Author: timothywallach

Lobby spending and campaign finance reports have been released for 2023, and one thing is clear: the grip Big oil and gas has on California’s political landscape is stronger than ever.

In 2023 (a non-election year!), the oil and gas industry poured over $1 million into the pockets of California candidates and spent nearly $22 million lobbying against critical climate bills. Sempra Energy stood out as the largest corporate contributor to California Legislators in 2023. This influx of money was strategically deployed to try to deepen influence and delay progress on climate solutions in California. 

Breaking Down the Numbers

The influence of big oil and gas is widespread, with more than three-quarters of California’s legislators receiving fossil fuel money in 2023. This includes 72% of Democrats and 96% of Republicans, indicating a bipartisan attempt to buy influence on the state’s environmental progress. This concerted effort by oil and gas to attempt to control California’s legislative agenda highlights a glaring conflict: while these companies report billions in profits and their CEOs enjoy multi-million dollar paychecks, they spend millions to obstruct the transition to clean energy and maintain high energy prices, leaving California families to bear the burden.

Check out CCAP’s updated Climate Scorecard HERE to see which oil and gas companies are contributing to California legislators and learn how those legislators are voting on key climate policies.

The California Climate Accountability Project has released its updated climate scorecard to reflect all of the 2023 legislative votes. The updated scorecard showcases California’s climate leaders and California’s climate laggards. Curious about how a legislator voted on climate issues? Wondering how much money their campaigns received from Oil & Gas? Take a look at the new scores on the California Climate Accountability Project’s interactive webtool.

As California faces the growing challenges of climate change, including wildfires, droughts, and extreme heat, residents are asking more from legislators on climate and clean energy. In fact, 70% say they want the electricity grid to run on 100% renewable energy by 2035. Thus, it is paramount that our elected officials uphold promises and act as responsible stewards of our environment, properly representing constituents. 

2023 was another important year for climate legislation in California. Several key climate bills crossed the governor’s desk this year. The below bills have been added to the scorecard from the 2023 legislative session. These bills are critical to California’s clean energy future and residents should be able to easily understand how their legislators voted on these bills. The 2023 climate bills that have been added to the scorecard are:

• SB 253 Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act
• SB 261 Greenhouse gasses: climate-related financial risk
• AB 1167 Oil and gas: acquisition: bonding requirements
• AB 631 Oil and gas: enforcement: penalties

We know that California politics isn’t always black and white and not every legislator who accepts Oil & Gas money allows it to influence their vote. However, it is clear that the fossil fuel industry is constantly trying to buy power and influence. While perhaps some Californians would not be surprised that certain Republicans received Oil & Gas funding and then were aligned with the oil and gas industry in opposing climate legislation, several Democrats also failed to protect California’s climate. In total, seven Democrats both accepted financial contributions from oil and gas and failed to support any of the climate bills detailed above. They are:

• Marie Alvarado-Gil (Senator, District 4)
• Jasmeet Bains (Assemblymember, District 35)
• Mike Gipson (Assemblymember, District 65)
• Tim Grayson (Assemblymember, District 15)
• Blanca Rubio (Assemblymember, District 48)
• Esmeralda Soria (Assemblymember, District 27)
• Carlos Villapudua (Assemblymember, District 13)

2024 is a seminal year for climate and clean energy legislation in California and across the country because scientists say we must rapidly reduce emissions and limit warming to avoid the most devastating and irreversible impacts of climate change.. We’ll continue to ensure that the public knows when legislators take Oil & Gas money and subsequently do not support critical climate legislation. Stay tuned throughout the year for more updates and information on your legislator’s climate accountability. 

The California Climate Accountability Project urges Californians to examine their legislators – explore our webtool to access comprehensive information about legislators’ voting records and financial ties to Oil & Gas interests.

What do SEMPRA, Chevron, and the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) have in common? All three are among the top spenders in recently submitted California lobby expenditure reports, shelling out a combined $2.4 million in just the first three months of 2022, according to lobbying disclosures.

