As someone who has dedicated a career to better understanding air pollution and climate change — and developing large-scale clean energy solutions that benefit our communities — I found it thrilling to see Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León introduce legislation that would require 100 percent of California’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2045.

This goal would change the game for Californians. And it’s entirely feasible, if the right policies are in place.

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Letters: Renewables quest | Ban prone restraint | Secure retirement | Rail’s rewards | Hopeful convention | Report backs Mueller But realizing the Golden State’s renewable energy future requires additional steps. We need to electrify transportation, heating and industry at an accelerated pace — a process that will create good-paying jobs, reduce air pollution deaths (an estimated 13,000 per year in California alone) and save households and businesses across our state billions of dollars in energy costs over the next few decades. We also need that additional electricity to come from clean, affordable and reliable sources.

All of this means that De León and his colleagues should incorporate integration of the Western power grid into his proposal — and every Californian who wants to save money on monthly energy costs and breathe cleaner air should urge them to do so.

The legislation should authorize the California Independent System Operator to become the regional Western Grid operator. CAISO needs to transition to a fully independent board, and all Western utilities and generators should then have the opportunity to join.

Our current fragmented grid system, in which 38 different operators move electricity to homes and businesses across Western states, is preventing renewable energy from reaching its full potential by blocking it from access to millions of potential users.

In the San Francisco Bay area, communities such as West Oakland suffer disproportionately high rates of air pollutants because of our over reliance on fossil fueled electricity generation, causing asthma and lung disease.

A coordinated Western regional grid will help on all these fronts. By operating the region’s grid more efficiently and allowing clean energy to reach its full potential, we can reduce unnecessarily energy costs for families and toxic emissions into our air.

Some have worried about more imports of fossil fuel energy into California, but in fact the integration of our regional grid would boost clean energy production. Wind and solar always win when given the chance to show that they can run at lower cost than fossil-fueled power plants.

Today, such competition is limited by our inefficient and fragmented system, favoring the operators of aging and expensive coal and natural gas generators. But with an integrated grid, those operators would be required to show continuously that no lower-cost options were available to meet electricity demand in the region. Their plants would operate less frequently, creating more room on the grid for clean, renewable power.

Paving the way toward integrating our Western grid is vital to hitting De León’s 100 percent clean energy target and all that comes with it: California’s continued leadership in reducing toxic air pollution, growing our economy, stabilizing energy costs and combating climate change.

Mark Jacobson is a climate scientist and a professor at Stanford University. He wrote this for The Mercury News.