California’s sustainable energy leadership: past, present – and future?

OPINION – Its long-held “green” reputation notwithstanding, California was not destined to be the catalyst for the sustainable energy boom at the beginning of the 21^st century, despite Gov. Jerry Brown’s embrace of renewable resources and energy efficiency in the latter half of the 1970s and early 1980s.

Indeed, in 1996 Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and the state legislature rejected an effort to add a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to major “deregulation” legislation for the state’s investor-owned utilities (IOUs), which would’ve required the IOUs to annually increase the percentage of renewable energy in their portfolios. Unlike California in 1996, Massachusetts enacted the first “modern” RPS as part of its electricity deregulation effort in 1997, and Texas followed suit in 1999.

However, California enacted a more ambitious RPS in 2002 in large part due to the devastating electricity crisis in 2000-01 created by deregulation’s failure in the state, which led to a backlash against electricity deregulation elsewhere in the nation and an RPS boom. From 2004 through 2009, 22 more states authorized binding RPS targets, including seven of the ten largest states after California and Texas.

For large-scale renewable energy development, the RPS proved to be good for California and for the country’s clean energy future. The procurement obligations of the IOUs pursuant to the state’s RPS created the demand for the first five large utility-scale solar projects. They were made possible by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantees that were part of the $90 billion for clean energy programs that President Barack Obama had fought to secure in the 2009 stimulus bill during the Great Recession.

When Obama left office in January 2017, those five DOE-backed projects had spurred 45 more that were privately financed and included multiple facilities in seven other states. Stimulus bill funds also bolstered energy efficiency efforts that California had pioneered to flatten power consumption growth. As Obama proclaimed, “if California can do it, then the whole country can do it.”

The clean-energy programs that Obama adopted came mainly from the administrations of California Gov. Gray Davis after the electricity crisis and his successor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, through 2008. Jerry Brown, in his second gubernatorial stint, increased the energy efficiency efforts Obama supported that Brown had initiated decades earlier and built on the efforts of Davis and Schwarzenegger.

Following in the green footsteps of his predecessors, Gov. Gavin Newsom, through legislation and actions by his administration, has charted a course for the state to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045. He has called this commendable effort “the most ambitious climate action plan in the world.” However, it’s not clear how much it can help the rest of the world battle climate change, which is a global emissions challenge.

A decade ago, UC Berkeley economist Severin Borenstein observed that, for all the laudable efforts that California had made to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, “if we don’t solve the problem in the developing world, we don’t solve the problem.”

California’s leadership on solar energy has clearly provided a global dividend. Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted that global solar energy capacity will surpass wind capacity in 2027. But the IEA also noted that 90 percent of the current global renewable energy capacity is in 19 “developed” countries, while numerous “emerging and developing economies” don’t even have clean energy policies.

As Borenstein maintained in 2014, the main goal of California climate policy should be to “develop the technologies that can replace fossil fuels” in the developing world and “achieve low-carbon economic growth.” By making this a priority now, Newsom could blaze a bigger trail to the sustainable horizon through the state’s world class universities and technology sector and fulfill the “global” promise – and imperative — in the state’s landmark Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

Climate policy progress will surely face new challenges with the second Trump administration seemingly intent on undercutting both state and federal programs. But that should not diminish California’s resolve to push the envelope on cost-effective technological innovations for which the state is so well known. The world needs that cutting-edge, innovative force more than ever.

Kurt Schuparra served in the administrations of California governors Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jerry Brown, and in the state legislature. He is the author of How the California Electricity Crisis Generated a Green Wave: An Insider’s Account (Routledge, January 2025).