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The clean energy transition refers to the shift from fossil fuel-based energy systems (coal, oil, natural gas) to renewable and low-carbon energy sources like solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and energy storage technologies. This transformation involves changes in how we generate, distribute, store, and consume energy across all sectors—electricity, transportation, heating, and industrial processes.
California’s clean energy transition is crucial for meeting both local and state goals. The current energy system emits greenhouse gases and causes other environmental impacts including air, water, and soil pollution. Participants in SLECC engagements prioritized expanding local renewable energy and building decarbonization.
The State has committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2045 and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2030, targets that have been similarly set by over 250 local governments. The clean energy transition is fundamental to these targets, as the electricity sector represents a major source of emissions that can be effectively decarbonized through renewable energy deployment. With advances in storage technology and grid modernization, renewable energy increasingly provides reliable power while protecting against price volatility. The transition also supports California’s goal of maintaining economic leadership while reducing emissions. Clean energy industries create local jobs, attract investment into regions, and position the state as a global leader in emerging technologies like battery storage, electric vehicles, and smart grid systems. Clean energy development helps reduce local air pollution, particularly in disadvantaged communities, directly improving community health outcomes and addressing environmental justice concerns. Further, State and local government entities and utilities can achieve direct and long term operational savings by implementing clean and distributed energy resources on their facilities, which supports affordability for both taxpayers and ratepayers.
This priority area is relevant to the function of:
California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) requiring 60% renewable electricity by 2030 has driven massive renewable deployment. The state’s cap-and-trade program provides market incentives for emissions reductions, while building codes increasingly mandate solar installations and energy efficiency. Large solar and wind projects have dramatically reduced costs through economies of scale. California now regularly achieves periods where renewables meet 100% of electricity demand during peak production hours. Aggressive storage mandates and declining battery costs have made California a global leader in grid-scale energy storage, helping solve renewable intermittency challenges.
The federal Inflation Reduction Act, before being dismantled, catalyzed significant investment and tax credits to support grid modernization, domestic solar manufacturing, solar access, home energy rebates, etc.
Local-level leadership has advanced progress in the State’s clean energy transition, propelled by a strong sense of urgency and importance in many regions. Initial CPUC investment in local government partnerships two decades ago supported energy and climate capacity at the local level. Since then, enormous progress is being made through community choice aggregation (CCA) programs and municipal utilities that purchase cleaner electricity for utility customers at lower rates, Regional Energy Networks that are transforming the market for efficiency and distributed energy resources, municipal building codes that exceed state standards, innovative solar financing and energy efficiency programs, and municipal solar and efficiency installations. Recent regional technical assistance programs support locally led clean energy progress. Local workforce and job training programs are building the market capacity to continue addressing clean energy in buildings. Local plans are engaging community stakeholders deeply to achieve community benefits alongside aggressive energy targets. Participants highlighted major progress in recent years in the development of wind, solar, and storage. Some regions, like the Inland Empire, emphasize their potential to implement much more, while others, like the Bay Area are more constrained and are looking at infill project opportunities.
To achieve the desired future outlined above, California will need to accelerate climate action across CA. Participants share that several key barriers impede progress and require further attention, as detailed below: Interconnection & Energization Processes, Grid Infrastructure, Investment Decisions, Funding, Siting & Permitting, Supply Chain, Assistance Coordination, Residential Decarbonization & Affordability, Workforce, Data Access, Codes & Standards, Community Microgrid Deployment and Utility Structure. On the left, toggle through these barriers to view details about challenges experienced across the state and solution opportunities at the state and local level.
Transitioning vehicles and buildings to clean electricity is challenging due to electrical capacity constraints, delayed load studies, long interconnection and energization queues, and process inconsistency managed by the utilities.
Insufficient and aging infrastructure (e.g. battery storage, smart grid, transmission) cannot adequately support or optimize growing energy demand (e.g EVs, VPPs, AI, data centers, housing), the rapid transition to renewables, abundant day-time energy, and reliability as climate impacts increase.
