Climate champions in the state legislature introduced critical bills this year aimed at supporting affordable and reliable clean energy and forcing oil and gas corporations to clean up their pollution.
Four key bills survived and, with your help, could soon become law if signed by Governor Newsom:
- ✅ SB 59 (Skinner) — Sponsored by The Climate Center and co-sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Nuvve — would unlock the potential for California’s millions of electric vehicles to backup homes during outages, lower energy bills, reduce reliance on polluting fossil fuels, and make the electric grid more reliable for all.
- ✅ SB 1374 (Becker) would allow schools and apartment dwellers to use their own solar power to offset their utility bills, just as residential customers do.
- ✅ AB 1866 (Hart) would increase idle well fees and accelerate the clean-up of more than 40,000 toxic idle oil wells across California.
- ✅ AB 3233 (Addis) would protect local communities’ rights to regulate, limit, or prohibit oil and gas operations within their jurisdictions.
With major support from you and from across the climate movement, lawmakers also passed SB 867 (Allen) to place Prop 4 on this November’s ballot. If approved by California voters, this $10 billion bond will support investments in clean air, clean water, wildfire protection, resilience to extreme heat, and more. As I wrote in an op-ed for the Sacramento Bee earlier this week, the climate crisis won’t wait for our state budget to recover. Be sure to vote yes on Prop 4 this November and encourage your friends and family to do the same!
Sadly, Big Oil and Big Utility lobbyists managed to kill or stall several common-sense climate bills. To name a few, SB 252 (Gonzalez) would have divested two of the largest public pension funds in the nation from fossil fuels. SB 1497 (Menjivar) would have required the oil and gas industry to pay into a superfund that would finance climate solutions. And SB 938 (Min) would have prohibited investor-owned utilities from using ratepayer dollars to pay for lobbying.
Thanks to those same Big Oil interests who’ve been obstructing bold climate action for decades, this year we’ve endured an exceptionally wet winter, sweltering hot summer, and, now, raging wildfires across Southern California. We need all hands on deck to turn things around and get the remaining climate legislation across the finish line.
Take a moment now to tell Governor Newsom to sign SB 59, SB 1374, AB 1866, and AB 3233 into law.
This blog first appeared in The Climate Center’s bi-weekly newsletter. To keep up with the latest climate news and ways to take action for a climate-safe future, subscribe today!
