The Biden administration Tuesday announced it plans to offer leases for California’s first offshore wind areas, a 399-square-mile block off Morro Bay that could support 3 GW, and the Humboldt Call Area off Northern California, which it said is big enough for an additional 1.6 GW. The Morro Bay area...

Some California lawmakers want the woody biomass from forest thinning efforts to be used for electricity generation, after four years of catastrophic wildfires bathed the West Coast in smoke, with rural disasters choking major urban areas. The normally good air quality in the San Francisco Bay Area, for instance, was...

Fellow Democrats are questioning California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal to spend $1.5 billion to accelerate the adoption of zero-emissions vehicles (ZEVs) by building charging infrastructure and providing incentives to low-income households and buyers of heavy-duty vehicles. Newsom’s proposal does not renew funding for the state’s Clean Vehicle Rebate Program...

Legislators in Sacramento introduced a spate of bills this session to ban natural gas from new construction, promote hydrogen as an alternative fuel source and increase demand response to head off future blackouts. A number of bills deal with building decarbonization, including measures by Sen. Dave Cortese, a Democrat who...

Pacific Gas and Electric said it had completed its bankruptcy restructuring Wednesday, one day after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill allowing the state to take over the utility if it fails egregiously over time to obey the Public Utilities Commission’s rules. Those rules, imposed as a condition of...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California lawmakers advanced a measure Tuesday that would let the state appoint a receiver or take over Pacific Gas and Electric if the utility fails to provide safe and reliable service after it leaves bankruptcy. Senate Bill 350, called the Golden State Energy Act, cleared the state...

By Hudson Sangree SACRAMENTO, Calif. — State lawmakers have drafted a spate of bills since early January aimed at correcting perceived wrongs by Pacific Gas and Electric and other investor-owned utilities, and they still have a few days left to offer more. Friday marks the deadline for introducing legislative proposals...

By Hudson Sangree SACRAMENTO, Calif. — One of the biggest energy-related bills of the year in California shot through the State Legislature earlier this summer, well ahead of lawmakers’ Sept. 13 deadline to pass legislation, but other noteworthy electricity bills landed on the desk of Gov. Gavin Newsom in recent...

By Hudson Sangree SACRAMENTO, Calif. — San Francisco offered $2.5 billion to buy PG&E Corp.’s grid facilities serving the city Friday as the company announced it was postponing a controversial effort to secure up to $20 billion in bonds to pay its wildfire debts. The company's announcement came as state...