Silicon Valley Customer Expectations: Resilience and Innovation in a Changing Climate

Silicon Valley is often a harbinger of change, including in the world of electricity where information technology is playing a growing role. This chapter explores how companies and other large institutional customers are taking their energy production and management into their own hands in order to control costs and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Large customers are joining together to demand renewable energy at a massive scale. Utility executives and regulators are grappling with how to change their business models and take action to keep customers satisfied. In the San Francisco Bay Area, utilities like Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) are providing transmission infrastructure and billing services to support Community Choice Energy cooperatives, such as Silicon Valley Clean Energy. New green tariffs and other models for delivering renewable electricity are emerging across the country.