Sacramento, California - Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced that he has signed a sweeping package of legislation – including AB 1288 by Assembly Speaker Toni G. Atkins (D-San Diego) – to help protect and empower California’s most vulnerable communities, which remain the most susceptible to the impacts of a changing climate.

The bills expand access to energy efficiency, solar programs and other resources in these communities and will help ensure one of the state’s top environmental regulatory bodies – the California Air Resources Board – is more representative of the state’s diversity and those most impacted by pollution. This legislation and these investments are critical to California’s efforts to decarbonize its economy.

The Governor signed the following bills today:

• AB 682 by Assemblymember Das G. Williams (D-Santa Barbara) – Mobilehome park: electric and gas service: master-meter customers.

• AB 693 by Assemblymember Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton) – Multifamily Affordable Housing Solar Roofs Program.

• AB 865 by Assemblymember Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville) – State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission: contracts, grants, and loans: diversity.

• AB 1059 by Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia (D-Coachella) – California Communities Environmental Health Screening.

• AB 1071 by Assemblymember Toni G. Atkins (D-San Diego) – Supplemental environmental projects.

• AB 1288 by Assemblymember Toni G. Atkins (D-San Diego) – Air resources.

• SB 793 by Senator Lois Wolk (D-Davis) – Green Tariff Shared Renewables Program.

California's Leadership on Climate Change

Yesterday, Governor Brown signed landmark legislation – SB 350 – that codified the goals he laid out in his January 2015 inaugural address to double the rate of energy efficiency savings in California buildings and generate half of the state's electricity from renewable sources by 2030. In the same remarks, Governor Brown also committed to reduce today’s petroleum use in cars and trucks by up to 50 percent within the next 15 years; make heating fuels cleaner; reduce the release of methane, black carbon and other potent pollutants across industries; and manage farm and rangelands, forests and wetlands so they can store carbon.

Earlier this year, the Governor issued an executive order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 – the most ambitious target in North America and consistent with California's existing commitment to reduce emissions 80 percent under 1990 levels by 2050.

Additionally, as the clock ticks for national governments to reach a deal to reduce harmful emissions ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, Governor Brown continues to focus on building and broadening collaboration amongst cities, states and provinces, at the "subnational level."

To that end, the Governor has spearheaded a global pact amongst cities, states and countries, called the Under 2 MOU, to limit the increase in global average temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius – the warming threshold at which scientists say there will likely be catastrophic climate disruptions. To date, a total of 42 jurisdictions representing 19 countries and five continents have signed or endorsed the Under 2 MOU, collectively representing more than $13.1 trillion in GDP and 463 million people. If the signatories represented a single country, it would be the second largest economy in the world behind only the United States.

In addition to action on the Under 2 MOU, in recent months the Governor has traveled to the United Nations in New York, the Vatican in Italy and the Climate Summit of the Americas in Toronto, Canada to call on others leaders to join California in the fight against climate change.

These efforts build on a number of other international climate change agreements with leaders from Mexico, China, North America, Japan, Israel,  Peru and Chile. Governor Brown also helped convene hundreds of world-renowned researchers and scientists to issue a groundbreaking call to action – called the consensus statement – which translates key scientific climate findings from disparate fields into one unified document.