Governor Newsom signs executive order to bolster California’s clean energy progress in face of Trump’s wrecking ball

What you need to know: The Governor signed an executive order today to help clean energy projects in the state capture federal tax credits before they expire as a result of HR 1, Trump's Big Ugly Bill.

SACRAMENTO - As the Trump administration takes the country backward on clean energy deployment and development, Governor Gavin Newsom today signed an executive order to protect California's decades of progress and double down on building more clean energy, faster.

The executive order comes after President Trump signed his 'One Big Beautiful Bill' into law earlier this year. The new law eliminates federal tax credits for clean energy projects that do not begin construction by July 2026 or come online by the end of 2027.

This, in addition to other actions taken by the Trump administration, puts hundreds of projects in California at risk of stalling and makes energy more expensive for consumers. These projects will create thousands of good-paying jobs, power thousands of homes, and add critical clean electricity capacity to the state's power grid.

Full text of the Governor's executive order is available here.

No other state in the nation has built as much clean energy as fast as California - it's why we just recently became the largest economy on the planet to be powered by two-thirds clean electricity.

While Trump and Republicans want to bring back the days of dirty coal powering our homes, polluting our air and increasing our electric bills, California will continue our decades of progress building our affordable, clean, reliable energy future.

Governor Gavin Newsom

Trump's biased, 19th century energy policies mean dirtier, more expensive electricity and higher risk of power outages. A recent study by Energy Innovation expects Californians to pay over $320 more a year for energy thanks to Trump's backward energy policies. Overall, Americans will be forced to pay $170 billion in added costs on their energy bills while hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost and hundreds of thousands of megawatts in added electricity capacity never get built.

Today's executive order:

• Designates the Energy Working Group of the Governor's Infrastructure Strike Team to track projects eligible for tax credits and state agencies' actions to accelerate clean energy project development.
• Directs relevant state agencies to prioritize actions within their purview that support projects beginning construction before July 4, 2026 or coming online by December 31, 2027 to capture the expiring federal tax credits.
• Directs state energy agencies to assess actions both to capture expiring clean energy tax credits and to further expedite clean energy deployment, and to submit recommendations to the Governor for consideration.

The Governor also continues to work with the Legislature to enable the expansion of regional energy markets to lower energy costs, reduce air pollution, and avoid power outages.

California's climate leadership

Pollution is down and the economy is up. Greenhouse gas emissions in California are down 20% since 2000 - even as the state's GDP increased 78% in that same time period.

The state also continues to set clean energy records. California was powered by two-thirds clean energy in 2023, the latest year for which data is available - the largest economy in the world to achieve this level of clean energy. The state has run on 100% clean electricity for some part of the day almost every day this year.

Since the beginning of the Newsom Administration, battery storage is up to over 15,000 megawatts - a 1,900%+ increase, and over 25,000 megawatts of new resources have been added to the electric grid.