California’s Climate Priorities for the Next Governor

Improving Clean Electricity Infrastructure

California has made major progress on transitioning to clean energy, but natural gas still provides more than a third of the state’s electricity. To meet clean energy goals and keep power reliable and affordable, the next governor should prioritize faster clean‑energy buildout, better infrastructure, and wider opportunity for property owners to participate in energy generation.

Accelerate Clean Energy Interconnections and Expand Energy Choice

California should streamline approvals for clean energy projects by using tools like SB 131, which accelerates environmental review for high‑priority projects like electricity generation. Better interconnection and energy choice allows:

• • Utility‑scale, community‑scale, and on‑site clean energy projects to come online sooner.
  • Property owners to host solar, storage, or mixed‑use clean energy projects.
  • Cost‑saving public‑private partnerships where the state shares in project value.

Tapping into clean, abundant energy, like wind and solar power, is one of the most effective ways to make utility costs more affordable. A study by Aurora Energy Research shows that solar power could reduce bills up to 20% for customers.

Expand Energy Storage and New Technologies

California needs far more energy storage to balance the grid and use renewable energy effectively. To expand energy storage and improve new technologies, California’s next governor can:

• • Expand incentives for advanced storage, including batteries, geothermal, and long‑duration technologies.
  • Support bidirectional EV charging, allowing cars to help stabilize the grid and giving owners more flexibility on electrical management.
  • Use a Polluters Pay Fund to help finance storage while reducing pressure on the state budget and everyday Californians.

Expanded energy storage creates a more stable, reliable, and cleaner energy system for everyone, and the next California governor should lead the state to make energy storage a priority.

Conserving Public Lands and Biodiversity

A strong climate and environmental agenda must include protecting California’s lands, waters, and wildlife. Conservation plays a critical role in climate resilience, carbon sequestration, and public health, while also safeguarding clean air, clean water, and food systems.

California has committed to conserving 30% of its lands and waters by 2030 (30×30), and we’re already taking major strides. Because the next California governor’s first term would end in 2030, meeting this goal should be a top environmental priority.

Protecting forests, wetlands, grasslands, and coastal ecosystems:

• • Stores carbon naturally.
  • Reduces wildfire risk and flood damage.
  • Protects access to drinking water.
  • Preserves biodiversity.
  • Supports outdoor recreation and local economies.

Long‑term success will require sustained investment and meaningful partnerships with tribal nations, farmers, ranchers, and frontline communities.

Leading on Conservation in California

As federal protections for public lands face uncertainty, state leadership is more important than ever. California’s next governor should make conservation a cornerstone of climate leadership by:

• • Advancing the 30×30 goal with clear timelines and accountability.
  • Centering tribal leadership and traditional ecological knowledge.
  • Supporting land stewards through grants, conservation easements, and technical assistance.
  • Investing in biodiversity programs in forests, wetlands, and working lands as climate resilience and wildfire prevention strategies.

Conservation is not just an environmental issue—it is essential for climate resilience, water security, wildfire prevention, and long‑term affordability for Californians.

Protecting Water Resources

Water management is one of California’s most persistent and complex challenges, and climate change is making it harder. Droughts, floods, population growth, and economic shifts are placing increasing stress on water systems across the state.

California’s next governor should advance a climate‑resilient water strategy that includes:

• • Proactive and transparent planning to manage fluctuations in water supply and demand.
  • Investment in multi‑benefit water projects that support ecosystems and communities.
  • Modernizing infrastructure to reduce waste and improve reliability.
  • Ensuring water systems prioritize clean and safe drinking water for families and communities that need it most.

Smart water policy strengthens food security, protects ecosystems, and supports long‑term economic stability.

Accelerating the Transition to Clean Transportation

Transportation is California’s largest source of climate pollution. Pollution from gasoline-powered vehicles generates significant air pollution, with major health impacts like asthma and cardiovascular disease. Getting more clean vehicles on the road, ensuring affordable, equitable access to EV ownership and charging, and expanding clean universal public transportation infrastructure should be a top priority for the next California governor.

Expand Support for Zero‑Emission Electric Vehicles

Expanding access to zero‑emission vehicles (EVs) is one of the fastest ways to cut emissions, improve air quality, and lower transportation costs. California’s next governor should lead the creation or expansion of a statewide EV incentive program that:

• • Provides up‑front financial incentives for new and used EV purchases to reach more income levels.
  • Prioritizes low‑ and moderate‑income households and small businesses.
  • Coordinates with federal incentives to maximize affordability.
  • Increase EV charging availability at apartment buildings, state parks, government buildings, and under-invested areas.

Funding for EV incentives can be supported in part by a Polluters Pay Fund, reducing the burden on taxpayers while accelerating clean transportation adoption across the state.

Making California More Affordable

Lowering Energy Bills Through Utility Reform and Smart Planning

Abundant and affordable electricity is key in the transition to clean appliances, building electrification, and clean transportation—yet energy prices in California are often too high. Because of decades of misinformation and inaction by the oil and gas industry about their fossil fuel products, climate change is driving up energy costs in our state. This has created issues around wildfire mitigation costs, outdated utility regulations, and unmanaged growth in electricity demand that are creating an energy affordability crisis in our state. California’s next governor should address these challenges together.

