California Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature comes in the waning months of his fourth and final term, and serves as a capstone to his efforts to make California a global leader on climate change. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images California's Brown signs renewable energy bill in another rebuke to Trump

SACRAMENTO — California will aim to derive all its retail electricity from renewable sources by 2045 under a bill Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law on Monday, with backers framing the measure as the state’s latest rebuke to environmental backsliding by the Trump administration.

The bill “is sending a message to California and the world that we are going to meet the Paris agreement and we are going to continue down that path to transition our economy,” Brown told reporters, referencing the climate accord from which President Donald Trump withdrew the United States last year.


Brown’s signature comes in the waning months of his fourth and final term, and serves as a capstone to his efforts to make California a global leader on climate change. He timed the public signing ceremony to a global climate summit that will bring public officials from around the world to San Francisco this week.

With Sacramento and Washington engaged in a protracted policy standoff from the start of the Trump administration, much of the conflict has turned on California’s ability to maintain its aggressive environmental policies.

And with both foreign dignitaries and U.S. officials with national aspirations preparing to gather in San Francisco for the climate summit, the divergence between those two power centers is on stark display: Even as the Trump administration has sought to unravel Barack Obama’s climate legacy, the nation’s largest state is forging ahead.

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“Trump has made himself an outlaw on the matter of climate change,” Brown said in a follow-up interview with POLITICO on Monday. “And since climate change is [an] existential threat, I would say that doing what he’s doing to undermine efforts that will save lives and prevent catastrophe for California, for America and the world, is about as reprehensible as any act that any American president has ever been guilty of.”

Still, Brown said the legislation California enacted was not primarily a reflection of who occupies the White House, saying that even if Trump did not exist “we would still be doing this.”

“This is the next step in California’s continuing effort to combat global warming,” Brown said. “It’s a very important commitment to clean energy that sends a signal to industry to step up to the plate and provide the new technologies that are required.”

Of the state’s broader dispute over climate change with Washington, however, Brown said, “The clash has intensified because Trump, more than anybody else in the whole world in terms of national leaders, is going in the opposite direction. He’s trying to subsidize coal, undermine vehicle emission standards, sabotage clean electricity, make it harder to buy electric vehicles and on and on. So, yes, we’re going on a certain course.”



“Against the indifference of an entrenched global leadership, these delegates are demanding action now,” the governor tweeted shortly before he began speaking.

Tom Steyer, the wealthy environmental activist who has plunged millions into an effort aimed at impeaching Trump and into seeking to boost voter turnout and flip the House, was in attendance at a Monday press conference and praised Brown’s “world leadership” in making California a standard-bearer.

“From a leadership standpoint and a symbolic standpoint, what he’s doing and what he’s helping this entire state do is to reframe the way the world thinks about what’s going on in terms of energy and climate — what’s possible and what’s necessary and what’s just,” Steyer said.

In recent years, Brown has helped shepherd through a suite of ambitious climate-change policies that include mandates to reduce carbon emissions and augment renewable energy use, and an extension of the state’s pioneering cap-and-trade program.

Brown and other officials have lambasted the administration’s push to relax air quality rules and potentially dissolve California’s ability to set more stringent vehicle emission standards; California is leading a group of states seeking to challenge the administration and maintain the tougher rules.

Over the weekend, Brown signed a pair of bills to block new oil and gas extraction in the waters off of California’s coast, a direct rejection of the Trump administration’s move to reverse Obama administration policies and throw open coastal waters to energy exploration.

“Today, California’s message to the Trump administration is simple: Not here, not now,” Brown said in a pointed statement accompanying the weekend signing. “We will not let the federal government pillage public lands and destroy our treasured coast.”

The renewable energy law could also yield a political windfall for the bill’s author, former state senate leader Kevin de León, who will have another progressive accomplishment to trumpet as he seeks to unseat fellow Democrat Dianne Feinstein by energizing California’s sizable liberal electorate.

“Today California sends an unmistakable message to the nation and the world: regardless of who occupies the White House, California will always lead on climate change,” de León said.