How one of the largest US utilities is building climate resilience

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.

Copyright ©2025 by S&P Global

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