Environmental groups mixed on outcome of secret California climate negotiations

Kate Wolffe, The Sacramento Bee on Sep 10, 2025

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The California Legislature’s big, last-minute climate deal is drawing mixed reactions from the environmental community.

Talks over California’s cap-and-trade program, which effectively forces polluters to pay the state for excess carbon emissions, ended as the shot clock was running out Tuesday night. Negotiations between representatives from the state Senate, Assembly and governor’s office were wide-ranging and drew in numerous other pieces of climate and environmental legislation.

The ensuing six bills, which lawmakers are expected to vote on Saturday morning, have drawn mixed reactions from climate policy and environmental groups, who’ve been following the months-long saga.

“We definitely saw worse proposals than this throughout the process,” said Ryan Schleeter with the Santa Rosa nonprofit The Climate Center, a climate policy think-tank.

“There were some good things that made it in, although the missed opportunities are probably bigger.”

Groups with a more national footprint framed the passage as a rebuke to President Donald Trump and his policies.

“While the Trump administration attacks California and undercuts jobs in wind, solar and electric vehicles, our state leadership came together around a package of bills to lead the clean energy transition into the next decade,” said Victoria Rome, who leads California policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

A coalition of 10 environmental justice and health organizations, including the California Environmental Justice Alliance and the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition, signed onto a letter Wednesday calling out specific elements of bills that they say harm vulnerable communities.

They called out Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leadership for not being stricter about enforcing emissions reductions and for giving the oil industry a carve-out from administering environmental quality reviews in Kern County.

“Once again, these bills continue to make (environmental justice) communities into sacrifice zones for the benefit of industry profit,” the letter read.

Cap-and-trade was a policy passed in 2006 by then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that caps carbon emissions allowed by all polluting entities. Companies must hold allowances for the pollution they produce, and both companies and investors can buy and sell those allowances in a market.

Newsom, who stopped by the Capitol Tuesday night to engage directly in the talks, has maintained reauthorization was necessary this year to preserve the program, given the forward-looking nature of the markets. California’s program was to expire in 2030, but if legislators pass the contents of the deal Saturday, it will remain in place until 2045.

Sources close to the negotiations said the governor and state Assembly were mostly aligned to do a “straight” reauthorization of the program, with the state Senate, and longtime Senate policy advisor Kip Lipper, pushing for more aggressive tactics to reduce pollution.

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