Environment

SAN FRANCISCO—Barry Hooper’s co-workers can be forgiven if they try to avoid him in the office. No one wants to be fingered as an energy hog. Hooper manages San Francisco’s five-year-old building-efficiency ordinance, created to measure wasted energy in the city’s largest structures, give them a score the public can see and prod owners to […]

Residential and commercial users consume most of California’s available power. Source: California Energy Commission

Can a Democrat cross environmentalists and labor unions and still keep her seat in the California Legislature? Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown (D-San Bernardino) is putting that question to the test. After two terms in the statehouse, Brown is facing a challenge from the left as she runs for re-election. Environmentalists and union leaders unhappy with Brown’s […]

State officials recently added a new piece to the patchwork quilt that is California energy policy:  a mechanism for easily—and publicly—tracking how non-residential buildings use energy. The details aren’t worked out yet under a law that took effect three months ago. But such programs are already in place in San Francisco and a smattering of other […]

Before remodeling a kitchen or building a house, Californians should consider Title 24 of the state building code. It spells out the state’s energy-use requirements for new and existing structures. Since 1978, Title 24 has set such standards for builders and homeowners, guiding them along a path that will lower the energy footprint of California’s buildings. The code is updated every three years, with the […]

Owning a home in California could get more complicated starting next year with a new law intended to cut energy consumption, partly by increasing the efficiency of home heating, cooling and lighting systems. The legislation requires a doubling of statewide energy savings by 2030. All sectors of California’s built environment — state buildings, commercial and […]

A panel of energy experts gave mostly passing marks to California’s landmark climate change law, but raised concerns about the cost of implementing additional, more stringent, measures. In a spirited but cordial debate Thursday night in Bakersfield, lawmakers, regulators and advocates explored the state of play in the decade since the passage of AB32, the […]

A Harvard economist known globally for his work on climate change policy sat in the Sacramento office of the oil industry’s lobbying firm recently, making the case that California is fighting global warming the wrong way. The state has a good cap and trade system, Robert Stavins said, but some of its other environmental policies […]

CALmatters is looking into the complex topic of making California’s houses, schools, hospitals, offices and other buildings more energy-efficient — part of Governor Jerry Brown’s strategy for battling climate change. Beginning next year, new rules will determine how millions of structures throughout the state use less energy so that consumption is cut in half by […]

Lawmakers are debating how to find money to fix the state’s deteriorating roads and bridges. But it will be almost impossible to end Californians’ top driving headache — congestion. Making roads wider is a traditional solution. But this holds little appeal in California, where land is expensive and and urban corridors are densely packed. Also, […]