Newsom’s Climate Record
What Worked, What Didn’t, and Why
As Newsom’s name comes up more often in 2028 conversations, his environmental record in California is where the disagreement gets sharpest, and both sides are pointing at things that are real. The state’s clean energy numbers are genuinely remarkable. So is the collapse of its rooftop solar market. Both of those things are true at the same time, and the reason why is worth walking through.
This piece moves through Newsom’s record in three buckets: what worked, what didn’t, and what’s still being fought out in court and Congress, followed by a final read on the pattern connecting all of it.
Across these threads, the same pattern holds: the policies that succeeded didn’t require anyone with real leverage to lose money, and the ones that failed did.
What Worked
Start with the grid, where the numbers are hardest to argue with. In 2023, the most recent year for which full data is available, 67 percent of the electricity sold in California came from clean sources, up from 61 percent in 2022 and roughly 41 percent a decade earlier. That made California the largest economy in the world to cross the two-thirds mark. By mid-2025, the grid was running on 100 percent clean electricity for at least part of the day on more than nine of every ten days. Battery storage capacity is now nearly 20 times what it was when Newsom took office in January 2019, and statewide greenhouse gas emissions are down 20 percent since 2000 even as the state’s economy grew 78 percent over the same period.
None of this happened because individual Californians changed how they live. It happened because the state used procurement targets, tax credits, and the grid operator’s long-range planning to get large solar, wind, and storage projects built. When a policy’s success depends on a handful of major developers and three large utilities responding to predictable incentives, that’s a fundamentally easier execution problem than one that depends on millions of individual households making their own decisions.
The legislature produced a different kind of win. SB 253 and SB 261, signed by Newsom in 2023, require large companies doing business in California, those with $1 billion or more in revenue for emissions reporting and $500 million or more for climate risk reporting, to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risks. No other state has gone this far, and because the laws apply to any company doing business in California regardless of where it’s headquartered, they function as a national disclosure standard by default. Newsom has also pushed to extend the state’s cap-and-trade program from its scheduled 2030 expiration out to 2045, which would lock in a long-term price on industrial carbon and a dedicated funding stream for climate spending if it’s enacted.
California’s own consumer advocate found that rooftop solar cost ratepayers $8.5 billion in 2024. The solar industry’s economists found it saved them up to $2.3 billion. Three years on, nobody has settled which number is closer to true.
What Didn’t
Rooftop solar is close to the opposite story, and it’s the clearest example of a policy where someone with real leverage did have to lose something. In December 2022, the California Public Utilities Commission, whose five members Newsom appointed, voted to overhaul the state’s net-metering rules. The new policy, known as NEM 3.0, took effect for anyone who installed solar after April 2023 and cut the credit homeowners receive for excess power sent back to the grid by roughly 75 to 80 percent. Within months, residential solar sales had fallen 77 to 85 percent from 2022 levels, according to the California Solar and Storage Association.
The Environmental Working Group, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Protect Our Communities Foundation sued, arguing the CPUC had ignored its legal obligation to weigh the benefits of customer-owned solar. An appellate court deferred to the CPUC in 2023, the California Supreme Court sent the case back for a fresh look in August 2025, and the same appellate court affirmed the CPUC’s decision again in March 2026.
The financial argument underneath all of this is itself disputed. The CPUC’s own Public Advocates Office estimated that in 2024 the policy was costing non-solar customers $8.5 billion, more than double its 2021 estimate. The solar industry commissioned its own analysis, which corrected what it said were errors in how the state valued self-generated power and the infrastructure spending that distributed solar helps utilities avoid, and found the opposite: a net benefit to all ratepayers of roughly $1.5 to $2.3 billion in 2024. Both figures come from parties with a stake in the outcome, which is part of why the fight isn’t over.
The state’s finances moved in a similarly mixed direction, and for a similar underlying reason: the money wasn’t really there to begin with. In 2021 and 2022, record pandemic-era surpluses let Newsom and the legislature commit $54 billion to climate programs over five years, what he called the California Climate Commitment. When the surpluses turned into deficits, that commitment was an early target. Newsom’s first 2024-25 budget proposed $2.9 billion in climate cuts; by the May revision, with the deficit having grown to nearly $45 billion, cuts and delays to climate programs totaled $9 billion, and the five-year commitment was stretched to eight years while preserving about 83 percent of its original dollar value. The next year, facing a new $12 billion shortfall, Newsom proposed redirecting $1.5 billion earmarked for the cap-and-trade climate fund toward wildfire response instead. By early 2026, the Legislative Analyst’s Office projected that funding for the California Natural Resources Agency, which covers Cal Fire, water management, and the energy commission, would fall from $18.4 billion in 2025-26 to $12.8 billion in 2026-27, a one-year drop of $5.6 billion, largely because the one-time surplus money that had inflated those budgets had run out.
Two of California’s most ambitious climate policies are currently on hold for reasons that have nothing to do with California changing its mind.
What’s Still in Play
Two threads don’t fit neatly into “worked” or “didn’t,” because the outcome hasn’t been decided yet. SB 253 and SB 261 were signed in 2023, but California’s Air Resources Board missed its own deadline to write the regulations needed to enforce them, pushing that deadline from July 2025 to October 2025 and not finalizing the rules until February 2026. Separately, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued, arguing the laws compel speech in violation of the First Amendment, and in November 2025 the Ninth Circuit paused enforcement of SB 261’s first reporting deadline while that case is decided. More than two years after Newsom signed both laws, neither has produced a mandatory disclosure yet, for reasons that are partly the state’s own pace and partly outside its control.
