Senate Resolution 98 designates the week of April 11 to April 17, 2026, as Heat Pump Week in California to raise awareness about electric heat pump technology. This resolution directly affects homeowners, businesses, and the general public by encouraging the adoption of heat pumps for space heating, cooling, and water heating. The text highlights that these systems are more energy-efficient than traditional gas equipment and can help lower utility bills while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. By promoting this technology, the Senate aims to support the state's broader goals of achieving carbon neutrality and improving public health through cleaner air.
(1) The California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 establishes the State Air Resources Board as the state agency responsible for monitoring and regulating sources emitting greenhouse gases. The act requires the state board to adopt rules and regulations to achieve the maximum technologically feasible and cost-effective greenhouse gas emissions reductions to ensure that the statewide greenhouse gas emissions are reduced to at least 40% below the statewide greenhouse gas emissions limit, as defined, no later than December 31, 2030. Pursuant to the act, the state board has adopted the Low Carbon Fuel Standard regulations. The act authorizes the state board to include in its regulation of those emissions the use of market-based compliance mechanisms. Existing law requires all moneys, except for fines and penalties, collected by the state board from the auction or sale of allowances as part of a market-based compliance mechanism to be deposited in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. This bill would suspend the Low Carbon Fuel Standard regulations for one year. The bill would also exempt suppliers of transportation fuels from regulations for the use of market-based compliance mechanisms for one year. This bill would direct the Controller to transfer a specified amount from the General Fund to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. By transferring General Fund moneys to a partially continuously appropriated fund, this bill would make an appropriation. (2) Existing law, the Motor Vehicle Fuel Tax Law, imposes a tax upon each gallon of motor vehicle fuel removed from a refinery or terminal rack in this state, entered into this state, or sold in this state, at a specified rate per gallon. This bill would suspend the imposition of the tax on motor vehicle fuels for one year. The bill would require a seller of motor vehicle fuels to provide a receipt to a purchaser that indicates the amount of tax that would have otherwise applied to the transaction. This bill would also direct the Controller to transfer a specified amount from the General Fund to the Motor Vehicle Fuel Account in the Transportation Tax Fund. By transferring General Fund moneys to a continuously appropriated account, this bill would make an appropriation. (3) Existing unfair competition laws establish a statutory cause of action for unfair competition, including any unlawful, unfair, or fraudulent business act or practice and unfair, deceptive, untrue, or misleading advertising and acts prohibited by false advertisement laws. This bill would require that all savings realized based on the suspension of the motor vehicle fuels tax, the suspension of the Low Carbon Fuel Standard regulations, and the exemption of suppliers of transportation fuels from regulations for use of market-based compliance mechanisms by a person other than an end consumer, as defined, be passed on to the end consumer, and would make the violation of this requirement an unfair business practice, in violation of unfair competition laws, as provided. (4) This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.
Existing law requires the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission (Energy Commission) , in consultation with the specified entities, to adopt a biennial integrated energy policy report containing certain information in a specified format. Existing law requires the Energy Commission, in consultation with the Public Utilities Commission and the Independent System Operator, to adopt a goal for load shifting to reduce net peak electrical demand and adjust this target in each biennial integrated energy policy report thereafter. This bill would require the Energy Commission, in consultation with specified entities, to analyze the cost-effectiveness of specific load flexibility programs and other types of load-shifting interventions and identify both the approximate amount of load shifting and the cost-effectiveness of each type of load-shifting intervention in the next update to the biennial integrated energy policy report after January 1, 2027, as provided. The bill would require the Energy Commission, as part of each integrated energy policy report, to estimate each retail supplier's load-shifting potential, giving consideration to certain factors, as specified. The bill would require the Energy Commission, on or before July 1, 2028, and biennially thereafter, to analyze and publish the amount of load shifting that each retail supplier achieved in the prior calendar year.
Existing law requires the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission (Energy Commission) to establish the Equitable Building Decarbonization Program that includes the direct install program and the statewide incentive program for low-carbon building technologies, as provided. This bill would require the Energy Commission to establish a mechanism to notify applicants to the Equitable Building Decarbonization Program that they may also be eligible for building energy efficiency and decarbonization incentives authorized by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) . Existing law vests the PUC with regulatory authority over public utilities, including electrical corporations and gas corporations. Existing law establishes an 11-member Low-Income Oversight Board to advise the PUC on low-income electrical, gas, and water customer issues, as specified. This bill would add to the Low-Income Oversight Board a member to be selected by the Executive Director of the Energy Commission.
