This is California Wire , a weekly newsletter from Jeff St. John on the state’s clean energy transition. Subscribe to get it every Wednesday via Substack . I’m launching this newsletter at an intriguing moment in California politics. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom — who everyone knows is eyeing a run for the White…

Gavin Newsom’s eight-year run as California’s Democratic governor — and as self-styled U.S. climate change warrior — comes to an end in January. At this pivotal moment for the state’s clean energy transition, it’s worth reflecting on how he’s lived up to his clean energy commitments and what kind of climate legacy he…

A federal court has ruled that the Department of Energy acted outside the bounds of its legal authority when it forced a coal plant in Michigan to keep running last year — a decision that could undermine the Trump administration’s push to prevent aging and costly fossil-fueled power plants from closing down. Under…

The Trump administration’s vaguely worded executive order on grid cybersecurity threatens to slow down the booming U.S. energy storage market . The order, issued late last month, declares a national security emergency over the risk that foreign-made technologies could be used to hack into and disrupt the U.S. power…

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has blocked an effort to keep the state’s most successful virtual power plant program funded through next year. State budget language finalized last week does not authorize additional money for the Demand Side Grid Support program , one of the biggest VPPs in the country…

Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a slate of bills meant to expand virtual power plants that could offset the state’s fast-rising electricity costs. Will he do the same this year? Earlier this month, two virtual power plant bills made it through a key legislative hurdle. Lawmakers must vote on the bills…

The country’s biggest energy market has a problem: It can’t build enough power plants to keep up with electricity demand. For PJM Interconnection’s 67 million customers across 13 states, the consequences are ever-higher utility bills. For PJM itself, it’s unrelenting political pressure, from blue-state lawmakers on…

Last month, grid operator PJM Interconnection unveiled a long-awaited proposal to prevent data centers from spiking power prices — but the plan largely relies on states to give it teeth . Pennsylvania, one of the biggest states in PJM’s 13-state territory, is taking up that challenge. This week, Pennsylvania Gov.…

California, with its sky-high electricity prices, isn’t facing the same influx of data centers that many other states are. But the massive facilities are still being built and proposed in California — and legislators are racing to stop them from pushing up utility rates and pollution. Two major data center bills…

A recent ruling from federal regulators will let virtual power plants help meet surging energy demand in the county’s biggest energy market. Late last month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered PJM Interconnection to accept statistical sampling as a valid method for measuring the reliability of programs…

California lawmakers are once again contending with how to curb the state’s high energy costs as they hurtle toward the end of this year’s legislative session on Aug. 31. So what’s on the table for utility rate reform in the final stretch? Enter Senate Bill 905 , a complicated package of proposals that are likely to…

In Wisconsin, utility Alliant Energy has called off a project meant to reduce power outages in disadvantaged and tribal communities, after the Trump administration terminated a federal grant that would have supported it. In California, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which has deployed and upgraded…

PJM Interconnection, the biggest grid operator in the U.S., has finally settled on a plan to prevent data centers from causing other customers’ utility bills to soar further in its 13-state territory. That plan relies heavily on states themselves, and the utilities they regulate, to force data centers to secure…

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency acted improperly in terminating billions of dollars of “green bank” financing last year, setting up a potential showdown before the U.S. Supreme Court over one of the Trump administration's earliest attacks on a key Biden-era climate program.…

Citing national security concerns, the Trump administration has banned the import and domestic use of new power inverters made outside the United States. The move could throw sand in the gears of gigawatts’ worth of planned solar, wind, and battery installations — projects that make up the vast majority of new…

The Trump administration seems to be doing all it can to give the coal industry everything it wants. Those efforts may not succeed, but they could keep the dying industry on life support, and soak U.S. citizens with the financial and environmental costs of doing so — unless legal challenges compel it to change…

California is making a bet: Once you’ve driven an EV, you won’t want to go back to a gas-powered car. Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed legislation creating the MyFirstEV program. It’s the state’s first big attempt to make up for the loss of federal EV tax credits, and it’s exclusively targeting the…

Solar, wind, and batteries are the cheapest, fastest ways to add much-needed electricity to America’s grid. And across the country, more state legislatures are passing laws to streamline renewable development than are enacting policies to prevent clean energy from being built. That’s the good news from the Siting…

With the conclusion of its latest capacity auction, PJM Interconnection has once again shown that its process for securing new energy is unable to keep up with the wave of electricity demand from data centers. But PJM, the grid operator for the country’s biggest energy market, is poised to adopt a new process that…