Pedro Pizarro, President and CEO, Edison International

“We need to be accountable and held accountable as electric utilities. But at the same time we cannot be the insurers of last resort for all of those other societal factors, including the impact of climate change.” Pedro Pizarro, President and CEO, Edison International

Halcyon CSO and co-founder Nat Bullard sits down with Edison International President and CEO Pedro Pizarro to talk about California as a postcard from the future for the rest of the US grid. Pedro expects Southern California Edison's load to grow 30–40% by 2035 and nearly double by 2045, driven mostly by electrification.

Pedro has led Edison International since 2016. Raised in Puerto Rico, he studied chemistry at Harvard, followed his future wife to Caltech for his PhD and spent five and a half years at McKinsey before joining Edison in 1999, where he went on to run power procurement and, later, Edison Mission Energy.

Chapters

00:16 | Intro: California as a postcard from the future 
01:17 | 140 years of Edison: Visalia, Henry Huntington and the Big Creek hydro project 
04:36 | Edison Mission Energy, from global power producer to bankruptcy and sale to NRG 
09:53 | SCE today: 15 million people across 50,000 square miles 
10:28 | What everyone should know about California energy policy 
13:56 | Pedro's path: Puerto Rico, Harvard, Caltech, McKinsey 
19:00 | Signing California's first renewable contracts, and the solar cost curve 
24:24 | Net energy metering, and why subsidies should move to heat pumps 
27:40 | Is the grid inflationary? Load nearly doubling by 2045 
34:51 | What's driving load growth: housing, EVs and building electrification 
39:45 | Wildfire: the Eaton Fire and the obligation to serve 
44:28 | Inverse condemnation, explained 
46:22 | 2017: the moment Edison rethought wildfire risk 
48:46 | California's wildfire fund and liability cap 
55:53 | SB 254, the Earthquake Authority report and the 2026 legislative session 
1:02:12 | What other states should learn from California 
1:07:36 | Beyond wildfire: sea level rise, floods, drought and extreme heat 
1:10:20 | Wish list: AI, a self-healing grid and smarter control

More in the series

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