California’s new governor must hold down clean energy costs, drive innovation

The California governorship is a peculiar prize. This November’s winner will inherit a powerful office that’s one-part bully pulpit and two-parts hot seat. Suddenly, every decision they make will ripple through the fifth-largest economy on Earth and the daily lives of 39 million people.

The winner will pay a price for that power, saddled immediately with a spiraling affordability crisis hammering the state’s middle class. A good place to start? The price of power.

If California’s multi-decade housing failure drives the cost crisis, our ideology-driven energy policy is riding shotgun. 

Energy costs feed into everything, devouring household budgets directly and through higher prices. Voters are feeling it. Employers are fleeing it.

We at the New California Coalition — a nonpartisan alliance of business, labor and civic leaders — have conducted extensive polling and focus groups with Californians. Our findings align with Stanford University’s Deliberative Democracy Lab and the Public Policy Institute of California: Voters want a cleaner energy future — but not if it wrecks jobs, doubles bills or drives out the middle class.

It’s a dual mandate with co-equal goals: climate leadership — including sustainability and resilience — and shared economic prosperity — meaning affordability, reliability and economic opportunity. 

We found 85% of Californians prioritize affordability over emissions, not because they doubt climate action, but because they doubt the state can deliver it without harming jobs, energy reliability and a shot at the middle class.

The next governor needs to level with Californians: The state accounts for less than 1% of global emissions. We could shut down every factory, park every car and kill every gas plant tomorrow, and global temperatures wouldn’t budge. The other 99% of the world just keeps emitting.

Energy costs and the California Dream

High energy costs strangle the California Dream. When electricity and fuel get expensive, everything gets expensive — housing, food and freight. 

Businesses feeling the pinch head for lower-cost locales, taking jobs with them. And the industries we claim to want — artificial intelligence, chip fabrication, clean tech, advanced manufacturing — need a stable, affordable grid. California is effectively telling them to enjoy Arizona.

So, what do voters want? Stanford found they support major energy technology — including modern nuclear — provided it keeps power and fuel affordable and reliable. 

What they reject is magical thinking: killing off existing energy sources before new ones are viable. This isn’t ideology or climate denialism. It’s common sense.

The next governor must treat energy as a top-of-the-chart priority. Whether through direct oversight, an energy czar, or a cabinet-level leader — direction must come from the Governor’s office, with streamlined permitting and measurable targets tracked publicly. 

It means building a counterweight to the regulatory state: an economic growth agency backed by job creators, and a formal workforce development role to train Californians for the jobs this transition will create. 

It also means redirecting cap-and-invest funds toward innovation that advances the co-equal goals of climate leadership and shared economic prosperity.

The next governor needs to get serious, fast. He or she should first unwind the bureaucratic snarl blocking transmission lines and unleash distributed energy generation, which involves  small, localized energy generators such as rooftop solar, small modular reactors and local microgrids.

We can’t electrify everything while strangling the grid.

Next, the new governor should extend Diablo Canyon’s operation. It’s California’s largest source of carbon-free electricity, and it works. End the outdated ban on small modular reactors. Nuclear is clean, stable and here.

California’s leader also should ensure the state continues investing in existing oil and natural gas infrastructure while developing new infrastructure for future diversified energy sources. 

And the state should launch an aggressive biomass-to-bioenergy push — turning organic waste into energy — so that it clears wildfire fuel, generates power and helps revitalize rural economies. That’s three benefits in one policy.

Lastly, the new governor should increase research and development support to commercialize breakthrough technologies like fusion and space-based solar, which places solar panels on satellites.

These aren’t pipe dreams; they’re policy decisions waiting for leaders with the gumption to make them happen.