All Things Sustainable (formerly ESG Insider)

How one of the largest US utilities is building climate resilience

Apr 11, 2025

Shinjini Menon, Senior Vice President at Southern California Edison, discusses how one of the largest US utilities is tackling the dual challenge of climate resilience and energy reliability. She highlights ambitious decarbonization goals and innovative technologies like LIDAR for wildfire risk mitigation. Shinjini emphasizes the importance of equitable energy access and collaboration with stakeholders in addressing climate change. Tune in to learn how these strategies not only protect communities but also ensure affordable and reliable energy during extreme weather.

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INSIGHT

Diverse, Large Service Area Factors

Southern California Edison serves 15 million customers in diverse environments including urban, rural, desert, and mountainous areas.
A third of customers are income qualified, which influences their equity and energy security strategies.

ADVICE

Integrate and Prioritize Projects

Integrate wildfire mitigation work with other local utility needs to enhance efficiency.
Prioritize urgent safety needs first, even if it means slowing down less critical work.

ANECDOTE

Rapid Wildfire Mitigation Deployment

Southern California Edison deployed over 6,000 miles of covered conductor in just five or six years to reduce wildfire risk.
They accelerated deployment by benchmarking global peers and organizing a dedicated wildfire team with a risk management mindset.

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In this episode of the All Things Sustainable podcast, we sit down with Shinjini Menon, Senior Vice President of System Planning and Engineering at Southern California Edison, an investor-owned public utility operating as a subsidiary of Edison International.

Southern California Edison is one of the largest US electric utilities, and Shinjini explains how it is prioritizing energy reliability and affordability while also building climate resilience — a topic that is particularly urgent in Southern California, where the risk of wildfires is so high.

“We have put forward a pretty ambitious goal for decarbonization and the electrification that we believe is necessary for affordable decarbonization,” Shinjini says.

“At the end of the day, it's about all of our communities having affordable access to energy, reliable energy, and having that energy security.”

Shinjini explains how the utility uses technology, modeling and data to mitigate wildfire risks and make the grid more resilient. She says Southern California Edison has learned from peers in the US and other parts of the world as it works to build climate resilience.

Listen to last week's interviews from the CERAWeek conference hosted by S&P Global here.

Listen to our podcast episode about 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles here.

Read research from S&P Global Sustainable1 about the projected financial costs of climate change for the world’s largest companies.

Learn more about the S&P Global Sustainable1 Physical Risk dataset.

This piece was published by S&P Global Sustainable1, a part of S&P Global.

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