California just gave plastic producers until 2032 to make all their packaging recyclable or compostable — the most ambitious deadline in the country. Advocates say it doesn’t go far enough. Producers say it goes too far. At least one of them is threatening to sue.

The sweeping regulations, finalized at the start of the month, put producers in a bind that has no obvious solution. Plastic clamshell containers, for instance, protect berries from being crushed and keep them fresher, longer until they reach a refrigerator. Plastic producers say there’s simply no substitute — yet under the new rules, they’ll have to find one. 

Last week, two environmental groups — the Natural Resources Defense Council and Californians Against Waste — said they plan to take California to court. Their argument: the state’s rules actually break the law by allowing recycling methods that create a lot of toxic waste, and by letting some plastics slip through the rules entirely. On the other side, plastic manufacturers say the rules go too far and will make products more expensive for shoppers.

Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat from coastal Los Angeles County who authored the plastic waste law, said the program still “massively moves the needle on this really major problem” — even if the process was messy. “This was the product of a compromise, and it was not perfect, and everybody walked away from the table, you know, unhappy about various aspects,” Allen said.

“California is the United States, but 30 years in the future,” said Joe Árvai,  director of the University of Southern California’s Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies. “What’s happening now is emblematic of trends that we are seeing worldwide … and the U.S. needs to adapt in the way that those countries are adapting in order to remain globally competitive.”

Less plastic, more recycling 

For decades, the burden of reducing, reusing and recycling plastic waste has fallen on consumers. Once a consumer buys a product, they decide what happens to it — whether it ends up in the garbage can or the recycling blue bin — and their tax dollars fund recycling systems we have today.  

In 2022, California’s landmark Senate Bill 54, the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, shifted that responsibility to businesses. The regulations outline what materials are covered by the law and who counts as a “producer” of plastic waste.  

The new regulations are a huge milestone, said Anja Brandon, director of U.S. plastics policy for the Ocean Conservancy. “There’s plenty more steps on this journey, but I’m just really excited that we are going to start making real progress,” she said. 

The law applies to plastic food service ware and almost all single-use packaging — from the plastic wrap around large pallets of products shipped to retailers to a tube of toothpaste and the cardboard box around it.  

To carry out the law, the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery appointed the Circular Action Alliance, a nonprofit that helps states carry out extended producer responsibility mandates, as the organizing body for producers. The alliance is responsible for coming up with  a plan to meet the law’s goals. 

Producers — defined as companies that make more than $1 million in sales and produce products packaged in plastic or own brands under which those products are sold — must join the organization and pay fees to fund waste management. They can meet the law’s requirements by using less plastic, finding alternative materials, or investing in recycling infrastructure.

“The biggest challenge is the scale and coordination required to modernize a complex recycling system across a state as large and diverse as California,” said Sheila Estaniel, a spokesperson for the Circular Action Alliance, in an email. 

California’s requirement that businesses reduce single-use plastic altogether makes it one of the strongest plastic waste laws in the country. It also goes further than other similar laws because it requires plastic producers to pay $5 billion over a decade to address the environmental damage their products have caused to communities — though the state doesn’t expect to start distributing those funds until 2027 at the earliest.

Watered down rules

The plastic waste rules have had a rocky road to implementation. 

In 2024, CalRecycle developed a first draft of regulations detailing what plastic the law covers and what producers must do. The draft expired before CalRecycle finalized it. In 2025, Gov. Gavin Newsom directed regulators to rewrite the rules — a move that some advocates say say food and agriculture lobbyists pushed for.

The result was a second draft that carved out a broad exclusion for plastics used for food and agriculture purposes, covering products under the jurisdiction of the FDA and USDA, such as packaging for fresh produce and supplements. Advocates said the exclusion gutted the law.

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Ventura County has seen a noticeable rise in rattlesnake encounters this spring, with officials confirming a sixth bite reported in less than a month.

Emergency crews responded Sunday after a man was bitten near California State University Channel Islands, according to Ventura County Fire Department spokesperson Andrew Dowd. The victim was taken to a hospital, treated with antivenom, and was reported to be in stable condition.

The recent cases are already approaching last year’s total. Ventura County recorded nine rattlesnake bites throughout all of 2025, meaning this year’s pace is significantly higher.

Across Southern California, two fatal encounters have already been reported this year. In March, a 46-year-old woman died after being bitten while hiking in Wildwood Regional Park. Days earlier, 25-year-old Julian Hernandez was killed following a bite near the Quail Hill Trailhead in Orange County.

Officials say environmental conditions are likely playing a role. A warmer-than-usual spring combined with heavy winter rainfall has created ideal conditions for snakes — and for the small rodents they prey on — bringing more activity to local trails at the same time more people are heading outdoors.

Statewide data reflects a similar trend. The California Poison Control System has reported an increase in rattlesnake-related calls, with 77 cases logged in just the first three months of 2026, according to the Los Angeles Times. Typically, annual totals range between 200 and 300 calls, with most incidents occurring between April and October.

Despite the recent incidents, experts stress that fatalities remain rare. According to emergency physician and toxicologist Jeffrey Suchard of UCI Health, deaths from rattlesnake bites are uncommon. Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates between 7,000 and 8,000 snakebites occur each year, with only a handful resulting in death.

Still, authorities are urging caution.

Dowd said the increase in bites serves as a reminder for hikers and outdoor enthusiasts to take basic safety precautions. Staying on marked trails, avoiding tall grass and brush, and wearing protective clothing like boots and long pants can reduce the risk of an encounter. Carrying a charged phone is also recommended in case of emergencies.

If bitten, officials say the most important steps are to remain calm, limit movement to slow the spread of venom, and call 911 immediately.

