Michael Peevey and Diane Wittenberg on Climate Leadership
Ted Flanigan interviews Michael Peevey and Diane Wittenberg about their new book, California Goes Green: A Roadmap to Climate Leadership. In this book, they show how California built a gold standard environment along with a thriving economy. It’s a very readable and inspiring contemporary account of how to make things happen. To learn more and purchase, click here: https://www.californiagoesgreen.net/
Michael R. Peevey has worked in California energy across all its facets: as a corporate officer in a Fortune 500 company, an entre- preneur, and president of California’s most powerful energy regulatory agency, the California Public Utilities Commission, for a dozen years. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics at the University of California, Berkeley, before starting his career as an economist in Washington, D.C. In 1973 he helped found the California Council of Environmental and Economic Balance (CCEEB), an organization of unions, businesses, government, and others. Peevey was the CCEEB’s president until 1984, when he joined Southern California Edison Company, one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, as a vice president. He became president in 1990.
In 1995, two years after leaving Edison, he co-founded New Energy Ventures, an energy supply and services company later sold to AES for $92 million. Now named New Energy, the company remains one of the largest energy supply and services companies in the country, with revenues in the billions. When the energy crisis of 2000-2001 hit California, Governor Gray Davis asked Peevey to be his chief adviser through the troubled times. In 2002 Davis appointed him to the PUC and made him president. Peevey continued in that role under Davis and governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown. He retired from the PUC at the end of 2014, turning his attention to writing this insider’s account of California’s storied environmental and energy policies over the last forty years.
Diane O. Wittenberg has extensive experience in California environmental and energy policy. Joining Southern California Edison in 1985, she became vice president of corporate communications for both the electric utility and its holding company, Edison International (EIX). She also served as president of a non-regulated EIX subsidiary, Edison EV, which provided electric vehicle charging installations for six major automakers. After leaving Edison, Wittenberg became the founding president of the California Climate Action Registry, a nonprofit formed through state legislation. The Registry developed greenhouse gas accounting and inventory standards. Wittenberg also served as president of the organization that subsequently evolved from the California experience, The Climate Registry, which developed voluntary greenhouse gas reporting standards for forty-one states, the twelve Canadian provinces and six Mexican states.
In 2011, Wittenberg became the first executive director of the PEV Collaborative, a public-private partnership to help insure electric vehicles were a commercial success in California. Members of the collaborative include the three key environmental and energy agencies in California, the major car companies and electric utilities operating in the state, the legislature, the governor’s office, and large environmental organizations. She is chair of the California State Parks and Recreation Commission.
