What Lies Ahead for Climate Justice Work in California?
Plus a conversation about how the transition to electric vehicles stands to benefit workers.
Welcome to the third issue of State of Change, a monthly newsletter from the Climate Equity Reporting Project.
Featured Stories
The Solar Battery You Already Own
By Taylor Barton, KneeDeep Times
The Overview
As Donald Trump prepares to take office for a second time, it might be easy to view the climate as a sunk battleship, especially with the prospect of an administration steeped in fossil fuel industry influence. Even local elections were heavily swayed by the likes of Chevron, Phillips 66 and Valero. But many experts have been weighing in over the last two weeks to remind us that it has never been an all-or-nothing fight.
As Princeton University’s Jesse Jenkins wrote for Heatmap Daily, “Every billion tons of CO2 and every 10th of a degree of warming we prevent will save lives, prevent suffering, and avoid countless damage.”
Here in California the future of many of the climate programs receiving federal funding is unknown. Although Trump has promised to “claw back” unspent funds from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) come January, we know that a number of Republican lawmakers have called on the administration to preserve the IRA’s tax rebates, saying, “Energy tax credits have spurred innovation, incentivized investment, and created good jobs in many parts of the country.” Incoming speaker of the house, Mike Johnson, has spoken of using “a scalpel and not a sledgehammer,” to make cuts.
Governor Newsom and California lawmakers are planning a special legislative session in December to shore up the state’s legal resources to protect IRA funds and other federal funds that it has already received or will receive in the next two months.
Clean Air Regulations Hang in the Balance
At the center of the conversation are eight clean air regulations, including rules that would put a ban on selling new, gasoline-powered cars by 2035 and require that all cargo trucks serving the state’s ports be zero-emission by that same year. These regulations go above and beyond the federal rules, meaning that they require waivers from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in order to be finalized and made enforceable.
Governor Newsom travelled to Washington, D.C. shortly after the election to advocate for the EPA waivers in hopes that having them in place will slow down or prevent Trump from rolling the rules back.
These are rules that could radically reduce greenhouse gas reduction in the state and toxic air pollution in the communities that are being most impacted by the expanding shipping industry alongside changes to the climate.
As the LA Times put it, “The Biden administration has until Jan. 19 to sign the rules. Otherwise, it will be up to the incoming administration to decide, and Trump has voiced disdain for California’s unique ability to set emissions standards.”
What about Justice40?
When it comes to environmental justice efforts, the Biden Administration’s Justice40 initiative—which called for ensuring that 40 percent of the money spend via the IRA, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and a number of other federal programs flowed “to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution”—is all but guaranteed to be thrown out.
Justice40 has been far from a panacea. The effort has been criticized for leaving race out of the discussion of its criteria and it has also relied on the kind of slow-moving bureaucracy that has made its effectiveness difficult to track
As Silvia González, Director of Research at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute, put it recently, “a drawback of Justice40 is that the 40 percent is aspirational. It does not require direct investments and could be interpreted as a ceiling and not a floor/minimum investment.” In addition, she said, “it’s still early to fully measure the tangible impact on disadvantaged communities”
However, González added, “Justice40 initiative and IRA set a critical precedent by directing significant resources toward frontline communities in California and throughout the nation.” And she was glad to see new funding streams and increased visibility for those communities.
On a national scale, Mother Jones reported that the EPA had funneled $234 million to environmental justice groups by early November, and more funding from a handful of departments, including the Department of Energy, are still moving into the state. And whether or not they’ll be pushed along by the current administration by January 19 is an open question.
In one example, the EPA is scheduled to provide the Berkeley-based Climate Justice Alliance with funding through Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmakers. Carla María Pérez of Movement Generation, one of the groups scheduled to receive funding via that grant, took to Bluesky to tell EPA that if the funds are not released in December, “it could jeopardize critical support needed for disaster resiliency and emergency preparedness in my community. Our communities have been overburdened and sacrificed for far too long.”
On the bright side, the $10 billion California Climate Bond that was approved by 60% of voters in this month’s election includes language modeled after Justice40 baked in. Earlier this year, Senators María Elena Durazo, Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, and Dave Cortese pushed to ensure that the bond’s funds be spent in communities most impacted by pollution and climate change.
What this means, says Ryan Schleeter, communications director of The Climate Center, is that when the state makes “investments in a broad array of climate resilience solutions—everything from climate smart agriculture to wildfire preparedness to drought mitigation—40% of those funds have to go to disadvantaged communities.”