As temperatures continue to rise, authorities expect snake activity to remain elevated — making awareness and preparation key for anyone spending time outdoors.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday doubled down on California’s commitment to electric vehicles with proposed rebates intended to backfill federal tax credits canceled by the Trump administration.

The plan would allocate $200 million in one-time special funds for a new point-of-sale incentive program for light-duty zero-emissions vehicles. It was part of a sweeping $348.9-billion state budget proposal released Friday, which also included items to address air pollution and worsening wildfires, amid a projected $3-billion state deficit.

EVs have become a flashpoint in California’s battle against the Trump administration, which moved last year to repeal the state’s long-held authority to set strict tailpipe emission standards and eventually ban the sale of new gas powered cars.

Last year, Trump ended federal tax credits of up to $7,500 for EV customers that were part of President Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. In September, his administration also let lapse federal authorization for California’s Clean Air Vehicle decal program, which allowed solo EV drivers to use carpool lanes.

“Despite federal interference, the governor maintains his commitment to protecting public health and achieving California’s world leading climate agenda,” Lindsay Buckley, spokesperson for the California Air Resources Board, said in an email. “This incentive program will help continue the state’s ZEV momentum, especially with the federal administration eliminating the federal EV tax credit and carpool lane access.”

Newsom had previously flip-flopped on this idea, first vowing to restore a state program that provided up to $7,500 to buy clean cars and then walking it back in September. That same month, a group of five automakers including Honda, Rivian, Hyundai, Volkswagen and Audi wrote a letter urging Newsom and state legislators to establish a $5,000 EV tax rebate to replace the lost federal incentives, Politico reported.

During his State of the State speech Thursday — one year after the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles — Newsom said California “refuse[s] to be bystanders” while China and other nations take the lead on electric vehicles and the clean energy transition. He touted the state’s investments in solar, hydrogen, wind and nuclear power, as well as its recent move away from the use of any coal-fired power.

“We must continue our prudent fiscal management, funding our reserves, and continuing the investments Californians rely on, from education to public safety, all while preparing for Trump’s volatility outside our control,” the governor said in a statement. “This is what responsible governance looks like.”

Several environmental groups had been urging Newsom to invest more in clean air and clean vehicle programs, which they say are critical to the state’s ambitious goals for human health and the environment. Transportation is the largest source of climate and air pollution in California and is responsible for more than a third of global warming emissions, said Daniel Barad, Western states policy manager with the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists.

“As federal attacks threaten California’s authority to protect public health, incentives are more essential than ever to scale up clean cars and trucks,” Barad said. “The governor and legislative leaders must act now to fully fund zero-emission transportation and pursue new revenue to grow and sustain climate investments.”

Katelyn Roedner Sutter, California senior director with the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, called it “an essential step to save money for Californians, cut harmful pollution, spur innovation, and support the global competitiveness of our auto industry.”

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Last February, I climbed into a Jeep and rumbled up a rocky shelf road that took me high above a breathtaking corner of the Mojave National Preserve. At the top was an old gold mine where an Australian company had recently restarted activities, looking for rare earth minerals.

The National Park Service had been embroiled in a years-long dispute with the company, Dateline Resources Ltd., alleging that it was operating the Colosseum Mine without authorization and had damaged the surrounding landscape with heavy equipment. Dateline said it had the right to work the mine under a plan its prior operators had submitted to the Bureau of Land Management decades before.

President Trump had taken office just weeks before my visit. Environmentalists told me the conflict posed an early test of how his administration would handle the corporate exploitation of public lands.

At the time, observers weren’t sure how things would shake out. Conserving public lands is one of the rare issues that’s popular on both sides of the political aisle, they pointed out.

Almost a year later, it’s clear that the Trump administration has sided with the corporations.

Trump directed the Department of Interior to inventory mineral deposits on federal lands and prioritize mining as the primary use of those lands. He instructed officials to dramatically fast-track permitting and environmental reviews for certain types of energy and critical minerals projects — and designated metallurgical coal a critical mineral, enabling companies that mine it to qualify for a lucrative tax credit.

His budget bill lowered the royalty rates companies must pay the government to extract coal, oil or gas from public lands and provided other financial incentives for such projects while reducing the authority of federal land managers to deny them.

Under the president’s direction, the DOI has opened up millions of acres of federal land to new coal leasing and moved to rescind both the 2021 Roadless Rule, which protects swaths of national forest lands from extractive activities by barring most new road construction, and the 2024 Public Lands Rule, which puts conservation and restoration on par with other uses of BLM land like mining, drilling and grazing.

The administration is seeking to roll back limitations on mining and drilling for specific pieces of public land, including portions of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the watershed feeding the Boundary Waters in Minnesota and a buffer surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico. Meanwhile, conservative lawmakers overturned management plans limiting energy development on certain BLM lands in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming.

Altogether, the Trump administration and its legislative allies have taken steps to reduce or eliminate protections for nearly 90 million acres of public land, according to the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. That figure rises to more than 175 million acres if you include the habitat protections diminished by the administration’s moves to weaken the Endangered Species Act, the organization notes.

“All of these things represent in some ways the largest attack on our public lands and giveaway to large multinational mining corporations that we’ve seen probably since the 19th century,” said U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, who likened the level of resource exploitation to “something like what happened during the robber baron era when there was no regulation or protection for our communities or the environment.”

Stansbury has introduced legislation that would increase the fees mining companies must pay to sit on speculative claims on federal lands and require those funds be used for conservation. She told me it’s just a tiny contribution to a larger effort to push back against the administration’s approach to initiate extraction on public lands, which she described as so frequent and pervasive that “it’s a bit like whack-a-mole.”

“So much damage has been done, both administratively and legislatively, over the last 11 months since Trump took office,” she said.

As for the Colosseum Mine, the DOI sided with its operators back in the spring, saying Dateline Resources did not have to seek authorization from the Park Service to keep mining. The announcement was followed by public endorsements from Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. The company’s stock value soared, and by September, it had kicked off a major drilling blitz.