That’s on top of the millions they have made in campaign contributions and independent expenditures on behalf of lawmakers in recent elections, and the oil and gas industry has used that influence to rig the political system in California and push an agenda to burn more fossil fuels. Now, instead of denying the impacts of climate change, the industry is delaying real action by trying to create special deals for themselves.

A closer look at the lobby reports reveals SEMPRA, Chevron, and WSPA continue to share an interest in blocking urgent climate and environmental justice action in the California legislature and regulatory agencies. They are required to report all bills and regulatory processes they seek to influence and for the first quarter of 2022, all three list:

• Assembly Bill 1218 – which would set zero emission goals for cars and trucks and phase out gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035.
• Senate Bill 260 – which would require companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions.
• Senate Bill 342 – which would add two members to the South Coast Air Quality Management District from communities disproportionately burdened by pollution and environmental justice issues.
• California Air Resources Board (CARB) Climate Change Scoping Plan Update – a blueprint that will guide the next 20 years of climate action in California.
  

Despite Californians’ strong public support for climate action and clean energy solutions and a history of enacting landmark climate policy, the industry’s campaigns and lobby investments are again paying off for oil and gas interests – with key climate action weakened and stalled. Assembly Bill 1218 died after failing to be scheduled for a vote on the House floor. Senate Bill 342 failed on the Senate floor with 13 Democratic and Republican Senators failing to even cast a vote. And Senate Bill 260 passed the Senate floor but has languished for three months without a hearing in the House. CARB’s recently released draft Climate Change Scoping Plan does not include a target date or plan for the phaseout of oil refining, delays zero emission vehicle sale goals, and relies heavily on carbon capture and storage, a key priority for oil and gas interests. 

If gas and oil executives and lobbyists get their way and are able to block and slow our transition to cleaner, more reliable, cheaper clean energy, Californians will bear the costs. Our climate crisis will worsen, we’ll have fewer energy jobs, our air will be more polluted, and families will pay more for energy, while gas and oil executives squeeze more profit. Leaders need to do what huge supermajorities of Californians want – promote clean energy from solar and wind and ensure that clean energy powers our cars, homes and economy. Leaders can’t be for clean energy and industry special deals – it’s time to pick a side.

The oil industry, led by the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), has been working hard to slow the adoption of zero emissions vehicles in the West, pitting them directly against trends in the auto industry and against their own claim that they support increasing access to reliable and environmentally responsible energy options. 

WSPA spent over $4.3 million dollars on lobbying in 2021 and invested heavily in lobbying against climate-friendly legislation and policies related to electric vehicles. The trade group continued to drive the false narrative that policies that will help California transition toward lifesaving electric vehicles are “arbitrary mandates.” 

Studies show that transitioning to electric vehicles would save more than 7,000 lives in California by 2050, and corporate giants like GM and Ford have already committed to producing mostly electric cars in the next 10 years because it makes sense for their business model. The majority of Californians also support this transition — a decisive majority of  Californians believe all new vehicles shouldn’t produce polluting emissions by 2035. But WSPA is opposing key policies that would get more electric vehicles on California’s roads.

WSPA’s recent lobbying efforts to stop the build-out of charging stations and new electric vehicles gives us one more example of oil and gas executives and their lobbyists pushing a narrow corporate agenda to burn more fossil fuels and block California’s leadership on climate, just so they can keep profiting a little longer.

Here’s a breakdown of WSPA’s recent lobbying efforts and claims against electric vehicles:

WSPA created the misleading website Energy Ideas CA to oppose ongoing electric vehicle initiatives in California. The site includes false claims that switching to electric vehicles will drive up consumer costs, despite evidence that clean cars will be cheaper and more reliable than doubling down on dirty energy. We’ve seen this playbook before. WSPA is interfering with our cheap electric vehicle future by trying to keep us tied to dirty technologies of the past. 

WSPA opposed electric vehicle legislation by testifying in opposition, signing letters, and commenting to the California Public Utilities Commission. WSPA directly opposed a bill that would codify California’s transition to electric vehicles by 2035, a policy goal that the vast majority of Californians support. Oil, gas, and allied climate opponents are desperately trying to stall progress on climate action — and even take us backward — by forcing Californians to spend money supporting outdated gas infrastructure instead of the clean and affordable solutions they want to invest in.