Despite state goals related to distributed, localized energy resources, investments, regulatory decisions, and policies often discourage or hamstring clean energy deployment or favor centralized utility infrastructure.
Lack of sufficient, accessible, flexible, and reliably recurring funding/financing to support widespread implementation of place-based clean energy projects and decarbonization.
Siting, planning, and deciding on utility-scale energy infrastructure projects lacks transparency and alignment with societal needs, and faces community resistance in some areas, often those most remote.
Global dependencies and geopolitical risks slows progress towards clean energy goals.
Lack of coordinated systems, compounded by fragmented programs, language barriers, and community mistrust, prevents households from accessing or trusting home decarbonization assistance.
Residential energy bills are increasing, making electrification initiatives more difficult, and CA lacks a coordinated strategy to address the root issues of system costs that impact the trajectory of rates while protecting energy efficiency programs that help lower customer costs.
The market of qualified workers necessary to construct and install clean energy projects and retrofits is not large enough, especially outside of major urban centers.
California lacks consistent access to data about consumption, energy supply infrastructure, and other information that can inform CAPs, capital projects, and cost affordability impact analyses.
While California has one of the nation’s strongest statewide energy codes, weak enforcement and limited local capacity undermine its impact. Efforts to go further through local reach codes can be highly political and result in legal challenges, and are now constrained by a legislated moratorium.
Community-scale microgrids remain financially and technically difficult to deploy due to restrictive utility rules, undervaluation of battery reserves, and high coordination needs for EV fleets and other DERs. These challenges, compounded by PSPS outages and slow permitting, prevent microgrids from delivering reliable and cost-effective community resilience.
Investor-owned utilities’ concentrated control over energy infrastructure limits public power and community solutions, creating legal and procedural hurdles for municipalization and keeping many projects unnecessarily under utility purview.
I-REN focuses on public sector programs, building code enhancement, and workforce development in the Inland Empire. IREN launched its fellowship program dedicated to building capacity and energy comprehension within local public agencies in 2023. In 2024, it has placed 25 fellowship interns in the Inland Empire for energy efficiency projects.
The Bassett & Avocado Heights Advanced Energy Community (BAAEC) is a groundbreaking five-year demonstration project that addresses environmental justice through community-scale clean energy deployment in two disadvantaged unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. Serving approximately 28,000 residents across 4.7 square miles, the project is funded by a California Energy Commission EPIC Challenge grant and has already provided free solar installations to 34 homeowners while offering 20% average monthly electricity bill savings through its Community Solar program. AdvancedenergycommunityAdvancedenergycommunity These predominantly Latino communities have been disproportionately burdened by pollution from three nearby freeways, the Quemetco battery recycling center, and a nearby landfill, resulting in chronic health issues including asthma and lung cancer, with neighborhoods predicted to experience over 40 additional extreme heat days per year by 2050. Boom CaliforniaHomes
BAAEC employs an integrated approach featuring four main components: Advanced Homes providing up to $50,000 in free energy equipment including solar panels and battery storage managed as a virtual power plant; Community Solar offering 100% local renewable electricity at 20% discounts; a Microgrid Resiliency Hub with 4-5 hours of backup power capacity; and Clean Transportation including EV charging infrastructure and zero-emissions mobility services expected to reduce annual emissions by 30.5 MTCO2e. Basset/Avocado Heights Advanced Energy Community (BAAEC) The project also demonstrates innovative technologies like blockchain-enabled carbon credit trading and real-time vehicle emissions monitoring while prioritizing community engagement through youth advocacy programs and leadership academies that train residents to become energy champions.
Led by The Energy Coalition in partnership with organizations including ActiveSGV, UCLA’s California Center for Sustainable Communities, and GRID Alternatives, BAAEC serves as a replicable model for just energy transitions that simultaneously address climate goals and environmental justice. AdvancedenergycommunityAdvancedenergycommunity The project’s success stems from breaking down structural barriers common in disadvantaged communities—including high levels of renters, lower-income and limited-English-speaking residents—through comprehensive community engagement, cultural competency, and elimination of upfront costs. By centering authentic community partnership while deploying cutting-edge clean energy technology, BAAEC demonstrates how ambitious climate goals and community empowerment can be achieved together, providing valuable lessons for scaling similar initiatives across California and beyond.