The company has already uncovered high-grade gold deposits. It’s taking a break for Christmas, but is expected to resume drilling in the new year.

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Southern California Edison increased the number of Eaton fire victims that are eligible to file claims for damages in its final compensation proposal, though some Altadena residents say the utility’s program still falls short.

After talking to residents about the plan it released in July, Edison said it decided to expand the area of homes that are eligible for compensation for smoke damage.

“Expanding the eligibility area is one of the most significant updates made as a result of feedback,” said Pedro Pizarro, the chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company. “The number of qualified properties nearly doubled for those with damage from smoke, soot or ash.”

The utility also increased the amount of compensation it is offering for some victims. For example, each child in a family that lost its home will be eligible to receive $75,000 for pain and suffering, up from $50,000 in the initial plan.

To receive payments under the utility’s Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program, families must agree to drop any lawsuits they filed against the utility for the Jan. 7 fire.

The program also is open to businesses that lost revenues and renters who lost property. And it covers those who suffered physical injuries or had family members who died.

Edison is launching the victim compensation program even though government fire investigators have not released their report on the cause of the fire. The inferno swept through Altadena, destroying 9,400 homes and other structures and killing 19 people.

Videos captured the fire igniting under a century-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon that Edison had not used since 1971, and Pizarro has said a leading theory is that the line somehow re-energized and ignited the blaze. Edison said in a federal securities filing this week that “absent additional evidence, SCE believes that it is likely that its equipment could be found to have been associated with the ignition.”

In documents detailing its final compensation plan, the utility included the example of a family of four with a 1,500-square-foot home that was destroyed. The family would receive $900,000 to rebuild, $360,000 for personal property, $140,000 for loss of use and $380,000 for pain and suffering. It also would receive a $200,000 “direct claim premium” for agreeing to settle outside of court.

That total of $1,980,000 is then reduced by the family’s $1 million of insurance coverage, according to the company’s example.

On Thursday, state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena) sent a letter to Edison saying she was concerned about how the utility was requiring victims to waive their future legal rights in order to get compensation. And she called on Edison to provide immediate housing assistance to fire victims.

“Having acknowledged its potential role in starting the Eaton Fire, Edison must do everything within its power to prioritize the needs of survivors and make this commitment a core part of its corporate duty,” she wrote to Pizarro. “This means ensuring fire victims can recover and rebuild their lives with the support they are owed.”

Edison expects to be reimbursed for most or all of the payments it makes to victims by a $21-billion state wildfire fund that Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers created in 2019 to shield utilities from bankruptcy. Administrators of the wildfire fund told members of the state Catastrophe Response Council this week that they expect Eaton fire claims “to be in the tens of billions of dollars.”

In September, Newsom signed a bill that will bolster the money available by another $18 billion for future wildfires. Under that bill, Edison is allowed to raise electric rates for any Eaton fire costs that exceed the original $21-billion fund.

Some Eaton fire survivors told the council, which oversees the wildfire fund, that Edison’s program fails to fully cover damages suffered by victims. Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, recently sent the council a report detailing where her group found shortfalls. For example, Chen said, Edison is deducting a homeowner’s full insurance coverage from the compensation amounts even if the insurer has reimbursed the family for only part of that amount.

“Nine months after Edison’s negligence shattered our lives, the toll is clear,” the group’s report states. “Many have drained retirement savings, maxed out credit cards, or watched marriages and health deteriorate under the strain. “

“You destroyed our homes, lives and community,” the report says of Edison. “Fix what you broke. “

Chen’s group joined with Perez in calling for Edison to provide emergency housing assistance for victims.

Edison said its program is designed “to help the community recover and rebuild faster.” The utility said a report by RAND, the non-profit research group it hired to assess the compensation plan, determined the payment amounts “used modern statistical methods and in our judgment were thoughtfully done and well executed.”

Edison said victims can start filing for claims now and that it expects to get back to them with an offer within 90 days.

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One of former President Joe Biden’s last official acts was declaring the Chuckwalla National Monument on almost 625,000 acres of “canyon-carved mountain ranges” in Riverside County.

This spring President Donald Trump asked the Department of the Interior to consider removing those protections. In May the Department of Justice concluded that Trump “can and should” reverse the monument designations.

But this week, the White House Press Office told CalMatters that nothing is set in stone: “We would not get ahead of the President on any policy changes that may or may not be planned,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly wrote in an email.

Janessa Goldbeck, CEO of Vet Voice Foundation, which lobbied for the Chuckwalla National Monument designation, said the administration might be thinking twice about reversing that status after blowback from a recent proposal in the House Budget Bill to sell off public lands.

“Veterans, hunters, anglers, a lot of people who are not traditionally invested in politics who came out to say hands off our public lands,” she said. 

Speculation that the Trump administration could revoke monument status for more than half a million acres of protected land in California has environmentalists fretting, but some outdoor recreation and mining advocates hope to undo what they call a “lame duck land grab.”

The Chuckwalla National Monument hugs the southern edge of Joshua Tree National Park and extends eastward across the Mojave and Colorado Deserts. 

Tribal trails thread through the monument and the region is considered culturally and spiritually important to numerous tribes, Biden’s proclamation stated. It’s also home to endangered desert tortoise and desert pupfish, and rare species of aster, sage and cholla, that “grow nowhere else on Earth,” according to Sierra magazine.

“This is not just a bare landscape out in the desert,” tribal engagement strategist Donald Medart, a member of the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe, told CalMatters. “This is a living, breathing, thriving place, where people have lived since time immemorial. We intend to protect it by any means possible.”

