Alliance members are working to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping temperature increases below 1.5 degrees Celsius by reducing emissions, accelerating action, centering equity, and tracking progress. 

Explore California's policies and actions across the Alliance's 10 key policy areas. Numbers presented below only reflect the number of policies in this database and thus may not reflect all climate policies pursued.

california

GHG Targets + Governance

Just Transition + Equity

Industry

Pricing Carbon + Valuing Damages

Electricity

Transportation

Resilience

Natural + Working Lands

Climate Finance

Buildings

total

AB 2553

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exempts from its requirements residential projects on infill sites and transit priority projects that meet certain requirements, including a requirement that the projects are located within 1/2 mile of a major transit stop. CEQA defines “major transit stop” to include, among other locations, the intersection of 2 or more major bus routes with a frequency of service interval of 15 minutes or less during the morning and afternoon peak commute periods.
This bill revises the definition of “major transit stop” to increase the frequency of service interval to 20 minutes.

AB-2503 California Environmental Quality Act: exemption: passenger rail projects.

This bill would expand exemptions from the California Environmental Quality Act to include a public project for the institution or increase of other passenger rail service, which will be exclusively used by zero-emission trains, located entirely within existing rail rights-of-way or existing highway rights-of-way.

California Home Energy Rebates Funding Allocation

President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act established the Home Electrification and Home Efficiency Rebate Programs (together, the Home Energy Rebate Programs). The Home Energy Rebate Programs include $8.8 billion dollars in grant funding for states and Tribes to establish consumer home energy rebate programs, enabling communities to make homes more energy efficient, upgrade to electric appliances, and cut energy costs. California was allocated about $581 million.

The California Energy Commission is launching three programs under the IRA: Home Efficiency Rebates (HOMES), Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates (HEEHRA), and Training for Residential Energy Contractors (CA-TREC). Starting in October 2024, the HEEHRA Phase I Program rebates for energy efficient appliances and equipment are available to income-eligible California multifamily property owners/operators. The other IRA-funded rebate program – Home Efficiency Rebates (HOMES) – has not yet launched.

California Home Energy Rebates

The Caltrans System Investment Strategy (CSIS) updates the department’s project evaluation and nomination process to better identify and promote multimodal, climate-friendly projects in funding decisions.
 
The new tool fulfills a key action in the Climate Action Plan for Transportation Infrastructure (CAPTI), which called for a data- and performance-driven investment strategy to more effectively align the projects Caltrans supports for state and federal grants with the state’s ambitious climate goals.

The new analytical tool includes nine quantitative and two qualitative metrics to evaluate projects. Quantitative metrics include safety, vehicle miles traveled, accessibility, the effect on disadvantaged communities, land usage, improvements to bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, improvements to zero-emission vehicle infrastructure, and improvements to freight movement. Qualitative metrics include climate resilience and public engagement. Caltrans will use the recently unveiled Equity Index tool as part of the process.
 
Under CSIS, projects that reduce dependence on driving and expand access to multimodal options such as transit, walking and biking will score higher during the project evaluation process. Caltrans will use CSIS to inform its decisions around which projects to nominate for applicable state and federal grants while collaborating closely with partner agencies to make their projects as competitive as possible. In addition to combatting climate change, the new investment strategy will help the department gauge other values in transportation infrastructure projects such as safety, mobility and accessibility, environmental health and justice, and quality of life.