On June 11, 2025, the California Energy Commission voted unanimously to approve a permit for the country’s largest solar and battery project to date Wednesday via a new permitting process to streamline certain renewable energy projects.
The Intersect Power’s Darden Energy Project in the southwestern Central Valley includes solar panels that can generate 1,150 megawatts, roughly enough to power 862,500 homes, as well as a giant battery that can keep those homes powered for four hours and a substation to connect to the grid.
The vote is the first project approved under a new opt-in streamlined permitting process established by a 2022 state law, AB 205. The law is aimed at shortening review timelines and circumventing local opposition in service of California’s goal to rid its grid of greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. AB 205’s new one, stop, 270-day certification process is explicitly in lieu of any permit, certificate, or similar document required by a state, local, or regional agency, or federal agency, to the extent permitted by federal law, for those facilities. That is, the law effectively sidesteps local permitting obstacles. (source)
In deference to local authorities, the legislation does require the Energy Commission to forward applications to a local government having land use and related jurisdiction in the areas of the proposed site and related facility and would require the local agencies to review the application and submit comments on the application, as provided. The legislation further authorizes local agencies to request a fee from the Energy Commission to reimburse the local agency for the actual and added costs of the review by the local agency. (source)
This is not an example of state-local coordination, but rather an example of the state imposing a solution to sidestep a role normally under local jurisdiction. State and local leaders should monitor this project and others approved under this new certification to determine whether this was an effective way to fast-track clean energy, or simply another assault on local control.
The Project Delivery Program helps cities, counties, water agencies, school districts, and others overcome barriers to energy efficiency and eventually lead by example. It does this by filling project management, technical assistance, and financing gaps in existing utility efficiency programs at no cost to the recipient. The program is provided by the Southern California Regional Network (SoCalREN), which offers a wide variety of customized energy efficiency support services to public agencies in Southern California with an emphasis on underserved communities. Eligible customers must receive service from SoCalGas and/or Southern California Edison.
The SoCalREN project implementer works closely with public agency decision-makers and technical experts to support the entire project from identification of a site through completion. This includes conducting audits, developing technically feasible and cost-effective efficiency interventions that will create persistent energy savings (e.g., interior and exterior lighting controls, water controls optimization, retrocommissioning, HVAC upgrades), supporting construction management, and creating project buy-in. Participating agencies also gain access to the collective knowledge and expertise of the SoCalREN network, which provides access to best practices and lessons for reducing costs and overcoming common barriers. For its diverse range of buildings served, high percentage of projects in underserved communities, and variety of services offered, SoCalREN’s Project Delivery Program is a Leader of the Pack.
Key accomplishments and program features:
Local Government Sustainable Energy Coalition has established a working group specifically focused on addressing interconnection and grid capacity issues affecting local governments.The working group is reviewing the Resiliency and Reliability proceeding, advocating for better data on reliability concerns. They highlight the need for transparency from utilities and state agencies on outage locations, causes, responses, cost analysis, and available safeguards.
San Diego Community Power, a Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) focused on providing more renewable energy at lower costs. It manages procurement of locally-sourced energy and energy efficiency programs, including SD Regional Energy Network, and implements programs like Solar Battery Savings, which placed batteries in 1,600 homes.
The Tribal Energy and Climate Collaborative (TECC) partners with 25 member tribes of the Southern California Tribal Chairman’s Association. It focuses on developing tribal capacity for green energy projects and views green energy as both climate adaptation and economic development for tribes. It recently began helping tribes participate in CPUC (California Public Utilities Commission) rulemakings and regulatory processes.
Grants to tribes like Viejas and San Pasqual to develop tribal energy utilities empowers helping tribes to own and operate their own energy systems. Projects include outreach and engagement with the CPUC to help tribes understand regulatory barriers.
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