Biden dedicated the monument in the final days of his term, but it got off to an inauspicious start. The White House had planned to celebrate with a ceremony at Chuckwalla on Jan. 7, then cancelled it amid powerful winds that fanned catastrophic fires in Los Angeles that day. Biden issued a proclamation establishing the monument a week later.

On his inauguration day Jan. 20, Trump declared an “energy emergency” to fast-track power projects, and ordered the Interior Department to look at the new monuments. Officials pored over geological maps to identify their oil and mining potential, the Washington Post reported.

In May, a Michigan gold miner, an Idaho-based off-road vehicle organization and a conservative Texas think tank sued the federal government to overturn the Chuckwalla monument designation, alleging that it restricts access to public lands for recreation and amateur mining. However, Biden’s proclamation preserves existing rights to use of the land.

Chance Weldon, director of litigation of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, said that’s true, but future mine claims and trails could be off limits. He said the foundation believes that vast national monuments declared by presidential proclamation are a misuse of the Antiquities Act, which authorizes their creation.

“When you have thousands of acres being taken off line, that’s something that should be decided by Congress, not by the president at the stroke of a pen,” Weldon said.

Goldbeck questioned the plaintiffs’ basis for challenging the monument: “This is an out of state entity being represented by another out of state entity, trying to undo something that Californians love and fought for.”

Environmental and tribal groups have argued that once a president dedicates a monument it can’t be undone. But in June the Department of Justice told Trump he could eliminate monuments if he thinks the space or structures they contain “either never were or no longer are deserving of the (Antiquities) Act’s protections.”

Some local officials have also balked at what they consider restrictions of Chuckwalla National Monument. The city of Blythe weighed in against the designation, arguing that it would hurt tourism, solar development and the local economy.

It’s unclear whether those objections are part of the administration’s calculations. Trump has put the brakes on alternative energy development, and on Monday directed the treasury to end tax credits for wind and solar programs.

In a recent Senate hearing, Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum suggested that the monument is just too big.

“The question is not whether the monuments serve the purpose, I think the real question is the size,” Burgum said, responding to questions from California Sen. Alex Padilla.

Burgum said he has heard concerns from residents of other states that local communities weren’t consulted on recent monuments, but he noted that wasn’t the case in California. Padilla thanked him for acknowledging California’s public review efforts and said the Trump administration should follow the same process for any changes to Chuckwalla National Monument.

“If it’s going to be revisited or undone, we expect that same level of engagement on the back end before any action is taken or before any decisions are made,” Padilla said.

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Eighteen states sued the Trump administration Monday over its halting of permits for wind-energy projects, arguing that its actions posed an existential threat to the burgeoning industry.

“This administration is devastating one of our nation’s fastest-growing sources of clean, reliable and affordable energy,” said Attorney General Letitia James of New York, which is one of the plaintiffs. She said the halt threatened “the loss of thousands of good-paying jobs and billions in investments” and was “delaying our transition away from the fossil fuels that harm our health and our planet.”

The halt on federal permits for wind energy was first laid out in a Jan. 20 executive order, one of a barrage that President Trump signed immediately upon taking office. It directed agencies to stop all permits for wind farms pending federal review.

The lawsuit says that, by complying, federal agencies have put major investments that have already been made at risk. The order also instructed the United States attorney general and the interior secretary to explore “terminating or amending” existing leases to wind farms, further increasing uncertainty for companies.

The wind industry provides about 10 percent of the nation’s electricity, and has many new projects under development, particularly in the Great Plains and the Atlantic Ocean.

Last month, the Trump administration halted a major wind farm under construction off the coast of Long Island, the Empire Wind project. It was designed to provide enough electricity to power a half-million homes. It had already received the permits it needed, but Interior Secretary Doug Burgum suggested the Biden administration’s analysis during the approval process was rushed and insufficient.

Ms. James noted that Mr. Trump had also declared an energy emergency. Energy experts have called that declaration overstated. Nevertheless, she said, the moratorium on wind permits is harming the ability to provide a new source of energy.

New York also has a new law on the books requiring it to dramatically increase the amount of electricity that comes from renewable sources. Achieving that goal will become more complicated without wind sources.

The lawsuit names numerous federal officials and agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department. The E.P.A. didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, accused the Democratic attorneys general who sued of using “lawfare” to thwart the president’s energy agenda. “Americans in blue states should not have to pay the price of the Democrats’ radical climate agenda,” she said.

The Interior Department said in a statement that it was committed to “overseeing public lands and waters for the benefit of all Americans, while prioritizing fiscal responsibility for the American people.”

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, asks a judge to prevent federal agencies from taking any action to block wind-energy development and to declare the executive order unlawful.

“The Trump administration’s directive to halt the development of offshore wind energy is illegal,” said Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California.

His office said the federal policy would “derail the clean energy transition” and lead to higher costs for Americans. In addition to onshore wind sites, the state has five federal offshore wind leases, the office said. Offshore operations are more complicated and expensive to operate.

Timothy Fox, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington consulting firm, said that he expected the lawsuit to face an uphill climb in convincing the court to block the executive order. The firm’s “best-case scenario” for the offshore wind industry is that facilities that are already operating, or far along in development, may continue without opposition from the Trump administration, he said.

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California officials are pressing for further cuts to the electric bill credits people with rooftop solar panels can earn, in a move that would align the state with its for-profit utilities at the expense of consumers who invested thousands of dollars to power their homes with renewable energy.

Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric have long complained about the financial credits to households that generate more solar energy than they can use — credits that can keep rising electricity costs in check for those with panels.

But the energy generated by rooftop solar also puts a dent in utility sales of electricity, and the big utility companies successfully pressed the state Public Utilities Commission in 2022 to reduce the value of the billing credits for panels installed after April 15, 2023.

Now, the credits for consumers who installed panels before that date are becoming a target.

