2026 Priority California Climate Bills: We're Celebrating!
October 3, 2026: Governor Newsom has wrapped up his bill-signing marathon at last. On the very last day he signed ALL of Climate Action California's priority bills still on his desk, including some that the investor-owned utilities—especially the gas utilities—have opposed througout the session. GREAT WORK EVERYONE! We've been plaguing our supporters with requests to urge the Governor to do the right thing by the climate, and he heard us.
As you'll see from the list below, a lot of really important bills died along the way...and we'll be working in 2027 to bring many of them back when we have a new Governor and new climate champions in both houses. But we're taking the win.
One sobering note: Volunteers have asked about the possibility of overriding his veto, specifically of SB 954, the long-fought bill that would have repaired significant damage to CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act. This is highly unlikely. An override requires a 2/3 vote in both houses of the legislature, and SB 954 has never had that much support. And, the last time a veto was overridden was in 1979.
SIGNED INTO LAW
Important energy bills: reducing natural gas use, making electricity affordable
AB 2313 (Berman) Gas corporations: gas distribution service line replacements: alternatives. When a gas line needs repair or replacement, requires gas utilities to offer cash incentives to customers for purchase of electric appliances instead. Because installing gas lines is so expensive, very large incentives will still save the utility money. Our highest priority, along with SB 1359
SB 1359 (Stern) Gas Transition Responsibility and Electrification Act. Requires the CPUC to evaluate and disclose the cost of repairing or replacing natural gas infrastructure, and to calculate depreciation of those assets. The aim is to avoid stranded assets as we move away from natural gas (as we must).
SB 868 (Wiener) Electricity: portable solar generation devices. Exempts "balcony solar" and other portable/plug-in solar devices from state law and electric utility requirements to connect to the electrical distribution system ("interconnection").
SB 905 (Becker) Electricity. Charges the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) with investigating alternative financing methods for infrastructure projects (transmission and distribution)—ultimately moving away from the current model under which the utility only profits when it builds (not when it sells power). A
SB 913 (Becker) Resource adequacy; aggregated distributed capacity resources. Directs the CPUC to take actions to count "distributed energy resources" (home solar, vehicle-to-grid EV batteries, etc.) when calculating resource adequacy. Designed to help build a market for local energy generation, smart appliances, and battery storage.
SB 327 (McNerney) Public utilities: review of accounts: electrical and gas corporations: rates: political influence activities. Prohibits each electrical corporation or gas corporation from recovering from ratepayers the direct or indirect costs of activities related to opposing the municipalization of electrical or gas utility service.
Supporting and accelerating building decarbonization
AB 1738 (Carrillo) State Housing Law: remote inspections. Requires local building departments to offer remote inspections (video/photos) for many permits, including water heaters, HVAC, and solar.
AB 1684 (Ward) Common interest developments: cooling systems. Disallows homeowners' associations (HOAs) from prohibiting cooling systems for owners/tenants.
SB 222 (Wiener, Allen, Becker, Stern) Residential heat pump systems: water heaters and HVAC: installations. Requires permit streamlining for residential heat pump systems, and requires landlords and homeowners' associations, etc., to allow air conditioning units, heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, and replacement of gas appliances with electric.
Making landfills safer and reducing their methane emissions
AB 28 (Schiavo) Solid waste landfills: subsurface temperatures. Strengthens landfill operational practices to prevent future landfill fires and remediate CA’s current over-temperature landfill events; establishes penalties and funding mechanisms to support impacted communities.
AB 762 (Irwin & Wilson) Disposable, battery-embedded vapor inhalation devices: prohibition. Bans the sale and manufacture of single-use, disposable battery-operated vaping devices, which contain lithium-ion batteries that can ignite in a landfill.
SB 881 (McNerney) Income taxation: credits: voluntary contributions: food bank donations. Renews two farm-to-food bank programs.
Addressing data centers' energy use; avoiding cost shifts to other ratepayers
SB 886 (Padilla) California Technology Innovation and Ratepayer Protection Act. Establishes a public tariff (rate) for data centers, with significant procedural protections for other rate payers.
SB 887 (Padilla) California Environmental Quality Act: environmental leadership development projects: data centers: clean energy powerplant projects. Establishes criteria by which a data center construction project can qualify for permit streamlining under CEQA—and prohibits data centers from receiving a categorical exemption from CEQA requirements. It also clarifies that some geothermal powerplants may be eligible for designation as environmental leadership project.
SB 1168 (McNerney) Data centers: rate structures. Requires the commission to assess opportunities for rate structures to ensure data centers pay a reasonable share of their energy costs, and structure rates to reduce costs for residential ratepayers.
AB 2383(Zbur) Electricity: large energy use facilities.Tasks the PUC with creating a class of large (data center) customers and creating a rate structure that prohibits shifting infrastructure costs onto other ratepayers.
Protecting California's natural resources and promoting wildfire resilience
SJR 12 (Laird) Proposed 2026–2031 National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program: opposition. In order to fight the Trump administration rollbacks, this Senate joint resolution strongly opposes any new offshore drilling and declares unequivocal support for the current federal prohibition on new oil or gas drilling in federal waters offshore of the Pacific coast.