And given California's role in the climate movement nationally, Schleeter added, “I think we can expect to see a lot of other states emulate that approach. That just sort of happens every time California pursues any big piece of environmental policy. It's replicated elsewhere, for better or worse.”
Not all the projects funded by the IRA are supported by the environmental justice community, however—and that’s an important complicating factor.
As UCLA’s González put it: “It's always challenging to fill a gap left by federal funds. On the other hand, [cuts to IRA funds] could slow more controversial projects—like carbon capture and storage, lithium mining, and even a national cap and trade program—that, despite their potential benefits for a transition to a lower-carbon economy, have raised significant environmental justice concerns.”
In Other News
Transportation
Will Trump’s presidency be as bad for EV adoption as some experts have predicted? It’s impossible to say for sure. It’s looking likely that the new administration will do away with the $7,500 tax credit for EV buyers, a move that could help Elon Musk and Tesla but hurt competition and undermine investment in the U.S. battery supply chain. The change might also bring down EV prices overall, which could make them more accessible for more consumers.
Building Decarbonization
Trump’s promises to raise tariffs also has the nation guessing. Vox made a list of things to buy before Trump takes office and it includes heat pumps.
In October, the state launched the Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates or HEEHRA program, a sizable rebate programs for low-income residents of both multi-unit buildings and single-family homes looking to replace gas appliances with energy efficient heat pumps. Residents can get as much at $8,000 back when they purchase heat pumps. And, according to the Building Decarb Coalition, the program still has about $80 million available.
The Energy Transition
As many news outlets have confirmed over the last two weeks, the transition to renewables will continue with or without federal support, mainly because the cost of renewables has been dropping radically. According to Yale Climate Connections: “Energy experts believe solar power, the price of which fell 90% between 2010 and 2020, will continue to proliferate across the landscape. (Last year, the United States added three times as much solar capacity as natural gas.)” Much of that growth has been in California, and battery storage technology has only increased the state’s solar energy production.
But that doesn’t mean growth will continue at the same pace. According to the Financial Times, “The loss of the IRA would result in a 17% drop in renewable capacity additions from 2025 to 2035.”The California Public Utilities Commission has issued new reporting requirements for SoCal Gas after a Sacramento Bee investigation found that the company illegally spent millions of ratepayer dollars on political lobbying against electrification policies. SoCalGas, the largest gas utility in the country, was fined in 2022 for the same reason, but that failed to deter it from spending at least $36 million on anti-electric policies.
Earlier this month, the California Air Resources Board updated the low-carbon fuel standards in a resolution designed to cut emissions from the transportation sector, which is responsible for 50% of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. Fuel producers will need to drastically reduce their emissions—30% by 2030, and 90% by 2045—either by scaling back operations, switching to producing lower-carbon fuels or purchasing energy credits.
Aside from the perennial concern about gas prices, critics of the resolution also worry that it disproportionately favors biofuel producers (one option on the credit purchasing side). Biofuel still means combustion—and comes with its own resulting pollutants. What’s more, environmentalists worry that the standards encourage the growth of large-scale dairy farms, which are responsible for over half the methane emissions in the state. Dairy credits are substantially larger than those for other alternate fuels, and many are concerned the incentives will lead to more factory farms and more manure along with them. Activists called CARB’s analysis of the environmental impact of anaerobic digesters designed to help break down this waste “insufficient” and “cursory.”
All this suggests that regardless of transportation emissions, disadvantaged communities like those in the San Joaquin Valley will bear the brunt of an increase in dairy pollution in the years to come. The updated standards are set to take effect in late spring 2025.
Carbon Removal
Many see carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technology—the idea of capturing CO2 and storing it underground—as a beacon of hope. Just half a pound of a bright yellow powder recently developed by scientists at UC Berkeley promises to remove as much as 40 kilograms of CO2 from the air in a year. But a new study warns that CDR is a dangerous strategy to rely on alone, especially at the policy level. The cultural, economic and political hurdles needed to make such drastic land use changes should not be underestimated, and a rapid expansion of fossil fuel production in the meantime may not be as reparable as we’d like to think.
Climate Impacts
Over 240 structures were destroyed in the Mountain Fire in Ventura County, while nearly 20,000 acres burned. The fire was 98% contained as of November 22, but the cause is still unknown. The devastation felt by residents is a grim reminder of the risks of the state’s extended fire season. Cheri Carlson and Tom Kisken detailed the community’s initial moments of terror for the Ventura Star.
