Why Newsom got his climate clock cleaned

With help from Wes Venteicher and Camille von Kaenel

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis got in some hits on gas prices, grid reliability and EVs. | AP

THE GREAT CLIMATE SMACKDOWN: With so many points of contention between Gov. Gavin Newsom and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the “Great Red vs. Blue State Debate” Sean Hannity special last night, we weren’t sure if climate change policy would come up much. But it sure did.

After Newsom and DeSantis threw barbs at each other over fentanyl, education, reproductive rights, Covid policy and more, Hannity flashed a slide showing California’s high gas prices relative to Florida.

“If your lawsuit [against big oil companies] is successful, that would likely mean even higher gas prices for everybody,” said Hannity. “Could you name right now, one source of energy that you can bring online in the next three to six months that would be as inexpensive for the people in this country as fossil fuels?”

There was a pretty obvious answer: Newsom could have argued that renewable energy like solar plus storage is already outcompeting coal and starting to outcompete natural gas around the country, said Ethan Elkind, who directs the climate program at Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, & the Environment. (Newsom’s press office reiterated this point in an email after the debate.)

“If we’re talking about fossil fuels to power your vehicles, electricity is cheaper than gasoline if you’re charging at home,” Elkind said. “If you’re at one of the public chargers the rates can vary, and sometimes they’re pretty much equivalent to gasoline.”

Instead, Newsom talked about how California’s high gas prices are caused by price gouging, plugging a law he signed earlier this year to potentially impose penalties on oil companies that engage in this practice, as well as his September lawsuit. He also invoked DeSantis’ about-face on past support for climate policies, including his opposition to hydraulic fracturing and offshore oil drilling.

In response, DeSantis called out California policies for driving high gas prices. “Why aren’t they doing that to Georgia or Florida or these other states that have lower gas prices?” he said. “It’s because of their policies.” He slammed Newsom’s plan to phase out gas-powered vehicle sales by 2035 and also suggested that EVs are crippling the state’s power grid, leading to rolling blackouts.

Newsom started trying to respond, but Hannity cut to break. (Newsom’s aides said the debate was rigged, and that Hannity did not live up to his promise to be a fair moderator.) When they came back they were onto the topic of homelessness.

Newsom’s camp said he pushed back: “Throughout the debate, the Governor lifted up California’s successful policies and set the record straight on Gov. DeSantis’ lies,” said Alex Stack, a spokesperson for the governor’s office.

If Newsom could have replied more substantively, he might have disputed the false accusation that EVs caused the state’s electricity shortages in the summer of 2022.

The state did send out a notice to Californians a week after approving the gas car ban two summers ago asking residents to reduce their electricity use. That included a request to limit electric vehicle charging. But the state narrowly avoided outages then, and EVs weren’t a significant contributor.

“EV charging accounts for less than 1% of electricity demand during peak hours,” Stack said. While there were brief rolling blackouts in 2020, “there hasn’t been a large-scale unplanned outage in California since 2011.”

The 2022 shortage that DeSantis referenced “was caused by climate change, which electric vehicles are designed to address,” said Elkind, noting the alert went out when the entire Western grid needed air conditioning during an extreme heat wave. “Electric vehicles actually support the grid when they’re charging dynamically,” he said, something the governor has also talked about.

“I don’t want to minimize the challenge,” he added. “We do need to increase renewable energy deployment. We need more electricity … but you know, we do have time to get there.” He added that Newsom’s EV sales mandate, which DeSantis also criticized, doesn’t kick in for 12 years, giving time for advancements in electricity deployment and bidirectional charging which allows cars to charge homes.

“There’s nothing technologically or even economically unfeasible about it. It’s really just sort of a political question in California,” said Elkind. — BB

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Catalonia’s Minister of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda David Mascort (L); California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot; and California state Sens. Henry Stern and Anna Caballero meet at COP28 in Dubai on Friday. | Jenn Phillips/California Natural Resources Agency

COP-DATE: It’s partnership announcement time. In Dubai on Friday, Secretary of Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot huddled in person for the first time with David Mascort, the minister of climate action, food and rural agenda for Catalonia — a region that faces many of the same environmental challenges as California, from drought to wildfire, because of their similar Mediterranean climates.

The two are set to announce a new partnership with other subnational governments with similarly balmy climates — and similar problems — this weekend. The philanthropy-funded group will share policy and technology ideas. — CvK

Want more COP coverage? Follow along with our Global Playbook author, Suzanne Lynch, and the rest of our transatlantic team on the ground in Dubai.

CalSSA says jobs are evaporating along with rooftop solar payments. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

SOLAR SLUMP: Rooftop solar sales dropped 77 percent or more this year after California’s utility regulator sharply cut compensation for homeowners who feed excess power from their panels onto the grid, according to an analysis released yesterday by the California Solar and Storage Association.

The California Public Utilities Commission slashed reimbursements by around 75 percent for homeowners with newly installed panels starting in April of this year. Utilities sought the change, saying they can get solar cheaper from large-scale installations. The CPUC’s Public Advocates Office supported the change, saying customers without solar panels — who often make less money — were in effect subsidizing those with panels.

The CPUC also changed reimbursements to promote the installation of batteries at home to capture power from rooftop solar and feed it into the grid when the state really needs it — on hot summer nights after the sun goes down and solar power slumps.

The analysis finds that the solar industry’s warnings of job losses were borne out: About 11,000 people have lost rooftop solar jobs that pay an average of $70,000 per year, and the rooftop industry’s surveys suggest another 6,000 could lose jobs in the next few months, which would amount to a 22 percent reduction, according to CalSSA.

“They caused the nation’s largest-ever loss of clean energy jobs, pushed once thriving businesses out of the state or into bankruptcy, and derailed California’s fastest and most accessible path to a clean energy future. All as California holds itself out there as a world leader in the fight against climate change,” CALSSA Executive Director Bernadette Del Chiaro said in a statement.

Rooftop panels deliver about half the state’s solar power. Advocates say California should be adding new solar any way it can — including from rooftops — to try to meet the state’s goal of removing carbon from retail electricity sales by 2045, which will require 3.5 times more solar. — WV

DRYCEMBER: California is playing it safe with its projected water deliveries given the dry start to the winter. Farmers and cities will tentatively get just ten percent of their requested water supplies from the state next summer, according to a preliminary estimate by the Department of Water Resources released today.

The number is likely to change, since meteorologists are still predicting a relatively wet El Niño year, but early estimates are important because they inform growers’ decisions about which crops to plant. The projection is a far cry from the 100 percent farmers and cities got this summer, illustrating California’s boom-and-bust weather cycle.

The state will hold its first official snow survey to get a better sense of precipitation levels in early January. The federal Bureau of Reclamation, which supplies about 3 million acres of irrigated farmland through the Central Valley Project, typically announces its initial allocation in February. — CvK

— The California Supreme Court today rejected Westlands Water District’s appeal to secure a permanent water contract with the federal government for the water it draws from the Central Valley Project.

— Long-awaited tax credit rules for EVs under the Inflation Reduction Act came out today. Car models will qualify for the full rebate only if their companies aren’t headquartered in China and aren’t controlled by Chinese companies and investors.

— Irvine was ready to ban single-use plastics. Leaders backed off after the beverage and grocery industries lobbied against it.