The commission staff, with the support of its consumer-focused Public Advocates Office, is making a case for cutting credits to those who installed rooftop panels before April 2023. Those panel owners are paid the retail rate for the excess electricity they send to the grid, while later adopters are paid a fraction of that price.

Among the ideas floated in a report by commission staff last week is to limit the number of years those customers can receive the retail rate, or end it when a home is sold. The commission staff also suggested adding a new monthly charge to solar owners’ bills, saying it would reduce the costs needed to maintain the electrical grid that it says are shifted to other customers.

The report, issued in response to last fall’s executive order by Gov. Gavin Newsom calling for recommendations to stem rising electric rates, comes after a series of reports from the Public Advocates Office critical of how people with solar installations are compensated for the excess solar power they generate.

“Rooftop solar customers do not contribute their fair share of fixed grid costs, such as maintaining power lines and ensuring grid reliability,” the advocates office said in a December report. “These costs are shifted onto non-solar customers, who shoulder a disproportionate financial burden.”

Any action to cut the electric bill credits would have to be approved by the state Public Utilities Commission. Municipal utilities such as those in the cities of Los Angeles, Glendale and Pasadena aren’t affected by its decisions.

Rooftop solar advocates and environmentalist groups say that strong incentives are needed to encourage people to spend thousands of dollars on rooftop systems that help wean California off fossil fuels.

“It’s the utilities preserving their monopoly,” said William Anastas, a resident of Long Beach, who paid nearly $18,000 to install the panels on his home in 2018. “This is fixed against us. They will get their way.”

The commission and the advocates office blame rooftop solar payments as a major reason for California’s fast-rising electric rates, but critics point to other factors.

Utilities such as Edison, PG&E and SDG&E make much of their profit not by selling more electricity, but by building infrastructure, such as the towers and lines needed to link solar farms far from cities to the grid. On its website, for example, PG&E notes that regulators want to encourage customers to conserve power, so as a result the company “does not make more money when customers use more energy.”

Economist Richard McCann performed an analysis for the rooftop solar industry that found electric rates had risen as the utilities spent more on infrastructure.

Even though homeowners’ solar panels helped keep public electricity demand flat for 20 years, the three companies’ spending on transmission and distribution infrastructure increased by more than 300%, according to McCann, who works for the public policy consulting firm M.Cubed.

Much of that spending, which led to rate increases, was approved by the state’s Public Utilities Commission. The five-member panel appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom has long been faulted for favoring utilities over customers, and those complaints have been heightened in the wake of the Eaton and Palisades fires.

Less than two weeks after the fires began last month, for example, the commission approved Edison’s wildfire mitigation plan even though regulators had detailed myriad problems with how the company was trying to keep its equipment from sparking fires.

Then on Jan. 30, the commission overrode objections from the public and voted to raise Edison’s electric rates so that customers would cover most of the payments made to victims of the 2017 Thomas fire, which according to investigators was ignited by company equipment. After the vote, seven Democratic state legislators sent a letter to the commission, saying the action harmed customers and failed to hold Edison accountable.

“They’re letting utilities treat ratepayers as an ATM,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, former executive director at the California Solar & Storage Assn., which represents companies selling rooftop systems.

California Public Utilities Commission spokeswoman Terrie Prosper disputed that contention. The commission estimates that the rooftop panels are adding 11% to 25% to the electric bills of customers who don’t have them, she said, while not significantly reducing the need for spending on poles and other grid infrastructure.

“While rooftop solar panels can in theory avoid some transmission costs,” Prosper said, “many transmission costs — such as infrastructure upgrades to mitigate wildfire risk — cannot be avoided.”

Edison supports solar power, said Dan Hopper, the utility’s managing director of regulatory policy, but asked state officials to reduce the rooftop incentives because the program was resulting in electrical grid costs “being pushed onto other customers that don’t have solar.”

“We’re concerned about that sort of inequity,” Hopper said. “It’s an inaccurate statement, from my perspective, to say it’s about utility profits.”

PG&E and SDG&E declined to make executives available for comment.

California’s electricity rates are now the second highest in the nation and have increased significantly faster than those in the rest of the nation, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office said in a recent report.

Although general inflation increased by about 18% from 2019 to 2023, the analyst said, rates charged by the three utilities have climbed 48% to 67%.

At the same time, the companies continue to post big profits. PG&E said this month that it earned a profit of almost $2.5 billion in 2024, up 10% from the year before. Edison and SDG&E will report 2024 results later this month. In 2023, the parent of Edison recorded $1.2 billion in profit — a jump of 95% from the year before. SDG&E made $936 million in 2023, up from $915 million in 2022.

The solar threat

The electric utility industry has long recognized the threat posed by rooftop solar.

David Owens, an executive with the Edison Electric Institute, an industry trade group, noted during a 2012 conference that California state officials had given nearly $2 billion in incentives to homeowners installing rooftop solar panels, which meant declining electricity sales for the utilities.

“How do you grow earnings in this environment?” he asked, according to slides in his presentation.

Under California’s system, rooftop solar owners get a credit on their electric bills for the solar energy they don’t use and send to the grid. The credit was based on the current retail electric rate for each utility, which grew in value as the state’s Public Utilities Commission approved rate increases requested by the companies.

In January 2016, the state’s utility commissioners, who had been appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown, voted 3 to 2 to keep paying new rooftop solar customers retail rates for energy they sent to the grid.

That year, the Edison Electric Institute revealed at an executive meeting that it had hired a New York public relations firm, Maslansky and Partners, to polish the utility companies’ public image, as reported previously by the Huffington Post.

The plan, called the Lexicon Project, suggested that utility companies describe rooftop panels as “private solar” that “benefits only a limited number of owners” and raises costs for others.

When the California PUC took up the rate issue again five years later, the utilities emerged as part of a new coalition called Affordable Clean Energy for All that painted rooftop solar as benefiting the wealthy.