Last month, California saw its second-warmest October ever, as did a number of states in the West.
COP29
World leaders have spent the last two weeks gathered in (notably oil and gas dependent) Azerbaijan for COP29 to hash out the funding targets needed to get global temperatures under control. But the talked devolved after leaders at the G20 meeting in Rio chose not to include language about phasing out fossil fuels in its final statement.
Wealthy nations pledged $300 billion for the loss and damage fund at the center of the talks—a number that is much lower than the $1.3 trillion estimated to be necessary to protect poor nations from the climate impacts ahead. As one advocacy group put it: “People who needed a life raft had been given a plank of wood instead.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom was conspicuously absent from this year’s summit. But Wade Crowfoot, California’s secretary of natural resources, spoke on behalf of a group of sub-national governments working on climate action to ask the leader of the gathering to encourage finance for sustainable climate funding on all levels. “Our climate commitments remain and will remain strong and translate into measurable and durable processes in the years to come.”
Q&A: California’s Trucking Industry is Changing. Will Workers Benefit?
By Taylor Barton
California’s approach to climate action hasn’t always centered the people doing the day-to-day work needed to help transition the state to renewable energy and reduce its reliance on fossil fuels. But Maurissa Brown and Mars Wu, both transportation equity program managers at The Greenlining Institute, are working to change that. Brown focuses on the electrification of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles—the second largest greenhouse gas polluters in the transportation industry—while Wu is working on labor and workforce development issues within the transportation sector as it moves toward renewables. Together they’re part of a broader network that is pushing for change in the way workers’ health and well-being is viewed in the climate space.
We spoke to them recently about the limitations of today’s green jobs, the dangers posed to their work by the incoming Trump administration, and their vision for a truly inclusive climate movement.
How are you all supporting workers?
Maurissa Brown: There’s a growing tension between the labor movement and the environmental movement, but these movements need to be united because they're dependent on one another. The two movements are often split around jobs. The Keystone XL pipeline is a good example—some labor groups were in favor of that pipeline, but Indigenous communities and environmental organizations were against it. In a more local example, Greenlining tried to get AB 2535 (Bonta) passed this summer. It would have stopped certain highway expansions and reallocated funds to zero-emission infrastructure projects through a program called the Trade Corridor Enhancement Program.
[The state spends] $5 billion annually in transportation infrastructure in California, and The Trade Corridor Enhancement Program (TCEP) gets $300 million to move freight more efficiently in high-volume corridors. What that often looks like is highway expansion—or adding general purpose lanes. But that does nothing to improve the efficiency of freight. If anything, general purpose lanes lead to more traffic congestion in the long run. And there is a growing body of research showing that expanding highways can lead to taking away homes in disadvantaged communities and displacing folks.
A lot of these freight corridors run through historically redlined communities, and that puts [low-income residents of color] on the front line of this deadly air pollution from diesel and gas vehicles. So there has been a growing disdain in the environmental space for highway expansion projects. AB 2535 sought to eliminate all-purpose highway expansions, and limit the number of overall expansions in our most pollution-burdened communities.
It didn’t pass, and the bill’s largest opposition came from a group called Transportation California, which has partnerships with several trade unions, job alliance groups, and construction materials companies. They really came out strong against this bill, because they say highways construction has been a major source for jobs. [However], we've engaged the California Transportation Commission (CTC) about TCEP and they don't have very much reliable information to provide about the number or quality of those jobs. Access to fair, high-quality jobs in transportation is necessary to help close the racial wealth gap. At the same time, we want to work with all parties to increase jobs for projects that promote walking, biking, transit, and electrification, rather than projects that increase pollution.
Mars Wu: The question of what type and how many jobs highway expansion provides isn’t easy to answer. The agencies providing funding to these projects don’t collect upfront data on those things. Through our advocacy, the [TCEP] did put in a new request that projects should provide the number of jobs being created when they are applying for funds, but the requirements are vague. We asked for information on what sector it’s in, what the quality of the jobs is, if it's union represented, and whether there are apprenticeship opportunities. Because it’s really important that all of us are moving together in this transition, and we want this emerging green economy to provide good jobs for everyone.
Where do unions figure into the equation?
