The pace of clean energy deployment in California is currently too slow to achieve the state’s ambitious climate targets. The Governor’s proposed Clean Energy Central Procurement mechanism in the 2023-24 energy trailer bill is a powerful policy concept that has the potential to correct this trajectory. In this blog post, we highlight how strategic public […]
State and federal agencies release first-of-its-kind biomass utilization strategy
Biomass management has been a neglected climate problem in California. That is, until recently – when the 2022 Scoping Plan identified both the significant scale of the biomass challenge and importance of mobilizing organic waste to provide clean fuels and carbon dioxide removal in a net-zero economy. In response, the Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience […]
How California can lead the world in decarbonizing aviation
As the United States seeks to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, one of the most challenging sectors to decarbonize will be aviation. Aviation makes up nearly 7% of the total U.S. transportation sector emissions (Figure 1). As planes are expected to remain reliant on liquid fuels for the foreseeable future, commercializing non-fossil, low-carbon […]
Op-ed: How forest thinning waste could fund California wildfire prevention
Yesterday, CSG’s Director of Climate and Energy Policy, Sam Uden, had an op-ed published in CalMatters that describes how a forest products strategy could help reduce megafires in California. In partnership with Sierra Business Council, a lead organization that represents more than 3,000 businesses, local governments and NGOs in the Sierra Nevada, the op-ed is timed with key […]
CARB’s opportunity on low-carbon fuels
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) will soon initiate a series of regulatory proceedings on different programs to cement the ambitions of the 2022 Scoping Plan into state policy. One of the first – and perhaps the most consequential – will be the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). The LCFS is one of the state’s […]
Accelerating advance mitigation in California
California is set to spend hundreds of billions – if not trillions – of dollars over the coming decades on projects to adapt to a changing climate, deploy clean energy and upgrade aging infrastructure. It is crucial that these investments minimize their impact on natural resources and maximize high-quality conservation outcomes. Innovative conservation planning tools, […]
Final Scoping Plan identifies key role for carbon dioxide removal
Today, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) released its proposed 2022 Final Scoping Plan, providing a roadmap for how the state can achieve net-zero emissions by 2045. The Plan identifies a key role for technological carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Specifically, it identifies a need for 75 million tons of technological CDR delivered via a combination of […]
California advances toward climate goals: carbon capture and storage
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identified that technologies that capture, transport and store carbon dioxide (CO2) are essential for achieving net-zero emissions targets. SB 905 (Caballero; Skinner) establishes a comprehensive framework to deploy carbon capture and storage in California. In this blog post, we review SB 905 and describe how capturing CO2 from industrial […]
California advances toward climate goals: permit streamlining
To achieve net-zero emissions by 2045, the sheer volume of new clean energy projects that must be planned, permitted, built and commissioned in only 23 years is unprecedented. AB 205 – a 2022 budget trailer bill passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor – establishes a number of landmark siting and permitting reforms […]
California advances toward climate goals: the $39 billion budget
The Legislature and Governor Newsom recently delivered a game-changing $39 billion climate budget and an important set of new policies to propel California towards its climate goals. In this blog post – the first of a three-part series – we review the central piece to the state’s recent actions: the $39 billion climate budget. We […]