’ home ground, AT&T Park. “As the team moves toward its second World Series in three years, Giants fans and PG&E customers will get even more chances to learn about renewable energy and caring for the environment while cheering on their team.”

Image Credit: via Art Siegel (some rights reserved)


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica.TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

Joshua S Hill

I'm a Christian, a nerd, a geek, and I believe that we're pretty quickly directing planet-Earth into hell in a handbasket! I also write for Fantasy Book Review (.co.uk), and can be found writing articles for a variety of other sites. Check me out at about.me for more.

Joshua S Hill has 4403 posts and counting. See all posts by Joshua S Hill