Mars: [In the conversation around EV charger installation], there has been a big disagreement between charging companies and unions about how many new electricians we’re going to need. California will need an estimated 1 million EV chargers by 2030 and the California Energy Commission (CEC) has been wanting to invest money into developing a workforce to install and maintain these chargers. Unions have consistently said that they think there are enough certified electricians [moving into their union] to meet that demand through their own apprenticeship and certification programs and pipelines. Streamlining workforce development efforts through existing union pathways can help skill and connect workers to high-road jobs and maximize limited state resources, which is important going into a tough state budget outlook.
Is that existing training accessible to everybody?
Maurissa: I think there needs to be a statewide movement around a just transition, meaning, we should help folks in [oil and gas] jobs move into clean energy jobs. There really hasn’t been a codified statewide push to incorporate just transition principles. The California Workforce Development Board is working on it.
Mars: The big question is: What does it look like to actually reskill the people who are far enough away from retirement [for it to be worthwhile]? But there have been suggestions that there may just be fewer jobs as we shift to EVs, so we probably can't just move everyone over, one-to-one. Again, we need more solid jobs data.
What are you seeing in the trucking industry?
Maurissa: The trucking industry is a bit unique because companies participate in an illegal practice called misclassification, meaning they classify drivers as independent contractors who really should be employees, causing drivers to be solely financially responsible for trucks and miss out on employee benefits, like health insurance. Advocates are trying to combat this through the Advanced Clean Fleets regulation. It would require that entities with large fleets of trucks gradually transition to EV vehicles beginning in 2025. It says regulated companies can not put the financial responsibility to electrify on to individual drivers. [Note: State regulators are waiting on the U.S. EPA to approve the regulation, alongside a handful of others, before the second Trump administration takes office].
But we’re seeing the same split between labor and environmental groups as the regulation has come under fire by a lot of different trucking associations who are supposed to represent truckers. They're suing both California and the EPA over the regulation. Yet truck drivers are the ones first and foremost exposed to diesel pollution and noise pollution; diesel trucks are really loud. Electric vehicles are quieter. So, it has been strange to watch these associations put profit over people.
How exactly are those industry groups profiting?
Maurissa: Part of the issue with transitioning to electric trucks is the supply chain, and the availability and cost of the zero emission trucks. So [big trucking companies] are saying a) the trucks are taking months to be manufactured and shipped and b) they just don't want to pay for them. Even though companies with large fleets can afford to. If you have over 50 vehicles (the minimum threshold for the rule) and you're making over $50 million annually, you can afford to start phasing in electric trucks. And the regulation is designed to happen in phases, so it's not like they have to replace their fleet all in one go.
So the onus is currently on the independent contractor truckers to do that replacement?
Maurissa: The regulation is not enforceable yet because the U.S. EPA hasn’t provided a waiver yet. But if that happens [and the Trump administration doesn’t roll back the rule] the onus will be on the companies. Right now, if folks are choosing to transition, it is up to them to seek out funding. There are multiple zero emission vehicle and infrastructure programs, offering grants to help make that happen.
Mars: I’ll add that there’s often a false dichotomy between workers and impacted communities. A lot of the time workers are from pollution burdened communities. Or they are feeling the impacts of pollution when they're on the job. And it goes beyond transportation. [Climate change and air pollution] impact service workers, educators, and healthcare workers. The UAW 4811, the Academic Workers Union [used by workers in the University of California system], included a parking and transit article in their last contract, where workers won e-bike discounts and the right to negotiate for free transit passes. So that's kind of a different way of looking at the labor and enviro issue as well: workers are also as transit riders; they’re using these roads and they’re being impacted by pollution.
And when it comes to these tensions between labor and environmental work, there is often a flattening of labor. It is portrayed as a single voice, when in fact different unions may hold different perspectives and face different impacts to their workers.
How do you respond to people who say that we're not going to be able to meet our net zero goals in time if we focus on making sure every worker involved in the transition is paid well and treated fairly?
Mars: Equity is non-negotiable, because the impacts of climate change are already highly inequitable in how they're felt across the state and across the country and the world, and that needs to be front and center. To me, it's not an acceptable solution to say, “We can improve climate change for some at the expense of others.” That's just not the work.
Maurissa: I agree. This is a global issue and workers, community residents, and Indigenous people around the world have a fundamental right to clean air, clean water, land, food, safe workplaces and safe homes and environments. Equity is non-negotiable, regardless of who you are and what purpose you serve in this world, you have a human right to all of those clean and safe things. As a state, we need to focus on a just transition.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
