Taking aim at Newsom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHis audience now seems to be the purple states and the people who vote in those purple states,\u201d said Cohen. \u201cHe\u2019s stepping back from his climate championship, his climate leadership.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the 2025 legislative session, she said, the governor rejected<\/a> a slew of bills meant to bolster virtual power plants<\/a> across the state. One such bill, AB 740, passed with broad, bipartisan support.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe vetoed that,\u201d said Cohen. \u201cAnd then a bill that actually got enacted, many of you will remember this: SB 237. Anybody remember what that bill does? Ooh, let\u2019s hear it \u2026 loud. \u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The boos ensued.\u00a0<\/p>\n Senate Bill 237<\/a> expanded oil and gas drilling in California\u2019s Kern County by streamlining permitting processes. While the fossil fuel industry touted the bill as a way to lower gas prices, experts argue<\/a> that the bill will not move the needle on affordable gas, since petroleum prices are set by a global market.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, with the war on Iran in its seventh week, driving gas prices upwards, hundreds of policymakers and advocates were left grappling with how to think about California\u2019s \u201cmid-transition,\u201d a period when renewables must coexist with fossil fuels to drive the state toward a zero-carbon energy grid. The conference centered the revived push for virtual power plants and the creation of equitable pathways for decarbonization, all while balancing state political goals.\u00a0<\/p>\n While Newsom wasn\u2019t present, California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot, in delivering the event\u2019s keynote address, responded to Cohen. Praising her advocacy, Crowfoot also called for realism:\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe are a model across the world, but there are forces in the United States that are working to make us the cautionary tale,\u201d he said. \u201cYes, drive forward and hold us accountable to continue to make progress, but ensure that ambition is pragmatic because we are on a transition and we are demonstrating to the world how to get this done.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n An Equitable Energy Transition<\/p>\n While AB 740 was vetoed by the governor, a renewed push for virtual power plants\u2014networks of small, distributed energy resources like solar panels, batteries and EV chargers tied together by software to act as a single power plant\u2014is well underway.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo much of our climate policy depends on electrification, electrifying transportation, electrifying homes and buildings,\u201d said state Sen. Josh Becker, a Democrat representing parts of San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.\u00a0<\/p>\n This story is funded by readers like you.<\/p>\n Our nonprofit newsroom provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going. Please donate now to support our work.<\/p>\n Donate Now<\/a> <\/p>\n A new bill backed by Becker, SB 913, \u201cResource Adequacy for Affordable Electricity,\u201d would aggregate the capacity of home batteries and smart technologies or \u201cdistributed energy resources\u201d to meet energy grid requirements, instead of fossil fuels. Distributed clean energy resources would act as a power plant in itself.<\/p>\n \u201cThe more we have of separate sources of [renewable] energy, the more resilient we\u2019ll be, whether it\u2019s to political shock, like the Iranian war, a dramatic increase in a very short period of time in global gas prices, or it could be a heat wave or a wildfire or a flood,\u201d said Cohen.\u00a0<\/p>\n Virtual power plant systems have shown success in California. California\u2019s Demand Side Grid Support Program<\/a> already offers incentives for electric customers providing backup generation to the grid in the event of an extreme event.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aIt\u2019s one gigawatt of everybody\u2019s batteries and smart thermostats and EV charging all looped together so that when the grid hits that peak day \u2026 we can get everybody to respond together and bring down that demand,\u201d said Leah Stokes, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. \u201cWhat does that mean? It means that that is delivering the cheapest, cleanest power to our grid.\u201d<\/p>\n Stokes participates in the program herself. \u201cI\u2019m a nerd and I have a battery, and so I\u2019ll sign up for everything,\u201d she said. According to Stokes, data from the California Energy Commission indicates that participants tend to be lower income and earn around $300 a year for their contribution to the grid.<\/p>\n \u201cThat makes a much bigger difference to you if you are living in Central Valley and you\u2019re struggling to pay your electricity bills, and so that\u2019s exactly the kind of people that we\u2019re supporting for this program,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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