SB 894 (Allen) Wildfire resiliency: financial assistance. Establishes the California Wildfire Resilience Program, to fund home hardening modifications to homes.
SB 1250 (Cortese) State highway system: wildlife connectivity. Requires Caltrans to establish and update an inventory of suitable locations for wildlife crossings, in consultation with Fish & Wildlife. Would help to maintain linkages between habitats threatened by climate change.
Transportation: supporting high-speed rail
SB 1425 (Cortese) High-Speed Rail Authority: right-of-way: encroachment permits. Provides the California High-Speed Rail Authority with the right to issue encroachment permits, speeding construction.
VETOED BY THE GOVERNOR AT THE END OF THE 25-26 LEGISLATIVE SESSION
SB 954 (Blakespear) California Environmental Quality Act: exemptions: natural and protected lands: advanced manufacturing: childcare facilities. Narrows the definition of "advanced manufacturing" exempted from CEQA in the 2025 budget process. Restores most habitat protections and tribal consultation requirements.
AB 1761 (Rogers) Electricity: calculation methodology: data disclosure. Requires the Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to publicly disclose the calculations on which it bases the costs a utility can charge its customers. One of many measures designed to lower electricity bills.
SB 1180 (Allen) Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act: California Plastic Pollution Mitigation Fund. Establishes the fund specifically to address past and current environmental justice, public health, and environmental impacts of plastics.
DIED IN COMMITTEE OR KILLED IN APPROPRIATIONS
AB 1790 (Connolly, Elhawary, & Lee) Corporations Tax Law: water’s-edge election: global intangible low-taxed income. Closes a loophole that allows corporations like fossil fuel companies to avoid paying CA taxes by electing a “waters-edge” reporting structure. We'll be back!!
AB 2243 (Haney, Kalra) State Bank Act. Removes the ban on public bank licensing, creates a State Bank Commission, and requires it to develop and vote on a state bank plan by mid-2028 after holding public hearings. Killed in Assembly Appropriations.
SB 978 (Pérez) Data centers: labor: electricity rates. Requires the California Public Utilities Commission to create a special electricity rate structure for data centers drawing at least 75 megawatts of power, making them pay upfront for any grid infrastructure upgrades they require rather than shifting those costs to other ratepayers, and requires data center construction to meet certain labor standards. Killed in Senate Appropriations
SB 1259 (Blakespear) Refineries: decommissioning and remediation: cost estimates. Requires California's refineries to prepare public plans for eventual closure and site remediation, which will allow refinery communities to anticipate economic changes. The bill is strongly opposed by oil companies and their allies. Pulled by the author due to members intimidated by the oil lobby
SB 943 (Becker) Public utilities: electricity: transmission charge: industrial transition usage. Encourages utilities to reduce the price gap between natural gas and electric energy so as to make electricity more competitive partly by changing how the non-bypassable charge is calculated. Killed in Assembly Appropriations
AB 2516 (Petrie-Norris) California Grid Manufacturing Initiative. Establishes the California Grid Manufacturing Initiative, led by the Energy Unit within the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (Go-Biz)—to coordinate statewide demand, procurement, and in-state manufacturing of critical electricity grid components. Killed in Senate Appropriations
SB 1295 (Stern) Distributed energy storage systems: procurement. Requires California utilities to evaluate battery storage and other non-infrastructure alternatives before proposing costly grid upgrades, and prohibits the PUC from approving rate recovery for new infrastructure unless the utility proves those alternatives won't work. Killed in Assembly Appropriations
AB 1975 (Schultz) Electrical corporations: grid utilization metric. Orders the CPUC to encourage the utilities to increase grid utilization. This will maximize the value of grid capital equipment to ratepayers. Killed in Assembly Appropriations
AB 2389 (Irwin) Property taxation: active solar energy systems: customer sited: extension. Extends the repeal date of the active solar energy system (ASES) property tax exclusion by five years, and limits the type of ASESs that qualify for the exclusion. Killed in Assembly Appropriations
AB 1777 (Garcia) Air pollution: indirect sources. Gives CARB the authority to regulate indirect sources of pollution, such as ports and distribution centers, that attract significant polluting vehicle traffic. Seen as a partial fix for the federal administration’s rollback of clean truck rules. Died without a vote in the Assembly
AB 2112 (Bains) Integrated waste management plans: annual report. Starting August 1, 2027, clarifies that new or expanded waste recycling facilities include specific medium and small compostable material operations. Because this may require additional reporting from local jurisdictions, the bill includes provisions for state reimbursement of any resulting mandated costs. Gutted and amended into a completely different bill and killed in Assembly Appropriations
SB 1282 (Becker) Transportation electrification: grid-integrated vehicle technologies: standards. Requires the Energy Commission (CEC) to study requirements for both vehicles and the electric grid to allow bi-directional charging. Sponsored by the Climate Center. Killed in Senate Appropriations
SB 1411 (Stern) Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund: funding conditions: high-speed rail. Lifts a $500 million cap (SB 198, 2022) on funds spent by the High-Speed Rail Authority outside the Merced-Bakersfield segment. Seen by the Authority as key to raising private capital and building profitable segments outside the Central Valley, starting with a link to the Bay Area. Killed in Senate Appropriations