California and France build on a decade of cooperation with new partnership to strengthen clean energy, protect communities, and grow economic opportunity

What you need to know: California and France are launching a partnership to share solutions to common challenges, from wildfires and extreme heat to clean energy and transportation. The partnership will connect government experts, researchers, and businesses to help protect communities, strengthen economic ties, and advance cleaner technologies.

SAN FRANCISCO - Governor Gavin Newsom and Monique Barbut, France's Minister for the Ecological Transition, Biodiversity, and International Climate and Nature Negotiations, signed a letter of intent launching a new partnership to strengthen cooperation on clean energy, climate resilience, and environmental protection, while creating opportunities for research, innovation, trade, and economic development.

The partnership brings California and France together around a practical goal: sharing what works to better protect people from climate change and strengthen their economies. Both face climate-driven realities, including destructive wildfires, drought, flooding, and extreme heat.

California and France are working together to turn shared challenges into shared opportunities. This partnership is about practical solutions and cooperation. It's about protecting our communities from wildfire and extreme heat, strengthening our electric grids, and helping businesses bring cleaner technologies to market. By sharing expertise and connecting our researchers and businesses, we can build healthier communities and stronger economies on both sides of the world.

Governor Gavin Newsom

France and California face the same challenges: ever more intense wildfires, more frequent droughts and extreme heat episodes that threaten our populations. The partnership we are signing today reflects our shared determination to respond to them concretely, by turning international commitments into action on the ground and by mobilizing states, regions, researchers and businesses. In the face of the climate emergency, France and California have chosen not to give up and to act together to protect our people and safeguard the future of generations to come.

French Minister Monique Barbut

The California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) will coordinate California's work, partnering with the French ministry to develop an action plan that turns shared priorities into practical cooperation.

"After another summer in which communities in both California and France faced severe climate impacts like extreme heat and wildfires, it is more important than ever to work with like-minded partners to fight climate change," said CalEPA Secretary Yana Garcia. "We are building on our history of collaboration with France to accelerate progress toward our shared climate goals, while building healthier and more resilient communities and economies."

The partnership creates a framework for exchanging expertise and developing partnerships to address these challenges, support cleaner transportation, and modernize electric grids. The partnership builds on more than a decade of California-France cooperation and their shared commitment to carbon neutrality.

Turning shared challenges into practical solutions

The partnership establishes a framework for cooperation across climate action and environmental protection. Priority areas include:

• Protecting communities from wildfire and extreme heat. California and France will share approaches to preventing and reducing wildfire impacts and heat-related illnesses, helping both partners learn from the challenges their communities face.
• Boost clean energy and strengthen electric grids. The partnership will facilitate exchanges among France's electricity transmission operator and California's energy agencies and grid operator. Cooperation will also explore artificial intelligence's impact on electricity demand and how AI can help modernize grids as well as improving energy efficiency in buildings.
• Advancing cleaner transportation. The partnership supports exchanges on reducing transportation pollution, including through high-speed rail.
• Supporting agriculture and protecting nature. Cooperation will also focus on climate-smart agriculture, agricultural technology, sustainable pest management, and nature-based solutions. Both partners share a goal of conserving 30% of their lands and coastal waters by 2030.
• Reducing pollution and waste. The partnership will support cooperation on air quality, cutting greenhouse gas emissions, including methane, and approaches that keep materials in use and reduce waste.

Connecting businesses and researchers to economic opportunity

The new partnership will promote connections among government, businesses, and researchers to support innovation, deepen trade and commercial ties, and advance economic development.

The Letter of Intent calls for exchanges of ideas between the California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development and the Consulate General of France in San Francisco, alongside public-private partnerships focused on climate and environmental solutions, including clean energy technologies. These connections and engagements are intended to support researchers and businesses in finding partners and moving promising ideas toward practical use.

California's global climate network

California has long been a key player on the international stage - from taking joint action on climate change to identifying new pathways and partnerships for sustained economic growth. During the Newsom administration alone, California has formed over 70 international partnerships that lay critical groundwork for our continued economic success, while prioritizing workers and businesses that benefit from these new opportunities.