“Rooftop solar is adding to income inequality,” said one of the coalition’s social media advertisements.

Whether that is the case continues to be debated. Statistics from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory show that 39% of the owners of the rooftop panels in 2023 had household incomes of less than $100,000. About 12% had incomes below $50,000.

The Times and others detailed how two-thirds of the community groups that had joined the coalition had received money from the state’s utilities.

That financial support, and the fact that the three utilities had paid to create the Affordable Green Energy for All coalition, weren’t always disclosed in the coalition’s public announcements.

The utilities say they followed laws in disclosing their funding. “The coalition’s website clearly showed how it was financially supported,” PG&E said in a statement.

In December 2022, the California commission voted unanimously to reduce financial incentives that homeowners could receive from the panels by about 75%, starting with those purchasing the systems on April 15, 2023.

The commission estimated that homeowners installing the systems after that date could still save about $100 on their bill each month and pay off their systems in about nine years.

The homeowners also can continue to get a 30% federal tax credit on their rooftop systems, which was extended by the Biden administration for the next decade.

The commission said its new rooftop program “controls electricity costs and improves electric bill affordability for all Californians.”

Environmentalists are trying to overturn the 2022 decision in court.

The Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Working Group and the Protect Our Communities Foundation say the commission has not considered certain benefits of the solar panels. Among those, the groups say, is how they reduce greenhouse gases and can limit the amount of land cleared for industrial-scale solar farms.

A state appeals court ruled in late 2023 against a lawsuit brought by the groups. They then took the case to the state Supreme Court, which agreed to hear their arguments. No date for that hearing has been set.

Roger Lin, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the groups question whether the rooftop panel incentives are actually shifting costs to those without the systems.

“There are so many other drivers of high electric bills,” he said, including the rate increases for infrastructure that the companies asked the commission for approval to build.

“It’s like the utilities are saying, ‘Don’t look here, look over there,’“ Lin said.

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The next time you shop for a cooking stove, the gas versions might show a health warning label similar to those on tobacco products.

Because a stove’s blue flame releases air pollution into your kitchen, California lawmakers have passed a bill that would require such warning labels on gas stoves for sale in stores and online. Gov. Gavin Newsom has until the end of September to sign the bill into law.

The legislation comes after a series of lawsuits was filed against stove manufacturers, claiming they should have warned customers about potential health risks. Environmental activists are encouraging people to switch to electric stoves, part of a broader campaign to cut climate pollution from buildings. Now there’s an effort to put health warning labels on stoves nationwide.

A chef replaces her gas stove

About 38% of U.S. homes cook with natural gas, and utilities have preserved that market share with tobacco-style tactics to avoid regulations on gas stoves. Part of that is a decades-old “cooking with gas” campaign that has helped gas stoves remain popular with cooks, including famous ones.

“I will say, historically, I’ve been really a snob about that,” says Samin Nosrat, who wrote the 2017 award-winning cookbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. She learned to cook with gas. “I just never accepted an alternative in my imagination.”

But a few years back, she bought a house with a gas stove, and her carbon monoxide alarm kept going off when she cooked. At first, she assumed the alarm was broken and installed a new one. Finally she called the gas company. A utility worker said that levels of the poisonous gas were “off the charts high” and that she should get checked for carbon monoxide poisoning.

Nosrat was fine but says, “I really didn’t feel safe. I just always had this feeling of like, ‘Is my oven going to kill me?'”

For her to switch from a gas to electric range could have required expensive electrical upgrades and construction that would inconvenience her neighbors. So Nosrat opted for a new style of electric induction stove with a battery that doesn’t need a special outlet.

As part of her installation, the California company Copper measured pollutants in Nosrat’s home before and after. It found that both nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide levels dropped dramatically.

While Nosrat still uses a gas stove in her studio for work, she says it’s a relief to know her home range is no longer sending fossil fuel pollutants into her living space. And she found another benefit to using an induction stove with a smooth cooktop: “Cleaning it rules — like, you just spray it down and wipe it off.”

A California law to warn stove buyers

Another Californian has been learning about indoor air pollution from gas stoves, and as a state lawmaker, she sponsored legislation to warn other stove buyers.

California Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, a Democrat from Santa Cruz, says she knew to turn on the vent hood when using the cooktop, but she hadn’t thought about her gas oven. “So if I’ve got a lasagna in the oven, I have never put the vent on, because you’re not seeing the smoke and everything,” Pellerin told NPR. “So I was emitting horrible gases into my home.”

Medical experts say nitrogen dioxide is the biggest concern. It’s a reddish-brown gas and is a key element of smog outdoors. It can irritate airways and may contribute to the development of asthma, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The American Public Health Association has labeled gas cooking stoves “a public health concern,” and the American Medical Association warns that cooking with gas increases the risk of childhood asthma.

Gas stoves can also leak methane, even when they’re off, and stoves emit benzene, which is linked to cancer. While stove manufacturers have developed cleaner and more efficient burners, they aren’t widely available to consumers.

If Pellerin’s legislation becomes law, it will require a label on gas stoves for sale in stores and online that says, “Gas stoves can release nitrogen dioxide, benzene, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and other harmful pollutants into the air, which can be toxic to people and pets.” The label would also mention associated risks for breathing problems, suggest using a vent hood and say, “Young children, people with asthma, and people with heart or lung disease are especially vulnerable to the toxic effects of combustion pollutants.”

“I think this is just important for us to have transparency and inform consumers so they can make the decision that’s right for their family,” Pellerin says.

Similar bills were introduced in Illinois and New York, but unlike California’s version, lawmakers did not pass them out of the legislature.

The campaign for warning labels is part of a larger climate effort to get consumers to switch to electric appliances that don’t burn fossil fuels. Commercial and residential buildings account for about 13% of heat-trapping emissions, mainly from the use of gas appliances.