Key actions include:

• • Responsibly managing new electricity demand, including from AI data centers.
  • Shifting more wildfire mitigation costs to the state general fund, with strict oversight to target the most effective risk‑reduction measures.
  • Protecting ratepayers from unlimited wildfire‑related cost increases.
  • Transitioning electric utilities to performance‑based regulation, which rewards:
    • Lower system costs.
    • Faster clean energy connections.
    • Improved reliability and safety.
    • Reduced emissions.

Making Polluters Pay Their Fair Share

Climate change is increasing the cost of essentials like electricity, food, housing, and insurance. We know that a small number of the world’s largest corporations have emitted the bulk of global greenhouse pollution, all while raking in immense profits. They’ve known about the consequences for more than 30 years and kept going anyway—knowing that working families would pay the price. Those companies that significantly contribute to climate change should help pay for the damages and help ease the burden on working families in California.

Improve Insurance Rules to Make Insurance Affordable

California’s next governor should support reforms that allow wildfire and climate‑related costs to be shared more fairly, including allowing consumers, insurers, the state, and utilities to pursue claims against polluters.

These reforms can help stabilize California’s insurance market and reduce the burden on families. Read more about our efforts to make insurance affordable in our state.

Create a Long‑Term Polluters Pay Fund

The next California governor should support the creation of a dedicated Polluters Pay Fund. A Polluters Pay fund could collect a portion of costs linked to past climate harms from the largest fossil fuel companies over a defined period. Funds could support investments in solutions like:

• • Clean energy and interconnection.
  • Storage and resilience.
  • EV incentives and charging.
  • Forest health and wildfire mitigation.

This reduces pressure on ratepayers while accelerating climate progress.

Eliminating Toxics and Pollution

Communities most harmed by pollution must be co‑authors of climate solutions. Many highly polluting industrial facilities lack adequate health and safety buffer zones and are concentrated in communities of color.

California’s next governor should:

• • Strengthen protections for frontline communities near polluting facilities.
  • Hold industrial polluters accountable for public health risks.
  • Reduce toxic emissions linked to climate and health harms.
  • Address California’s growing waste stream, especially single‑use plastics and non‑recyclable materials.

Reducing pollution protects public health, lowers healthcare costs, and improves quality of life statewide.

Climate Resilience and Responsible Land Use

California must invest more in climate mitigation and prevention alongside ecosystem restoration.

The next governor should:

• • Massively scale funding for wildfire prevention, restoration, and maintenance.
  • Advance land‑use planning that protects existing communities.
  • Limit new development in high‑risk wildland‑urban interface areas.
  • Ensure firefighting jobs are well‑paid, safe, and sustainable.
  • Prioritize tribal co-management of lands.

Smart land‑use planning saves lives, reduces disaster costs, and strengthens resilience.

Advancing Sustainable Agriculture

Over a quarter of California’s land is dedicated to agriculture. While agriculture is currently a major source of greenhouse gases in our state, investing in climate-smart solutions means this sector has a major opportunity to move toward carbon neutrality, and ultimately become carbon-negative (removing more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits).

California’s next governor should:

• • Expand Climate Smart Agriculture programs like organic and regenerative farming.
  • Reduce harmful fertilizer and pesticide use.
  • Protect farmworkers, water quality, and wildlife.

Sustainable agriculture strengthens food systems, climate resilience, and rural economies.

Creating Good, Clean Jobs and Protecting Workers

Climate action must advance economic mobility and racial justice. California should continue building a clean energy economy that creates family‑sustaining jobs with strong labor protections.

Key priorities include:

• • High labor standards for clean energy and infrastructure projects.
  • Workforce training and career pathways for impacted workers.
  • Strong wages, benefits, and workplace protections.
  • Inclusive job creation for communities historically left behind.

A just transition ensures climate progress benefits all Californians.

Strengthening Democracy

Californians overwhelmingly support clean air, clean water, and climate action. But too often, voters—especially from the communities impacted most by climate change—feel disempowered and disengaged from the political world as their voices are drowned out by well-funded and politically influential corporate interests.

California’s next governor should:

• • Expand voter participation through accessible education, voting options, and civic engagement.
  • Prioritize youth and communities of color to expand turnout and political participation.
  • Increase transparency and accountability in government through participatory policymaking.
  • Reduce the influence of wealthy corporate interests through campaign finance reform.

A stronger democracy ensures climate and environmental policies reflect the will of the people—not special interests.

What These Climate Priorities Mean for California’s Next Governor

California’s next governor will play a pivotal role in shaping the state’s clean energy future. A climate governor should accelerate clean electricity, energy storage, and EV charging, while bringing down the cost of electricity for households and businesses through eco-friendly solutions. Just as importantly, California needs a governor who ensures that fossil fuel polluters—not ratepayers—bear the financial responsibility for climate‑driven wildfires, insurance instability, and infrastructure costs.

By modernizing utility regulations, improving wildfire mitigation strategies, and expanding access to zero‑emission vehicles, California could reduce emissions while strengthening grid reliability, lowering costs, and protecting vulnerable communities. With smart incentives, streamlined permitting, and demand‑flexible strategies for AI data centers and other large energy users, the state could avoid unnecessary costs and prevent future grid strain.

California has the tools, technology, and talent needed to lead the world in climate action. What our state needs is a governor that’s focused on bold action, affordability, and accountability—a leader who can turn climate ambition into real‑world progress that benefits every Californian. With the right priorities and a strong climate leader, California can continue setting the national standard for clean energy, climate resilience, and environmental justice.