Golden State and global partnerships

• Finland (2026): California and Finland signed a memorandum of understanding to deepen economic cooperation and advance clean technology, innovation, and sustainable growth. The partnership connects businesses, researchers, and governments through collaboration on quantum computing, cybersecurity, health and life sciences, aerospace, and sustainable forest-based industries.
• Spain (2026): California and Spain signed a memorandum of understanding to advance clean energy, strengthen energy security, and prepare communities for climate impacts. Cooperation spans renewable energy, electrification, battery storage, carbon markets, methane reduction, and grid reliability, with a shared commitment to protecting communities from extreme heat and wildfire and benefiting workers and businesses.
• United Kingdom (2026): California and the United Kingdom signed a memorandum of understanding to tackle climate change and promote sustainable development together. The memorandum of understanding builds on an already strong history of cooperation, and focuses on areas for collaboration including clean energy technologies, climate resilience, decarbonizing transportation, and protecting the natural environment.
• Chile (2025): California and Chile signed a memorandum of understanding regarding exchanging information, developing best practices, and cooperating on methane emissions reduction. Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas, and the partnership between California and Chile opens up new opportunities for both partners to cooperate on methane reduction in waste, agriculture, and energy sectors.
• Colombia (2025): California and Colombia signed a partnership to advance joint efforts on forest conservation, methane reduction, climate resilience, and clean energy development. The memorandum of understanding deepens coordination on protecting the Amazon, strengthening biodiversity, and expanding nature-based climate solutions that support sustainable and equitable economic growth.
• Nigeria (2025): California signed a memorandum of understanding with Nigeria on sustainable urban transportation, green ports, low-carbon transportation fuels, climate adaptation, methane detection and abatement policies, greenhouse gas emissions and air quality, and academic exchange and university partnerships. The partnership will build upon our shared commitment to sustainable growth, accelerate the transition to zero-emission transportation, and expand opportunities for the next generation.
• Brazil (2025): California signed a memorandum of understanding with the Brazilian federal government to scale up cooperation on climate, clean energy, cutting pollution, and job-creating climate opportunities. This new partnership, announced in September 2025, will advance market-based carbon pricing programs, expand clean transportation, including zero-emission vehicles and low-carbon fuels, and strengthen air quality management through enhanced monitoring and regulatory controls. The partnership also focuses on conserving 30% of lands and coastal waters by 2030, including nature-based solutions and biodiversity protection. In 2025, California also advanced a partnership with the State of Pará to strengthen cooperation on wildfire prevention and response - enhancing forest monitoring, identifying areas most at risk, and sharing research and expertise to improve firefighting and emergency management.
• Kenya (2025): California signed a partnership focused on cutting pollution and supporting trade. The partnership advances medium- and long-term low-carbon development, policy research, development, and innovation in sustainable land use and urban planning that reduces long commutes and urban sprawl, while promoting integrated land use and transport systems.
• Noord-Holland (2024): California and Noord-Holland signed a Letter of Intent advancing next-generation air mobility - from drones to zero-emission aircraft. Joint innovation missions are producing pilot projects that inform California's Advanced Air Mobility Implementation Plan and readiness for major global events.
• Australia (2023): California signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Australia that helped inform the country's first-ever vehicle carbon emissions standards through input from the California Air Resources Board. The California Public Utilities Commission and California ISO have also advised Australia on electricity market reform to better align incentives for renewable energy.
• British Columbia (2023): California and British Columbia signed a memorandum of understanding on mutual wildfire assistance that is delivering results. British Columbia sent incident management experts to support California's Palisades Fire in 2025, while CAL FIRE deployed personnel during British Columbia's 2025 fire season. These exchanges established a lasting framework for cross-border wildfire support.
• China (2023): California signed five Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with China's National Development and Reform Commission, the provinces of Guangdong and Jiangsu, and the municipalities of Beijing and Shanghai to advance cooperation in cutting greenhouse gas emissions, transitioning away from fossil fuels, and developing clean energy.
• Denmark (2021): California and Denmark signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on groundwater mapping, leak detection, and water efficiency, which has modernized California's data systems and informed key state programs, like the Airborne Electromagnetic Survey. Danish technologies and expertise have helped strengthen drought and water-supply resilience statewide.
• Mexico (Baja California & Sonora): California signed Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with the Mexican states of Baja California and Sonora to advance zero-emission freight corridors, clean ports, and battery manufacturing - strengthening North American supply chains and workforce readiness. Joint forums have already produced new research collaborations and training programs advancing clean-tech.

California's clean energy leadership

Since Governor Newsom took office in 2019, California has added more than 37,000 megawatts of utility-scale clean and renewable energy to serve the California grid - and battery storage has ramped up from fewer than 700 MW to more than 21,000 MW, helping make the grid more reliable and pushing the state further along its clean energy transition.

Batteries play a key role in California's goal of getting all of its electricity from clean sources by 2045. The most recent numbers, from the end of 2024, show real progress: 67% of retail electricity sales in the state already come from clean energy. Last year, clean energy met 100% of the state's electricity needs for at least part of the day on 279 separate days. So far in 2026, that's happened on more than nine out of 10 days during the first half of the year.

Clean energy is also good for the economy. California leads the nation in total clean energy jobs, with 552,300 workers employed across clean energy technologies, nearly twice as many as the second-ranked state, Texas, according to a 2025 report from E2. California's clean energy workforce grew by nearly 7,300 workers in 2024, outpacing job growth in the rest of the state's economy by more than three times.