WSPA falsely claimed that increasing access to electric vehicles will cost Californians jobs and increase prices. WSPA CEO Catherine Reheis-Boyd has pushed the narrative that California’s transition to electric vehicles will cost hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs. The numbers say otherwise. California has five times more clean energy than oil and gas industry jobs, and phasing in climate-friendly policies will protect workers’ livelihoods and help keep costs reasonable.

WSPA is trying to block progress across the West; they opposed electric vehicle efforts in Washington state and Nevada. In Nevada, WSPA presented at the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection Clean Cars Nevada stakeholder workshop on June 17, 2021, claiming that WSPA’s companies are vital to keeping Nevada’s citizens supplied with the energy they need to fuel their homes. WSPA also testified in opposition to a Clean Fuel Standard bill in the Washington State Legislature calling it a “costly and ineffective mandate.” WSPA knows that oil and gas executives make the most money by ensuring our economy and our communities burn dirty fuels. That’s why they have opposed smart policies that will make the West less polluted.

WSPA has spent millions of dollars trying to influence state governments to defeat bills that will save lives and safeguard our climate, and they’re continuing to mislead the public to protect their own profits at the expense of our health and wallets.

California needs to act quickly and in the public’s interest. We have a lot to gain by transitioning to cleaner cars, and risk facing the steep costs of natural disaster and pollution cleanup, increased healthcare costs, and the loss of land, water, and wildlife that come from burning fossil fuels.

If you want to understand the climate fight in California, you need to know about SoCalGas. The Southern California affiliate of Sempra — the nation’s largest natural gas utility company —  has emerged as perhaps the leading opponent of the next logical steps to fight climate change and pollution in California. They are pioneers of a new and more deceptive kind of opposition to climate action, using front groups and lobbying tactics to push state legislators to carve out special policies that advance a pro-gas agenda. 

California is moving toward the adoption of clean energy, like solar and wind, and transitioning to 100 percent clean energy enjoys remarkably broad public support: the decisive majority of Californians strongly support policies to shift the electrical grid to run on 100 percent renewable energy by 2035. And as the state grapples with fires, droughts, and other immediate impacts of climate change, the need to phase in clean energy, rather than doubling down on dirty energy, is urgent. 

As clean energy is increasingly available and affordable, we all want to see it powering more of our lives, including zero-emission cars and new technologies to heat and cool our homes. This will benefit Californians’ health, the economy, and the environment, but it’s a fundamental problem for SoCalGas. SoCalGas only sells gas to its customers, unlike some other utilities or companies that also supply electricity or other forms of clean energy. This explains their desperation to slow California’s transition to renewable energy.

It also defines the stakes in California’s climate debate by pitting the interests of consumers, energy workers, and our environment against narrow corporate interests.

Funding affiliated front groups to oppose or delay climate policies geared toward phasing out use of natural gas in California — SoCalGas helped create the astroturf group Californians for Balanced Energy Solutions (C4BES), misusing using ratepayer money to help fund the launch. The group, which described itself as a non-profit coalition of “families, small and large commercial businesses, industrial users, local governments,” was actually a front group furthering SoCalGas’ agenda of opposing clean energy and advocating for California’s continued dependence on fossil fuels and natural gas. Instead of recruiting true allies, after SoCalGas created the group, they populated it with “supporters” — politicians and leaders from minority communities who SoCalGas specifically recruited to speak out in favor of the effort — leveraging that orchestrated support to advance its pro-fossil fuel agenda. C4BES is now defunct, after the Public Advocate’s Office exposed the astroturf group and ordered the California Public Utilities Commission to investigate the relationship between SoCalGas and C4BES. 

