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Newsom signed over a dozen climate-related bills this weekend, but these stood out.
California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, signed more than a dozen climate and clean energy-related bills into law on Saturday. As the Golden State is one of the nation’s most important labs for climate policy, there were three developments in particular that I think will be interesting to keep an eye on as they progress over the next few years.
First, and probably most relevant on a national level, Newsom put his signature on two bills that will require large businesses to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions as well as any risks to their business due to climate change. I wrote about these bills a month ago when they were up for a vote in the state Assembly. They mirror similar policies under consideration by the Securities and Exchange Commission that could soon be adopted at the federal level, but go further because they apply to private companies in addition to publicly-traded firms.
The new laws were sold as a measure to help investors understand how exposed different companies are to future carbon regulations or climate change risks, but they could also go a long way to standardize the reporting of corporate emissions data. That data could help activist groups hold companies accountable for their climate promises and help consumers compare the sustainability efforts of different brands. The next step will be for the California Air Resources Board to develop rules for the new disclosure system by 2025, with reporting to begin in 2026. I’ll be following that rulemaking process closely, as it’s likely to bring up ongoing debates about how companies should account for emissions from indirect sources, like their purchased electricity and supply chains, as well as how to account for carbon offsets.
The second development is a set of laws that are designed to help California overcome major obstacles for its inchoate offshore wind industry. Almost a year ago, the federal government auctioned off the first-ever leases to develop offshore wind in the Pacific, selling five parcels in total. California sees offshore wind as an essential component of its climate goals, as it has the potential to generate power at night when the state’s abundant solar resources disappear. But because the continental shelf drops off abruptly just a few miles from the California shore, plunging thousands of feet, the turbines will have to be built on floating platforms — a much more expensive proposition than the wind projects under development on the East Coast, which are already threatened by cost overruns.
These will be big, risky, projects, and developers need certainty that there will be a buyer for the energy at the end of the road. But it would be hard for a traditional utility to make that kind of commitment at this point, Molly Croll, the director of Pacific offshore wind at the trade group American Clean Power, told Canary Media last month. “It’s new technology,” she said. “It requires some new infrastructure; it requires a contract signed much longer in advance of commercial operation than typical renewable projects require.”
Under the new legislation, California will set up a central procurement program, tasking the Department of Water Resources, which owns and operates hydroelectric power plants in the state, to enter into long-term energy purchase agreements with wind developers. This is similar to programs in place in the northeast, like the New York State Energy and Research Development Agency’s offshore wind solicitation program. Notably, the department will also have the authority to enter into similar contracts with other expensive, risky, but potentially game-changing clean electricity projects like geothermal power plants and energy storage facilities. Meanwhile, a second bill that Newsom signed will get the ball rolling for the state to develop strategies to upgrade its port infrastructure to support the new industry.
The third development is interesting mainly because it’s one of those ideas that sounds so obvious that after you hear it, you can’t believe it’s not already a thing. The new law will enable the state to make use of the tens of thousands of miles of land it owns alongside highways for clean energy development. It instructs the California Department of Transportation to develop a plan to lease the land to utilities or other entities to build solar, storage, and transmission projects.
A recent analysis commissioned by the nonprofit advocacy group Environment California found that just three counties in southern California — Los Angeles, Ventura, and San Diego — together have 4,800 acres of suitable space for roadside solar development, which, if filled with panels, could power more than 270,000 homes. The group Environment California also points out that this could be a way to generate revenue for the state through lease fees and energy sales.
Land use for solar is contentious, especially in California, and putting as much as possible in the rights-of-way alongside highways could avoid battles over the use of undeveloped or agricultural land.
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For the first time, his administration targets an offshore wind project already under construction.
The Trump administration will try to stop work on Empire Wind, an offshore wind project by Equinor south of Long Island that was going through active construction, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum posted to X on Wednesday.
Burgum announced that he directed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to “halt all construction activities on the Empire Wind Project until further review of information that suggests the Biden administration rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis.”
A memo to the agency, which was obtained by The Washington Free Beacon, references “revelations” of “serious deficiencies” in the approval process for Empire Wind. The reported memo does not provide any further description or evidence to back this claim. When we requested comment on the Free Beacon story, an Interior spokesperson simply pointed to Burgum’s short announcement.
Equinor provided a statement to Heatmap confirming after Burgum’s announcement that it “just received a notification from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) regarding our Empire Wind 1 project, which has been in construction since 2024.”
“We will engage directly with BOEM and the Department of Interior to understand the questions raised about the permits we have received from authorities,” Equinor spokesman David Schoetz said. “We will not comment about the potential consequences until we know more.”
This is the second fully permitted offshore wind project that the Trump administration has publicly targeted and attempted to stop.
Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency pulled a Clean Air Act permit for Atlantic Shores, a wind farm under development off the coast of New Jersey, after anti-wind groups petitioned the agency to do so. The agency did not attempt to justify its decision other than to say that it gives the agency “the opportunity to reevaluate the Project and its environmental impacts in light of” Trump’s executive order requesting an assessment of the government’s leasing and permitting practices for wind projects.
A few days later, we were first to report that Representative Chris Smith — one of the loudest anti-wind voices in Congress — asked Burgum to halt work on Empire Wind, asserting that the environmental review process for the project was “completely inadequate.”
If Empire Wind is indeed halted, it would be the first offshore wind project under construction to be stopped by the Trump administration. Equinor disclosed in a project update that it started subsea rock installation last month, although the company’s statement to Heatmap indicates construction may have begun as early as last year. A halt to work on Empire Wind would cast a shadow over other offshore wind projects under construction, including Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia project, which we scooped could also wind up in the Trump administration’s crosshairs.