The California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 designates the State Air Resources Board as the state agency responsible for monitoring and regulating sources of emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming in order to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The act requires all state agencies to consider and implement strategies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. This bill would additionally require state agencies to prioritize strategies to reduce methane emissions, including emissions from imported petroleum and natural gas, where feasible and cost effective. The bill would require the state board to encourage natural gas procurement on behalf of the state to shift to certified natural gas producing low methane emissions. The bill would also authorize the state board, the Public Utilities Commission, and other relevant agencies to apply approved protocols that measure, monitor, report, and verify methane emissions to existing programs to reduce methane emissions, including emissions from imported petroleum and natural gas procured by utilities and other large gas users, as provided. The bill would also authorize the state board, the Public Utilities Commission, and other relevant agencies to use all relevant sources and standards, including, but not limited to, emissions data, models, or protocols from existing or new regulations.
Existing law requires the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission (Energy Commission) to adopt, on a biennial basis, an integrated energy policy report that contains an overview of major energy trends and issues facing the state, including supply, demand, pricing, reliability, efficiency, and impacts on public health and safety, the economy, resources, and the environment. Existing law requires that the report present policy recommendations based on an in-depth and integrated analysis of the most current and pressing energy issues facing the state. This bill would require the Energy Commission, on or before March 1, 2027, to designate a person within the Energy Commission or identify and retain an external candidate to serve as the Senior Counselor on Industrial Policy and Clean Energy Development, and would require the senior counselor to, among other things, convene working groups that focus on certain issues, as provided. The bill would require the Energy Commission, the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development, the Labor and Workforce Development Agency, the Public Utilities Commission, the Department of General Services, and the office of the Treasurer, on or before March 1, 2027, to enter into a memorandum of understanding on equitable clean energy supply chains and industrial policy in California with specified goals and provisions, as provided. The bill would require the senior counselor to track and coordinate the work under the memorandum of understanding and to prepare an annual report summarizing the key findings and recommendations resulting from that work. The bill would require that the report be presented at a public meeting of the Energy Commission and be published on the Energy Commission's internet website. The bill would establish in the State Treasury the Equitable Clean Energy Supply Chain and Industrial Policy Fund and would, upon appropriation by the Legislature, authorize the moneys in the fund to be expended for purposes of the bill.
Existing state sales and use tax laws impose a tax on retailers measured by the gross receipts from the sale of tangible personal property sold at retail in this state or on the storage, use, or other consumption in this state of tangible personal property purchased from a retailer for storage, use, or other consumption in this state. The Sales and Use Tax Law provides various exemptions from those taxes. This bill would, on and after July 1, 2026, provide an exemption from the taxes imposed by the Sales and Use Tax Law for the gross receipts from the sale in this state of, and the storage, use, or other consumption in this state of, hydrogen fuel, as defined. The Bradley-Burns Uniform Local Sales and Use Tax Law authorizes counties and cities to impose local sales and use taxes in conformity with the Sales and Use Tax Law, and existing laws authorize districts, as specified, to impose transactions and use taxes in accordance with the Transactions and Use Tax Law, which generally conforms to the Sales and Use Tax Law. Amendments to the Sales and Use Tax Law are automatically incorporated into the local tax laws. This bill would provide that the exemption created by the bill does not apply to local sales and use taxes or transactions and use taxes. Existing law imposes or dedicates certain state sales and use tax rates for local funding, including through the Local Revenue Fund 2011. This bill would provide that the exemption created by the bill does not apply to those state sales and use tax rates imposed or dedicated for local government funding, including those rates for which revenues are deposited into the Local Revenue Fund 2011. Existing law requires any bill authorizing a new tax expenditure to contain, among other things, specific goals, purposes, and objectives that the tax credit will achieve, detailed performance indicators, and data collection requirements. This bill would also include additional information required for any bill authorizing a new tax expenditure. This bill would take effect immediately as a tax levy.
The California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 establishes the State Air Resources Board as the state agency responsible for monitoring and regulating sources emitting greenhouse gases and requires the state board to ensure that statewide greenhouse gas emissions are reduced to at least 40% below the 1990 level by 2030. Existing law requires the state board, in consultation with the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, to develop a standardized system for quantifying the direct carbon emissions and decay from fuel reduction activities for purposes of meeting the accounting requirements for Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund expenditures, as specified. This bill would require the state board, on or before January 1, 2028, to publish on its internet website an assessment of the life-cycle emissions from alternative uses of forest and agricultural biomass residues, as specified. The bill would require the state board, on or before January 1, 2029, to publish on its internet website a strategy to support beneficial carbon removal products, including, but not limited to, biochar, that are generated from agricultural or forest biomass resources. The bill would require the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to require, to the extent feasible, all state-funded forest health projects to include an appropriate forest biomass resource disposal component that includes a scientifically based, verifiable method to determine the amount of biomass to be physically removed and the amount to be burned by prescribed burn. The bill would require the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission to include the value proposition of using agricultural and forest biomass resources for low- and negative-carbon liquid and gaseous fuels, including hydrogen, from noncombustion conversion technology methods and other emerging and innovative approaches in relevant reports and other agency-sponsored documentation.
