The Big Push for California Climate Bills

On Friday, August 15, the Appropriations committees in both the state Senate and Assembly announced their long-awaited verdicts on bills introduced in 2025 and 2026 that made it this far. Here is Climate Action California’s list of priority bills and their post-Appropriations status. The voting that begins on Monday, August 17 will be make-or-break for the most important climate bills—so your representatives need to hear from you SOON!

Meanwhile, authors whose bills were amended in Appropriations are scrambling to get the new language, and bill sponsors and coalitions are preparing “floor alerts” urging votes on important measures.

AND there are rumblings of a last minute gut-and-amend (substitute bill) bailing out the state’s big utilities, who are petitioning the Governor to protect their shareholders’ profits from wildfire costs. This may be the reckoning we’ve been anticipating since the January 2025 fires in Los Angeles. Stay tuned!

How you can help get the survivors to the Governor’s desk

The next two weeks offer important opportunities for all of us to contact our legislators and tell them we need them to vote on the survivlng bills—to reduce emissions and protect the climate. (This is why CAC is endorsing and supporting candidates for the legislature!) Some of our representatives are more important than others for “difficult” bills…but no matter which district you’re in, it will make a difference to phone your representatives’ Sacramento offices (early and often) and make a pitch for your favorite bills. Let them know you’re watching how they vote! Your message doesn’t have to be any more complicated than

My name is _______, and I live in ___________. I urge (Senator or Assembly Member ____________) to vote AYE on ___________ when the bill(s) reach the floor. Thank you!

Find your state Senator’s and Assembly member’s contact information here.

Call your Senator and ask for an AYE vote on these bills

• AB 2313 (Berman) Gas corporations: gas distribution service line replacements: alternatives. Provides customers served by a gas distribution service line which is planned for replacement in the next 5 years, with a monetary incentive to electrify the house / building instead.
• AB 1761 (Rogers) Electricity: calculation methodology: data disclosure. Requires the CPUC to publicly disclose the calculations on which it bases the costs a load serving entity can charge its customers. Public exposure will prevent wasteful IOU spending.
• AB 1738 (Carrillo) State Housing Law: remote inspections. Mandates that building inspectors offer remote inspections (video/photos) for many permits, including water heaters, HVAC and solar.

Call your Assembly Member and ask for Aye votes on any or all of these bills

• SB 954 (Blakespear) California Environmental Quality Act: exemptions: natural and protected lands: advanced manufacturing: childcare facilities. Addresses the “advanced manufacturing” exemption from CEQA, opened up in the 2025 budget process, by adding conditions and a public hearing requirement. Restores habitat protections and tribal consultation requirements.
• SB 905 (Becker) Electricity. Changes the incentive structure for some utility executive salaries to reward lower prices for ratepayers, and establishes performance metrics that de-emphasize construction of transmission and distribution infrastructure.
• SB 913 (Becker) Resource adequacy; aggregated distributed capacity resources. Directs the CPUC to take actions to better enable distributed energy resources (home solar, vehicle-to-grid EV batteries, etc.) to participate in the wholesale energy market and qualify for resource adequacy. This would help build a market for local energy generation, smart appliances, and battery storage.
• 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.
• SB 1359 (Stern) Gas Transition Responsibility and Electrification Act. Requires closer review of proposed fossil gas infrastructure investments, to avoid unnecessary, inefficient expenditures that could increase costs for ratepayers and result in stranded assets. Also gives the state Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) the authority to retire gas infrastructure that no longer serves the public interest.
• SB 868 (Wiener) Electricity: portable solar generation devices. Exempts portable/plug-in solar devices from state law and electric utility rules regarding requirements to connect to the electrical distribution system (“interconnection”).
• SB 222 (Wiener, Allen, Becker, Stern) Residential heat pump systems: water heaters and HVAC: installations. Requires specified streamlining of local permitting for residential heat pump systems, and voids any policy in the governing documents of an HOA that would prevent replacing a gas appliance with an electrical appliance.
• SB 894 (Allen) Wildfire resiliency: financial assistance. Expanding Access to Home Hardening – would state the intent of the Legislature to create the California Wildfire Resilience Program, which would increase access to home hardening modifications.
• SB 1180 (Allen) Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act: California Plastic Pollution Mitigation Fund. Adds further guidance to state agencies in allocating money from the California Plastic Pollution Mitigation Fund (PPMF) and expands the list of entities that are eligible for those funds.
• 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

And this is only a partial list! Please watch our web page for updates, and your email for targeted requests when your representatives need a push from constituents to do the right thing.