Stopping Empire Wind would also mean a huge blow to New York State’s climate and clean energy goals.
After the state’s Indian Point nuclear plant closed in 2021, the population-dense metro area in and around New York City has mostly replaced that carbon-free source of energy with natural gas. Offshore wind was supposed to be a path to moving away from reliance on the fossil fuel. The state’s target of deploying 9 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2035 was already going to be nearly impossible due to Trump’s pause on new leases and permits. Without the 800 megawatt Empire Wind project, New York will only have 1 gigawatt in the pipeline.
This news has already sparked an aggressive response from the American Clean Power Association, the largest renewables trade association, which released a statement pleading for the administration to “quickly address perceived inadequacies in the prior permit approvals” and that “halting construction of fully permitted energy projects is the literal opposite of an energy abundance agenda.”
“With skyrocketing energy demand and increasing consumer prices, we need streamlined permitting for all domestic energy resources,” American Clean Power CEO Jason Grumet stated. “Doubling back to reconsider permits after projects are under construction sends a chilling signal to all energy investment.”
“NOAA Fisheries does not anticipate any death or serious injury to whales from offshore wind related actions.”
A group of Republican lawmakers were hoping a new report released Monday would give them fresh ammunition in their fight against offshore wind development. Instead, they got … pretty much nothing. But they’re milking it anyway.
The report in question originated with a spate of whale deaths in early 2023. Though the deaths had no known connection to the nascent industry, they fueled a GOP campaign to shut down the renewable energy revolution that was taking place up and down the East Coast. New Jersey Congressman Chris Smith joined with three of his colleagues to solicit the Government Accountability Office to launch an investigation into the impacts of offshore wind on the environment, maritime safety, military operations, commercial fishing, and other concerns.
The resulting document is more of an overview than an investigation, and its findings are far from the smoking gun Republicans were looking for. Its main message is that the government and developers should do a better job engaging with Tribes and the fishing industry. As for whales, it basically shrugs. “NOAA Fisheries does not anticipate any death or serious injury to whales from offshore wind related actions and has not recorded marine mammal deaths from offshore wind activities,” it says.
But Smith seized on other findings to declare that the report “gives credibility and vindication” to concerns he has raised about offshore wind, pointing specifically to a section about defense and radar systems. The steel in offshore wind turbines has “high electromagnetic reflectivity,” which can disrupt certain radar systems, the report says. In a short paragraph about strategies to mitigate the issue, it notes that the Department of Defense can request that certain areas be excluded from development — which it has already done — or curtail operations as needed.
Smith also highlighted a portion of the report that says “large shipping vessels may have trouble avoiding turbines in the event of a mechanical failure.” Most projects on the East Coast have proposed spacing turbines at least 1 nautical mile apart, but shipping vessels may need up to 2 nautical miles in the event they need to make a sharp turn. The report doesn’t make any specific recommendations, but notes that the BOEM can prohibit construction within a certain distance of shipping lanes and require developers to create a “lighting, marking, and signaling plan” to improve safety.
Smith recently joined anti-offshore wind activists calling on the government to halt work on Empire Wind 1, an offshore wind farm off the coast of New York and New Jersey developed by Equinor that started construction this month. In a letter to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, he wrote that the environmental review process under the Biden administration “was completely inadequate,” and that the Empire Wind project could thus be “catastrophic.”
The GAO report finds little fault in the previous administration’s environmental review process. It does, however, identify “gaps in Interior’s oversight of development.” For example, the BOEM has been inconsistent in the way it consults with Tribes to identify areas for wind development, as well as in how it considers or addresses the concerns Tribes raise. Part of the problem, per the report, is that Tribes have limited capacity to review documents and engage with the agency, and that government grants meant to address this gap are inaccessible because they require the Tribes to cover some of the costs. The report also finds that while the agency has taken steps to incorporate the fishing industry’s concerns into developing new lease areas, it hasn’t adequately communicated those steps to the industry. In addition, while the agency has called for a compensation mechanism to reimburse fishing companies for losses related to offshore wind, it has not yet established one.
The five recommendations the GAO makes in light of its findings are all related to boosting agency capacity for engagement and information sharing. Far from building up the office, however, the Trump administration has laid off more than 2,000 interior department employees, including eight of the roughly 80 staffers who worked on planning and permitting offshore wind.
Smith is taking the report’s findings — including a note that there are still unknowns about offshore wind’s impacts — as proof that development should be shut down. “Ocean wind energy development is an egregiously flawed and dangerous initiative and must be stopped,” he said in a press release Monday.
I wanted to update you on some very exciting news — our Decarbonize Your Life section just won the National Magazine Award for Service Journalism. It’s a huge honor for a publication that just turned two years old last month and a testament to the outstanding journalism our small but mighty newsroom does every day guiding our readers through the great energy transition.
A huge shout out, in particular, to our deputy editor Jillian Goodman for making the section so smart and helpful, to Robinson Meyer for dreaming up the idea, and to all the writers — Jeva, Katie, Emily, Charu, Taylor, and Andrew — who reported so insightfully for it. Tackling a complex but consequential subject like how to make better personal decisions around climate changewas a massive undertaking, but a labor of love.
If you missed this special section, you can check it out here.
And thank you, as always, for reading us and making our work possible.
Nico
Founder & Editor in chief