Existing law requires the State Air Resources Board to adopt rules and regulations that will achieve ambient air quality standards required by the federal Clean Air Act, as specified. Existing law requires the state board, following a noticed public hearing, to adopt airborne toxic control measures to reduce emissions of toxic air contaminants from nonvehicular sources. Pursuant to this authority, the state board has adopted the Airborne Toxic Control Measure for Fuel Sulfur and Other Operational Requirements for Ocean-Going Vessels within California Waters and 24 Nautical Miles of the California Baseline regulation to require the use of low-sulfur marine distillate fuels in order to reduce emissions of particulate matter, diesel particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur oxides from the use of auxiliary diesel and diesel-electric engines, main propulsion diesel engines, and auxiliary boilers on oceangoing vessels. This bill would require the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission (Energy Commission) , in coordination with the State Lands Commission, the Transportation Agency, and the state board, to develop a plan on or before December 31, 2030, for the alternative fuel needs of oceangoing vessels that call at California's public seaports and that enables the seaports to meet their emission reduction goals. The bill would require that the plan do specified things, including, among other things, identify barriers to permitting alternative fuel facilities at seaports and opportunities to address those barriers. The bill would require the Energy Commission to convene a working group to advise the Energy Commission on the development of the information required to be included in the plan, as specified. The bill would require the state board to provide the Energy Commission with information regarding fuels for oceangoing vessels that comply with the state board's regulations for those vessels.
The California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, until January 1, 2031, authorizes the State Air Resources Board to adopt a regulation establishing a system of market-based declining aggregate emissions limits for sources or categories of sources that emit greenhouse gases (market-based compliance mechanism) that meets certain requirements. Existing law establishes the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and requires all moneys, except for fines and penalties, collected by the state board from the auction or sales of allowances as a part of a market-based compliance mechanism to be deposited into the fund and requires the Legislature to appropriate moneys in the fund for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the state, as provided. Existing law, the California Climate Crisis Act, declares that it is the policy of the state both to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, but no later than 2045, and achieve and maintain net-negative greenhouse gas emissions thereafter, and to ensure that by 2045, statewide anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are reduced to at least 85% below the 1990 levels. This bill would enact the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act of 2025 and would establish the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Program to be administered by the California Environmental Protection Agency to require fossil fuel polluters to pay their fair share of the damage caused by greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere during the covered period, which the bill would define as the time period between the 1990 and 2024 calendar years, inclusive, resulting from the extraction, production, refining, sale, or combustion of fossil fuels or petroleum products, to relieve a portion of the burden to address cost borne by current and future California taxpayers. The bill would require the agency, within 90 days of the effective date of the act, to determine and publish a list of responsible parties, which the bill would define as an entity with a majority ownership interest in a business engaged in extracting or refining fossil fuels that, during the covered period, did business in the state or otherwise had sufficient contact with the state, and is determined by the agency to be responsible for more than 1,000,000,000 metric tons of covered fossil fuel emissions, as defined, in aggregate globally, during the covered period. This bill would require the agency, within one year of the effective date of the act, to conduct and complete a climate cost study to, among other things, quantify the total damage amount, which the bill would define as all past and future climate harms and damages to the state from January 1, 1990, through December 31, 2045, inclusive. The bill would require the agency to update the climate cost study, not less frequently than every 5 years, through January 1, 2045, as provided. The bill would require the agency, within 60 days of the completion of the climate cost study, to determine and assess, as provided, a cost recovery demand for each responsible party listed, which represents the responsible party's proportionate share of the total damage amount. The bill would require responsible parties to pay their cost recovery demand, as provided. The bill would require the collected cost recovery demands to be deposited in the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund, which the bill would create in the State Treasury. The bill would, upon appropriation by the Legislature, require moneys in the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund be expended for, among other things, qualifying expenditures, which the bill would define to include expenditures for projects and programs to mitigate, adapt, or respond to the damages and costs caused to the state from climate change. The bill would require the agency to determine the initial implementation costs for the act, as provided, and would require the agency to assess an amount allocated equitably among responsible parties to cover those costs. This bill would require the Director of Finance, within 45 days of the effective date of the act, to perform an initial assessment of the reasonable and appropriate initial implementation costs that will be incurred by the agency. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.