The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) opposed California’s health warning legislation and suggested a different label that does not focus on fossil fuel combustion pollution. The trade group echoes gas industry arguments that smoke and fumes from cooking food are a bigger problem than pollution from burning gas and that two separate issues are being conflated.

“If we want to talk about people’s health and indoor air quality, then let’s talk about that. If we want to talk about fossil fuel versus electrification, then we need to talk about that,” says Kevin Messner, AHAM’s executive vice president and chief policy officer.

Messner says all pollution from stoves — electric or gas — requires proper ventilation to prevent pollution from accumulating in homes. With warning labels only on gas stoves, Messner argues that this sends the wrong message.

“So if you go to, let’s say, a retailer and you see a gas cooking product with a warning or information that says you should use ventilation. Then right next to it, you have an electric appliance or an induction [stove] that does not have that warning — this is common sense that you’re going to think, ‘I don’t need to use ventilation for the electric appliance,'” Messner says.

AHAM says it’s disappointed California lawmakers passed the health warning label only for gas stoves. But that has energized activists, who hope they can get similar labels on gas stoves for sale nationwide.

A national campaign for gas stove health warnings

The use of gas stoves has become a flash point in the culture wars. One of the groups pushing for health warning labels has turned to humor to spread its message. Gas Leaks Project released a parody trailer this year for a reality show it calls Hot & Toxic. The premise is an “unsuspecting homeowner” who loves her new gas stove but later learns it comes with some of “the hottest, most toxic housemates imaginable.”

Each character represents a pollutant created from burning gas, including carbon monoxide, or “C.MO,” who echoes a line that reality show fans will recognize, but with a twist. “I did not come here to make friends,” she says. “I came here to cause chest pain, nausea and vomiting.”

A campaign associated with the parody encourages people to sign a petition to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) telling it to put warning labels on gas stoves nationwide.

The CPSC was at the center of a 2023 culture war campaign led by conservatives, who falsely claimed the Biden administration wanted to take away Americans’ gas stoves. Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, wrote on social media, “I’ll NEVER give up my gas stove. If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands.”

The outrage was prompted by a story in which CPSC Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. suggested that the CPSC might consider stricter regulations on new gas stoves in response to health concerns.

Trumka and the CPSC did not respond to NPR’s requests for interviews. Even before that kerfuffle, the CPSC had launched a task force about gas stoves and indoor air quality. It included industry, environmental and consumer groups.

“We met at least monthly for a year and a half,” says AHAM’s Messner, adding that participants were leaning toward regulating cooking fumes instead of fossil fuel combustion pollution. “The enthusiasm for having CPSC’s task force trailed off by some who didn’t see it going in the direction where they wanted it to go, politically.”

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group disputes that conclusion and says the staff member directing the group was reassigned. Still, U.S. PIRG has redirected its campaign and launched a new effort to get health warning labels on gas stoves sold in Washington, D.C., by suing one of the biggest stove manufacturers.

Suing gas stove companies

U.S. PIRG filed a lawsuit in May against the Chinese company Haier, which owns GE Appliances. U.S. PIRG says the manufacturer violates the District of Columbia’s consumer protection law, which “prohibits a wide variety of deceptive and unconscionable business practices.”

“We’re saying that it’s a deceptive practice for GE Appliances to sell gas stoves in the District without warning consumers about the well-documented health risks associated with cooking with gas,” says Abe Scarr, U.S. PIRG’s energy and utilities program director.

The group isn’t asking for money, aside from paying U.S. PIRG’s attorney fees and costs. Instead it wants the court to require GE Appliances to put health warning labels on gas stoves sold in the District.

A spokesperson for GE Appliances said the company won’t comment on the litigation but said: “All our ranges and cooktops meet or exceed applicable safety standards.”

Other gas stove manufacturers face potential class action lawsuits in California and Wisconsin that claim companies should disclose the risk of pollutants to consumers. Attorneys in Massachusetts have filed a similar case against the local gas utility Eversource.

Scarr says the legal cases are needed because stove buyers aren’t getting the message that pollution from gas stoves can lead to health problems. His group surveyed 62 Lowe’s, Home Depot and Best Buy locations in 11 states. Secret shoppers were dispatched to ask about health concerns.

U.S. PIRG found that most salespeople “flatly denied or expressed ignorance about the health risks of gas stoves” and that 15% of them “recommended gas stoves over electric ranges or induction cooktops, even when the secret shopper voiced concerns about pollution.”

Lowe’s and Best Buy did not respond to NPR’s interview requests. A Home Depot spokesperson said, “Most customers choose a gas, electric or induction range based on which fuel their home is equipped for” and also said that the retailer sells range hoods and that a stove’s instruction manual “speaks to the importance of ventilation.”

As Scarr’s group pursues its D.C. lawsuit, he says they plan to again pressure the CPSC to require health warning labels for the entire country, possibly as soon as next year.

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The raging wildfires that have become a mainstay in certain California communities are not only devastating family dwellings — they are also impeding Californians from procuring the insurance necessary to protect these homes in the future.

Aiming to both quell soaring prices and bring back firms that have left the Golden State, regulators are proposing sweeping reforms that they believe could revive a competitive insurance market.

While experts agree that the status quo may no longer be sustainable, opinions remain divided on the merits of the proposed changes — which some fear could drive up prices further.

“The situation is hurting consumers badly,” Amy Bach, executive director of the consumer advocacy group United Policyholders, told The Hill.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s going to resolve on its own,” Bach added.

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara last week called for public input on the final phase of his wildfire modeling regulation, which is many months in the making and has sparked significant debate.

Lara’s strategy would update Proposition 103, a 1988 ballot measure that served “to protect consumers from arbitrary insurance rates and practices” and encouraged a competitive and fair marketplace, according to the Insurance Commission. 

