In 2019, Maryam Brown was named the President of Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas), one of BIASC’s most active members and industry partners. She previously served as SoCalGas’ Vice President of Federal Government Affairs following positions in Washington D.C. including Senior Energy and Environment Counsel to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Energy Chief Counsel for the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Policy Counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Republican Policy Committee. In this wide-ranging interview with Southern California Builder, she discusses SoCalGas’ close ties with the building industry and its many incentive programs, and how the company and its products can support California’s climate change goals. Southern California Builder: Let’s start with the basics. Tell us about SoCalGas – its history, its mission, its services, and its service area. Maryam Brown: Sure. Every day, SoCalGas delivers safe, affordable, and increasingly clean energy to 22 million Californians. SoCalGas’ mission is to build the cleanest, safest, most innovative energy company in America. In support of that mission, we employ 8,000 people across Southern Californian. SoCalGas’ roots go back over 150 years, all the way to 1867, when the Los Angeles Gas Company, a forerunner of SoCalGas, introduced gas lamps to downtown Los Angeles. Over the years, the company’s focus shifted to providing natural gas to residential customers for cooking and heating, and to supplying natural gas for electric generation, manufacturing, and more recently, transportation. As California’s population grew, SoCalGas’ service territory expanded to cover 24,000 square miles, reaching from Visalia in the north all the way down to San Diego. SoCalGas and the Building Industry Association of Southern California are long-time partners. With the Building Industry Association of Southern California about to celebrate its
Southern California
BUILDER |
April 2022
Maryam Brown
President, Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas)
100th year, we are grateful to have worked with the BIASC for decades. It is because of builders that Southern California is a great place to live, and SoCalGas looks forward to continuing to work with builders to keep the California dream alive and well.
Inside Edition: EMPOWERMENT
Q&A with Maryam Brown
SCB: A Google search of “SoCalGas builder incentive programs” turns up information on multiple programs you are offering to homebuilders. Can you recap your current programs and tell us about the importance of new homes in SoCalGas’ business strategy? MB: Since 2015, SoCalGas has paid over $20.7 million in incentives and rebates across various programs to builders for their new construction energy-efficiency projects. These energy-efficiency projects have resulted in significant costs savings for our customers and builders, as well as improvements in air quality and GHG emissions reductions. One of the main programs is the Energy Efficient New Homes program (EENH). This program incentivizes builders of new homes to install energy-efficient natural gas appliances and equipment that exceeds the minimum requirements of California’s building codes. Builders can get up to $3,500 per unit for a single-family home. Some builders are getting over $150,000 on a large multi-home project. There are also cash bonuses for projects that are eligible for Green Program Certifications through US Green Building Council LEED and EPA WaterSense-Labeled Home. Here is what’s most exciting about this program: it demonstrates great alignment between SoCalGas and the building industry to use energy more sustainably. In 2021, 214 agreements with a total of 16,300 new single-family residential and multi-family units/lots enrolled in this program, allowing homebuilders to increase the energy-efficiency of a home at a lower cost. Once constructed, these enrollments from 2021 are expected to result in $14.5 M in direct incentive payments to participating homebuilders, equivalent energy
23