California, the US state whose economy is the fifth largest in the world, this week launched its biggest effort yet to tackle climate change. Its lawmakers have passed a series of laws aimed at reducing emissions and leaving fossil fuel consumption behind.
Lawmakers approved a record $54 billion in climate spending and sanctioned sweeping new restrictions on oil and gas drilling, also mandating that by 2045 the state must stop spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
They voted to extend the state’s last nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, for another five years, something that in the past would have been seen by many environmentalists as unthinkable. Proponents of the extension said California, which this week is again having trouble keeping the lights on amid a scorching heat wave, needs emissions-free electricity from the nuclear power plant, while other clean energy sources such as wind and solar, are expanded.
Passed Wednesday night at the end of a busy two-year legislative session in Sacramento, the laws represented a victory for Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has sought to portray himself as a climate leader as he raises his national profile and begins to attract speculation about a possible candidacy for the White House.
Newsom surprised lawmakers in mid-August when he urged them to pass several new climate laws, many of which had failed to pass in previous years. In the end, all of his proposals were approved except one: a bill that sought to reinforce the state’s goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 2030. The measure was rejected in the state assembly by a difference of four votes.
“Together with the leadership of the Legislature, the progress we make on the climate crisis this year will be felt for generations, and the impact will spread far beyond our borders,” Newsom said in a press release.
California’s new initiatives give impetus to growing efforts across the country to limit greenhouse gas emissions from the combustion of oil, gas and coal, which are overheating the planet.
In August, President Joe Biden signed a comprehensive climate law that calls for investing $370 billion over the next ten years in low-emissions energy sources such as wind, solar and nuclear. But this law alone will not be enough to eliminate the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a goal climate scientists say the entire world needs to achieve to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. The White House said states also needed to take more decisive initiatives.
California already has some of the strictest policies in the country to promote renewable energy and phase out oil, gas and coal. Last month, state regulators finalized a plan to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035. The policy can be adopted by other states, and is expected to accelerate the global transition to cleaner, electric vehicles.
But in the face of record heat waves, droughts and wildfires that have battered the state, Newsom faces mounting pressure from climate activists to do more. As lawmakers voted for Sacramento, the National Weather Service was warning that an “extremely dangerous” heat wave would blanket the state through Labor Day weekend (September 5).
The new laws are intended to bolster California’s emission-cutting plans, but experts said the state will now have to do the hard work of realizing those targets.
Lawmakers had previously set a legally binding target for California to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. Under new legislation passed Wednesday, the state will now have to reduce its emissions by at least 85 % by 2045. At the same time, it will have to offset any remaining emissions by planting more trees or using still-expensive technologies like direct air capture, which captures carbon dioxide after it has already been released into the atmosphere.
But setting an ambitious goal is just a first step. For now, the state isn’t even on track to reach its 2030 targets, said Danny Cullenward, director of public policy at CarbonPlan, an NGO that evaluates climate solutions. He argued that California regulators are still overly reliant on a program to trade the emissions of big polluters internationally, but that the program has come under fire for excessive leniency.
“If these new targets force state regulators to re-examine the issue and come up with a new, credible emissions-cutting plan, great,” Cullenward said. “But I don’t think they have a realistic implementation plan yet, and that’s the most important part.”
Other laws passed by the legislature will require more concrete measures.
Lawmakers approved a budget introduced by Governor Newsom that forecasts spending a record $54 billion on climate programs over five years. It includes $6.1 billion for electric vehicles, including funds for the purchase of new battery-powered school buses; US$ 14.8 billion for road, rail and port works; more than $8 billion to clean and stabilize the electrical grid, $2.7 billion to reduce fire risks, and $2.8 billion to water programs to combat drought.
As part of that spending package, lawmakers endorsed a plan to keep the Diablo Cayon power plant, two nuclear reactors off the state’s central coast that provide 9 percent of California’s energy consumption, running.
The reactors were originally scheduled to close in 2024 and 2025, but the new plan stretches those deadlines to 2029 and 2030 and provides for a $1.4 billion loan to Pacific Gas & Electric, which operates the plant. PG&E is also expected to file an application to receive money from a new $6 billion federal program designed to keep existing nuclear plants running.
In the past, Newsom has strongly advocated closing Diablo Canyon, siding with activists and environmentalists concerned about the plant’s impact on marine flora and fauna and the risk posed by the nuclear reactors being situated over several seismic faults. But as California grapples with increasingly severe heat waves that raise demand for electricity and put pressure on the electrical grid, regulators have warned of the possibility of electricity shortages in the coming years. So this summer Newsom changed his stance and asked that the plant continue in operation.
Some environmental organizations opposed the initiative, arguing that the money would be better spent on other clean energy sources such as solar, wind and batteries. But supporters of the proposal to keep the plant running have warned that California is in dire need of electricity and that if the plant were closed, it would be replaced by more polluting sources such as natural gas.
In a letter to the House on Tuesday, Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, urged state lawmakers to act. “The alternative to shutting down the Diablo Canyon reactors will likely be to generate additional natural gas, which would reverse the advances made to reduce emissions and worsen air quality,” she wrote.
One of the most controversial measures passed by the legislature is the requirement that new oil and gas wells be at least 975 meters away from homes, schools and hospitals, in addition to imposing stricter pollution controls on wells located at closer distances.
California is the country’s seventh-largest oil producer, but it has never before implemented protection zones around wells, as states like Colorado and Pennsylvania do. Supporters of the new rules estimated that 2.7 million Californians reside within 975 meters of oil and gas wells, and last year a state health committee concluded that residing near active wells raises the risk of asthma, heart attacks and premature births.
“The oil and gas industry is not against setting distance limits,” said Kevin Slagle, a spokesman for the Petroleum Association of Western States. “But an equal political order for the entire state does little to protect health and safety, it will make us more dependent on oil from abroad and will likely increase fuel and energy costs.”
Another law mandates regulators to draft new guidelines for carbon capture and storage, which involves capturing carbon dioxide emitted by polluting industrial facilities and burying it underground. Newsom said the technology, which is struggling to adopt because of its high cost, is necessary for the state to achieve its climate goals, but some climate activists oppose it because it would allow industries to continue burning fossil fuels. The new legislation will ban the use of captured carbon dioxide to extract more crude oil.
Some experts say the deadlock over climate policy in California has been broken thanks to the governor. Many legislature climate bills appeared to be stalled until Newsom intervened in early August, presenting a five-point plan and encouraging lawmakers to send the bills to his cabinet.
“For the past few years the Senate has been the place where climate policy goes to die,” said David Weiskopf, senior public policy adviser at climate entity NexGen Policy. “But then Newsom came along and said ‘let’s settle the mood’. He’s never done that before.”
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