Proposition 103 determined that rate changes could only occur with the authorization of the commissioner, while also establishing a public participation process in which so-called “intervenors” could provide technical input and recover associated costs.

Lara’s office said in a press statement that his update aims to close a loophole in Proposition 103: Insurance firms today can request rates at any level to help compensate for an increased risk of losses but are not required to cover all Californians.

The new regulation, in contrast, would require companies to insure properties in distressed regions at a rate equivalent to 85 percent of the firm’s statewide market share. 

In addition, the proposal would incorporate the state’s first use of “catastrophe modeling,” localized simulations of potential risk based on historical analyses and probabilistic calculations that such events will occur in the future.

Whether relying upon such simulations, also known as “cat models,” would end up lowering or raising consumer rates, however, is a matter of contention.

Those in favor of employing these tools argue that other states have long done so and that proactive efforts to adapt California homes to a changing climate could mitigate risk.

“Over the past several years, the state has put billions toward wildfire mitigation efforts and homeowners have made significant investments in home hardening,” Lara said in a statement.

“This is not accounted for by our existing retrospective, past-focused models for ratemaking,” the commissioner continued. “We want consumers to reap the full benefits of these efforts through modern, forward-looking models on how rates are calculated.”

But others are far less certain that the models would account for such improvements — especially because the technology is often proprietary.

Bach cited catastrophe models as a reason for her muted enthusiasm about Lara’s proposal. Yet she expressed willingness “to let the commissioner’s sustainable insurance strategy go into place.”

“If it doesn’t work, then I guess we go back to the drawing board,” Bach said, expressing approval for the mandatory coverage component of the regulation.

Bach stressed that thus far, she has seen no indication that catastrophe models, when applied to wildfire-prone areas, are accounting for active mitigation efforts in price determinations. She also expressed concern that wildfire models are much newer than those for, say, hurricanes.

“We are nervous,” she continued. “The reality is that prices are so high already, and affordability is so low right now.”

Nonetheless, Bach acknowledged that California’s lack of catastrophe models was contributing to the exodus of insurance companies from the state. Beginning in 2022 and 2023, many big firms stopped offering services to new customers, often citing wildfire risk. 

“The writing was on the wall that cat models are going to come to California, just for practical reasons,” she acknowledged.

“We’re glad at least there’s a quid pro quo — that as a condition of insurers getting to use cat models, they also have to pledge to insure more homes in the areas that have been abandoned,” Bach added.

Harvey Rosenfield, founder of Consumer Watchdog and the author of Proposition 103, decried catastrophe models as “completely unjust, untested and unreliable.”

“Models are cloaked in the guise of technological infallibility, but they are drafted, they’re written, they’re controlled by humans,” Rosenfield told The Hill.

He also argued that their use would violate provisions of the voter-approved Proposition 103, because this would deny consumers their legal right to examine the details of these models.

“Nobody has the power to rewrite Proposition 103 to eliminate its protections,” Rosenfield added.

The applicability of catastrophe models to wildfire risk assessments was one focal point in a June 2024 working paper about the adaptation of insurance markets to a changing climate. Although these models have improved the ability of insurers to gauge wildfire risk, the resultant projections remain “inherently uncertain,” according to the paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“The modern catastrophe models bring a lot of value to insurance pricing and rate setting,” co-author Judson Boomhower, assistant professor of economics at the University of California San Diego School of Social Sciences, told The Hill.

“They give you a much more nuanced view of risk for a given property or a given area,” added Boomhower, who is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

That more detailed vantage point, he explained, is more sophisticated than the “backward-looking historical rate-setting methods that insurers have been required to use in California.”

Nonetheless, Boomhower also recognized that catastrophe models “are sort of a black box” due to their proprietary nature and resultant questions of transparency.

“Those are legitimate challenges for regulators to think about, but at a high level, this is the best scientific method for assessing catastrophe risk,” he said.

Boomhower described Florida as “a little bit ahead” of California from this perspective, as the state requires companies to give regulators some insight into how their individual models work.

In the working paper, Boomhower and his colleagues reconstructed pricing formulas used in California by six major insurers — combining data from company-provided premiums with proprietary information from about 100,000 households.

The authors found that following the 2017 and 2018 wildfire seasons, both premiums and the rate of policy cancellations in high-risk areas surged. They also observed increasing reliance on the state’s “quasi-private insurer of last resort” —  called California FAIR —  the basic but expensive property insurance provided when traditional coverage is unavailable.

Among the paper’s key findings was the fact that insurers exhibited “striking variation” in how firms priced wildfire risk, with some only divided the market roughly, at the zip-code-level, and pricing risk at a more granular level — using catastrophe models.

“There’s tons of heterogeneity in wildfire loss risk, even within zip codes or even within neighborhoods,” Boomhower said.

Insurers with less sophisticated models seemed to end up with a slew of higher-risk customers and greater-than-expected costs, which the authors dubbed the “winners’ curse.”

Meanwhile, they found that companies using the more granular models tended to attract lower-risk customers. With that in mind, Boomhower projected that there would be “a lot of competition among insurance companies to find the low-risk homes in these designated high-risk areas.”

“There are parts of the state where wildfire risk has increased really rapidly,” he continued. “Those are places where insurance rates probably do need to go up relative to where they’ve been historically, just to reflect the increasing risk.”

To the extent that Proposition 103 has held rates down, Boomhower acknowledged that the proposed updates could end up raising prices.

“On the other hand, that may be what you need to ensure availability in some of those places,” he said.

While the status quo may not be ideal for anyone, Rosenfield stressed his belief that insurance firms might come back to California without a change in regulation — simply because it will be in their financial interest to do so.

“California is the biggest single insurance market in the planet, and they’re just going to come back in and take advantage of that,” he said.

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