At the Blog | April 7, 2025
Beyond the Briefings: Sustainability
By Russell Hancock
Each year at State of the Valley, Joint Venture President and CEO Russell Hancock briefs the region on key indicators released in the annual update of the Silicon Valley Index. Time constraints limit coverage to People & Economy — the growth of the economy and the innovation engine itself — and Community — quality-of-life metrics including income and wealth, housing, and food insecurity.
This leaves many other telling indicators on the cutting room floor. At its March 2025 meeting, Hancock briefed the Joint Venture Silicon Valley Board of Directors on further subsets of data. This post, the first of two, addresses Sustainability and is adapted from that briefing. (Read the second: Education and Civil Society)
The Big Picture: Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The discussion of sustainability begins with the number 52 billion. This number represents metric tons of greenhouse gases the planet releases into the atmosphere on an annual basis. It enjoys broad consensus, backed by the World Resources Institute, the United Nations, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, among others. All agree that we have to reduce that number to zero, and that the window for doing so is rapidly passing.
That’s the big number, the context. Then comes the question, how is Silicon Valley doing?
Greenhouse gases come from various sources: transportation, natural gas, electricity, and solid waste. Our data show good news: Over a five-year period, we’ve reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 960,000 metric tons, a tremendous achievement representing a 21% drop in carbon dioxide emissions and a 23% drop in annual per capita emissions.
Electricity
One of the most significant regional developments is the transition to Community Choice energy programs — a structural reform, and a significant development. We note that the region’s electricity generators include the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), still a major provider to the Community Choice programs, and we note with gratitude PG&E’s presence on Joint Venture’s Board of Directors. I’m also pleased to note that the Community Choice programs are a fruit of Joint Venture’s efforts, reaching back to the efforts of our Climate Prosperity Council in 2016, helping Silicon Valley achieve this new configuration for electricity generation and distribution.
Here are two milestones for the region to take pride in:
- CO2 emissions from retail electricity customers have fallen by an estimated 87% since 2016.
- PG&E’s emissions factor has declined by 97% since 2014.
As of the last calendar year, 74% of our electricity is coming from clean, renewable sources. This compares to a national average of 34%, making this an extraordinary achievement on our part. Solar energy tops the list of renewable sources used regionally, at 37%. Solar is followed by wind and hydroelectric power (each at 22%), then by nuclear (10%) and other sources (5%).
Our region has embraced solar energy to a high degree and continues to install solar capacity in both settings, residential and nonresidential. In particular, we’re seeing precipitous growth in the number of homeowners installing solar technology on their rooftops.
Transportation
If we want to address the big number, then it is critical that we address the transportation sector.
One way Silicon Valley has responded is by converting to electric vehicles at a rate that leads the nation, and the region has responded by installing infrastructure to support them.
We must also look at vehicle miles traveled (VMT), because if we’re not converting to clean vehicles, then we have to reduce combustion. The year 2020 saw a huge decline in VMT because we were sheltering in place. Now that we have emerged from the pandemic, VMT has returned to just 4% below its pre-pandemic level, so there’s work to be done. However, the rest of the state is exceeding its pre-pandemic numbers, so here again Silicon Valley is outperforming other regions.
Another concerning trend is the steady increase of megacommuters. We define these as people who drive more than three hours per day to work. In Silicon Valley, there are 45,000 workers braving a three-hour round trip. This has harmful externalities from a sustainability standpoint, without even addressing lifestyle issues—making efforts to reduce the big number even harder.
Alternative Transportation
If we’re serious about reducing the big number, we’ll also be looking for alternatives to driving alone, and this is where Silicon Valley struggles. We prefer driving alone and we state that preference year after year.
For some 20 years Silicon Valley used transit for about 30% of its daily commutes; then, when the pandemic set in, fell off the cliff. Since the pandemic, we have recovered about 13% of lost ridership.
Caltrain runs a terrific service up and down the peninsula — improving its service, introducing Bullets, Baby Bullets, now electrifying the railway — but during the pandemic its ridership plummeted dramatically from 70,000 daily riders to 4,600, rebounding only slightly in the present to 20,000.
A similar trajectory took place at BART. Daily ridership is recovering at a higher rate than Caltrain, but not approaching anything close to pre-pandemic numbers. Meanwhile, driving trips across the Bay Bridge have rebounded to their pre-pandemic levels.
This leaves the region asking hard questions. Can transit survive? Should it survive with infusions of taxpayer dollars? Should we be looking at alternative models? These are enormous questions that the region’s leaders should be grappling with.
Here’s a piece of good news: People are riding their bicycles. Over the past 20 years, we have more than doubled the number of people bicycling to work, and cities are responding with bicycle master plans — planning and building infrastructure and creating dedicated bikeways that connect to their adjacent cities.
Air, Water, and Food Recovery
I’m pleased to report the number of unhealthy air days is also coming down, with the exception of 2020, a tough year when our state was ravaged by wildfires.
We’re also seeing improvement in water consumption. We used to consume about 150-160 gallons per person per day, and we’ve reduced that to around 98 gallons per day.
Finally, I’m pleased to share an indicator that talks about surplus food being recovered from organizations and diverted out of landfills, and in the last reporting year we diverted 22 million pounds of food. In the Index, we had to give that figure an asterisk and a disclosure, because this is work that Joint Venture led in partnership with others — a result of the Food Recovery Initiative that this board has supported, and we’re happy to report that the labor is bearing fruit.
About the Author
Russell Hancock is president and CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley. He also serves as president of Joint Venture’s research arm, the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies. Learn more about Russ on his bio page.