Opposing or delaying commonsense, cost-effective, and lifesaving climate policies to protect their own profits – In 2017, SoCalGas lobbied against electric vehicles and emissions standards, arguing that policymakers should prioritize natural gas vehicles. In 2020, SoCalGas sued the State of California in an attempt to overturn a mandate aiming to reduce air pollution by putting 300,000 zero-emission trucks on the road by 2035. The lawsuit, filed by the California Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition — of which SoCalGas is one of two charter members — argued that “the California Energy Commission has failed to promote natural gas as required by state law.” A recent Harvard study estimated that more than 34,000 Californians died prematurely as a result of fossil fuel pollution in 2018 alone, yet SoCalGas and other companies continue to push dirty fuels on our communities. 

Using ratepayer money to fund anti-climate lobbying— Advocates uncovered that SoCalGas used ratepayer money to try to block federal energy efficiency standards and other programs that would reduce pollution and save their customers money. In 2019, SoCalGas authorized use of nearly $28 million for “balanced energy” activities, characterized those activities as operations and maintenance expenditures, and billed them to their customers. But, in reality, that money funded the anti-climate lobbying effort to prevent cities from gradually phasing out fossil fuel use. And while “balanced energy solutions” might imply that SoCalGas prioritizes giving consumers access to a variety of energy options, the reality is that SoCalGas only supplies gas. SoCalGas originally denied the claims but when pressed by a consumer watchdog group, they acknowledged that some ratepayer money did go toward these lobbying efforts. SoCalGas claimed this was simply an “inadvertent accounting error.” A $28 million accounting error, apparently. In a positive step toward holding the company accountable, California officials recently fined SoCalGas nearly $10 million for using customers’ money to pay for their anti-climate campaigns and lobbying efforts.  

Creating confusion and trying to cut themselves special deals through policy proposals — Trucks make up just 4% of vehicles on U.S. roads, but they are responsible for nearly 7% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., as well as half of the nitrogen oxide emissions and 60% of the fine particulates emitted from all vehicles. As part of their last-ditch effort to undermine California’s transition away from fossil fuels, SoCalGas launched the Advanced Clean Trucks Now Los Angeles (ACT NOW LA) campaign in 2017, arguing that the state should invest in gas-powered vehicles over zero-emission electric vehicles (EVs). SoCalGas’ claim that gas trucks are the “best way to reduce heavy-duty trucking emissions” is nonsensical, but has continued even after the huge advances electric vehicles have made in recent years. They know that EVs are undoubtedly the best solution to reducing vehicle emissions, but they continue to push false solutions to create public confusion and help their own outdated business model.

Recruiting local politicians and minority groups to promote fossil fuels through lobbying efforts and monetary contributions —  In 2017, SoCalGas enlisted politicians of color and paid local residents to promote fossil fuels at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach ahead of the port officials’ vote on its Clean Air Action Plan. Many of the campaigners, who had been told they were “‘standing up for sustainability’ as part of an environmental campaign,” weren’t aware that they were actually taking part in an industry campaign to promote fossil fuels and “near-zero” trucks. At around the same time, SoCalGas worked with Imprenta Communications Group (an agency that claims to “empower communities of color by giving them a “voice”) to recruit Latino/a and Asian American politicians to promote the oil and gas agenda, through a “well-coordinated operation” that involved “writing gas-friendly remarks for politicians, making campaign contributions to those who delivered talking points, and sending [SoCalGas’] own speakers to public meetings.” 

Using their political influence and making campaign contributions to push legislators to carve out special policies that only benefit the fossil fuel industry — The vast majority of legislative Democrats in California, many of whom claim to have a pro-environment platform, took contributions from Sempra (SoCalGas’ parent company) in the past five years. While it’s not altogether uncommon for legislators on both sides of the aisle to take utility money, Sempra isn’t just another utility, and their political contributions (over $1.5 million in 2021 alone) are especially troubling given SoCalGas’ history of actively attempting to stall California’s climate progress. Meanwhile, key climate bills like The California Climate Crisis Act have died on the legislative floor as California lawmakers who are the recipients of these contributions refuse opportunities to make concrete progress on climate change. 

Every day of delay on climate action costs us. California could save over a thousand lives per year by powering our buildings and homes with clean electricity instead of natural gas. SoCalGas executives know that. But they also know that as long as our economy and our communities burn dirty fuels, they can continue to pollute and profit a little longer.