The same split applies, at much higher stakes, to the rule requiring all new car sales in California to be zero-emission by 2035. That target depended on a Clean Air Act waiver the EPA granted in December 2024. In May 2025, the Senate voted 51 to 44 to revoke it, using the Congressional Review Act in a way that both the Government Accountability Office and the Senate’s own parliamentarian had said wasn’t a valid use of that law. President Trump signed the resolution on June 12, 2025. Newsom issued an executive order the same day reaffirming the state’s targets, and California, joined by ten other states, sued to get the waiver reinstated. For now, that lawsuit is what stands between the 2035 target and a reversion to federal default standards.
The Pattern, and What It Means for 2028
Put these threads next to each other and the pattern from the top of this piece holds up. The grid transformation worked because almost nobody had to lose anything: utilities, developers, and ratepayers could each find a version of the story where they came out ahead, and the projects were large enough that a small number of state decisions could move a lot of capacity at once. NEM 3.0 failed homeowners for close to the opposite reason. It took money away from a large, scattered group of individual solar customers to address a cost that a small number of well-organized utilities said they were bearing, and the utilities won, in the original design of the policy, at the CPUC, and so far in court. The climate budget cuts happened because the underlying $54 billion was a temporary surplus rather than a recurring revenue source, so when the state’s finances tightened, climate spending competed with everything else and lost ground the way one-time money usually does. And the disclosure laws and the EV mandate show that California’s legislative ambition can outrun both its own administrative pace and, more importantly, its ability to defend a policy once it depends on a federal waiver that a different administration in Washington is free to revoke.
None of this supports the claim that Newsom turned his back on the climate, and none of it supports the claim that his environmental record is above criticism. The more useful question for 2028 isn’t whether Newsom takes climate policy seriously; on the evidence here, he does. It’s whether he’s shown the ability to build climate policy that survives contact with the people who lose money from it, the next budget cycle, or a hostile administration in Washington. On that question, his record splits roughly along the same lines as everything above: strong where the politics ran in his favor, weaker where they didn’t. That assessment would change if California’s rooftop solar market recovers the way regulators predict, if the disclosure laws survive their current court challenges intact, or if the EV waiver lawsuit succeeds, since any of those outcomes would mean the setbacks described here turn out to be temporary rather than structural.
Sources
In historic first, California powered by two-thirds clean energy, becoming largest economy in the world to achieve milestone (Office of Governor Gavin Newsom) https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/07/14/in-historic-first-california-powered-by-two-thirds-clean-energy-becoming-largest-economy-in-the-world-to-achieve-milestone
California scores more clean energy records: 9 in 10 days this year partially powered by 100% clean energy (Office of Governor Gavin Newsom) https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/07/10/california-scores-more-clean-energy-records-9-in-10-days-this-year-partially-powered-by-100-clean-energy/
California climate reporting, SB 253 and SB 261 explained (PwC Viewpoint) https://viewpoint.pwc.com/gx/en/pwc/in-depth/id202505.html
California climate disclosure laws, SB 253 and SB 261 status update (Nixon Peabody) https://www.nixonpeabody.com/insights/alerts/2026/03/02/california-climate-disclosure-laws-update
Appeals court upholds California’s net metering 3.0 (Utility Dive) https://www.utilitydive.com/news/appeals-court-upholds-californias-net-metering-30/814307/
California court upholds NEM 3.0, dealing blow to rooftop solar (pv magazine USA) https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/03/10/california-court-upholds-nem-3-0-dealing-blow-to-rooftop-solar/
Rooftop solar incentive to cost customers without solar an estimated $8.5 billion by the end of 2024 (CPUC Public Advocates Office) https://www.publicadvocates.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cal-advocates-website/files/press-room/reports-and-analyses/240822-public-advocates-office-2024-nem-cost-shift-fact-sheet.pdf
Rooftop solar saved California ratepayers $1.5 billion last year, finds report (pv magazine USA) https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/03/17/rooftop-solar-saved-california-ratepayers-1-5-billion-last-year-finds-report/
California climate programs would lose billions in Newsom’s budget (CalMatters) https://calmatters.org/environment/climate-change/2024/05/california-climate-programs-newsom-budget/
California Budget 2025: Newsom’s cuts explained (ABC10) https://www.abc10.com/article/news/politics/california-gov-gavin-newsom-12-billion-budget-shortfall/103-22ed7d64-1d37-4f3b-8068-e8705f54e7df
How will Newsom’s budget cuts affect California’s environmental goals? https://wheninyourstate.com/california/how-will-newsoms-budget-cuts-affect-californias-environmental-goals/
Senate revokes California emissions rules in blow to EVs (NPR) https://www.npr.org/2025/05/22/nx-s1-5387729/senate-california-ev-air-pollution-waiver-revoked
Active Battle Over the California Clean Air Act Waiver Continues (Jones Day) https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2025/08/active-battle-over-the-california-clean-air-act-waiver-continues
Advanced Clean Cars II (California Air Resources Board) https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/drive-forward-light-duty-vehicle-program/advanced-clean-cars