Every Spring in Sacramento, The Climate Center organizes the California Climate Policy Summit to bring together climate policy advocates, policy leaders, and industry partners working to create a climate-safe future for California. It seems fitting that this event should also pay tribute to California elected officials who have demonstrated outstanding leadership to make California a global climate leader.
We decided to start this inaugural Climate Leadership Award to honor the trailblazing accomplishments of Senator Nancy Skinner.
Senator Skinner has been a climate leader since long before she got to the state legislature. She helped found ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, a network of 2,500 local and regional governments in more than 125 countries working on sustainable urban development. Senator Skinner’s work at ICLEI led to the initiation of the Cities for Climate Protection program, which we at The Climate Center worked with to get all nine cities in Sonoma County to adopt the most aggressive greenhouse gas target in the United States at that time. This is only a fraction of Senator Skinner’s political and environmental activism –– she also introduced the nation’s first styrofoam ban after she was elected as the first and only student on the Berkeley City Council. She contributed to the bestselling book “Fifty Things You Can Do to Save the Earth” and she co-authored SB 54 (2022), which will drastically reduce the use of single-use plastics and plastic packaging in California.
Which brings me to her numerous legislative accomplishments on behalf of the climate: Senator Skinner has authored laws to accelerate the transition to zero-emission vehicles, expand rooftop solar, mandate clean energy storage, increase the energy efficiency of buildings and appliances, and reform clean energy financing. Her achievements also include jumpstarting California’s use of green hydrogen — a multi-faceted fuel that has the potential to decarbonize challenging sectors of our economy while protecting well-paying jobs — and maximizing nature’s ability to store climate-changing carbon in the soil, grasslands, wetlands, forests, and other natural systems.
Senator Skinner is also the author of SB 233, legislation that would help California utilize the batteries in our rapidly growing fleet of electric vehicles to strengthen the reliability of the electrical grid, reduce pollution in frontline communities, and save money for consumers. The Los Angeles Times editorial Board called passing SB 233 a “no-brainer.” Bidirectional EVs can power appliances, homes, and buildings, and even send electricity to the grid. With Senator Skinner’s leadership, we hope this bidirectional feature will become standard in all electric vehicles sold in California and nationwide, building upon California’s long history of setting state standards that quickly become national standards.
As chair of the budget committees in both the Assembly and state Senate, Senator Skinner brought about change even under tough political and economic circumstances. Her first time as chair, in the Assembly, coincided with the Great Recession, yet she managed to protect key public health and climate investments. In her second stint, as chair of the Senate Budget Committee, she helped guide the historic investments in climate priorities that we are trying to protect now.
Please join me in honoring Senator Nancy Skinner for her incredible, decades-long leadership in pursuit of a climate-safe future for California and the world.
