Supplier Diversity Program

The California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) General Order (GO) 156 fosters a competitive marketplace by encouraging investor-owned utilities, community choice aggregators, energy service providers and prime contractors to include diverse firms:  women; minority; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT); disabled veteran and persons with disabilities business enterprises in procurement activities. Currently, more than 30 investor-owned utilities such as AT&T, California Water Association, Comcast, Frontier, PG&E, SDG&E, Southern California Edison, SoCalGas, and Verizon participate in this program. In October 2019, Senate Bill (SB) 255 (Bradford, Chapter 407, 2019) added Community Choice Aggregators, energy service providers, distributed energy resource contractors, and energy storage system companies.

The Supplier Diversity Program has existed for almost 40 years with the fundamental and ongoing goal of advancing the American and Californian private enterprise marketplace through free, open and transparent competition. This can only be fully realized by harnessing the actual and potential capacity of all persons. Advancing competitive procurement opportunities for everyone by having voluntary inclusionary programs assists utilities into reaching new markets, increasing shareholder value, and controlling costs – while making us stronger together.

Our clearinghouse operator verifies the status of suppliers seeking certification as women, minority, LGBT, and/or persons with disabilities business. Disabled veteran businesses are certified by the Office of Small Business and Disabled Veteran Business Enterprise Services (OSDS), a unit of the Department of General Services. View the most recent update to the public version of our supplier database. Certification facilitates tracking of supplier procurement participation.