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One Way for PG&E to Win Over California: Make the Board Green

One Way for PG&E to Win Over California: Make the Board Green

(Bloomberg) -- If there’s any way for PG&E Corp. to win its way back into the hearts of those in Sacramento and fix a California policy that has saddled it with $30 billion in wildfire liabilities, it may be filling a bunch of spots on its board with clean energy folks.

Activist investor BlueMountain Capital Management LLC handed over a list of nominations for PG&E’s board of directors on Friday. It includes, in part, a who’s who in the clean tech world: David Crane, the former chief executive officer of NRG Energy Inc. who was ousted after trying to turn the power generator into a green company; Dick Rosenblum, former CEO of the clean energy-heavy island utility Hawaiian Electric Co.; and the heads of at least two companies that make renewable energy investments.

In releasing the list, BlueMountain did say that PG&E is going to have to “work collaboratively with the public sector.” In raising its stake in PG&E on Friday, another activist ValueAct similarly said a new board was an opportunity for PG&E to “turn the page on a new beginning” with customers, regulators and legislators in California. (ValueAct’s CEO, Jeffrey Ubben, is one of BlueMountain’s picks.)

--With assistance from Mark Chediak.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lynn Doan in San Francisco at ldoan6@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Doan at ldoan6@bloomberg.net, Joe Ryan

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