Californians Choosing Between Gas or Groceries, Utility Bills or Rent

Now that Gavin Newsom has created this mess, he’s directing the energy commission to do something to stop the refinery closures

How is it possible that in California, hard-working families must choose between gas or groceries, utility bills or rent?

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The average cost for a gallon of regular gas in the U.S. today is $3.138.

California’s cost for that same gallon of regular gas is $4.500, the highest cost in the entire country, according to AAA. Hawaii even pays less for gas.

In 1988, the state of California only imported about 4.5% of all the oil that we consumed in our state. By 2020 we were importing over 70%.

Approximately 30% of the cost of a gallon of gas in California comes from taxes and fees.

In 2023, 20% of the cost of a gallon of gas in California came from taxes and fees, according to WSPA, while only 1% was attributable to net profits from the oil industry.

While Californians are suffering under the highest gas prices in the country, and more than 2.2 million Californians are behind on their utility bills, Governor Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature are prioritizing redistricting the electoral districts to squeeze Republicans out of 6 more U.S. House seats.

California has an energy problem – a big energy problem, and even Newsom has noticed. But it’s his awful policies that brought the state to the brink.

In April, Gov. Gavin Newsom Thursday directed state officials to increase efforts to guarantee reliable fuel supplies for the nation’s biggest auto market, prompting oil companies to blame state policies for difficult business conditions and high pump prices, Reuters reported.

Gov. Newsom has been agitating for some time against “Big Oil” and their “windfall profits,” but always leaves out his and Democrats’ important role in escalating oil and gas prices in California through regulations, surcharges, “clean-air” and “low carbon” programs, cap and trade and more schemes, the Globe reported in April.

Gov. Newsom signed a package of “sweeping legislation” in September 2022 to achieve statewide carbon neutrality as soon as possible, and no later than 2045, by establishing an 85% emissions reduction target, capping oil wells, slowing oil and gas permitting, making it impossible to increase refining capacity, and entirely phasing out oil and gas starting in two years.

That “sweeping set of laws” Newsom touted was 40 new climate change bills regulating California businesses and its people.

Before Gov. Newsom, in 2018, then-Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 100 by then-Sen. Kevin De León, which established the policy that eligible renewable energy resources and zero-carbon resources supply 100% of all retail sales of electricity to California end-use customers and 100% of electricity procured to serve all state agencies by December 31, 2045, the “100% clean energy policy.”

California lawmakers also passed Senate Bill 2, the Renewable Portfolio Standard program in 2011, which required all retail sellers of electricity and publicly owned utilities to buy 33 percent of the electricity delivered to their retail customers from renewable resources by 2020.

And of course, who can forget the state’s greenhouse gas reduction and clean energy goals since 2006 when AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 was passed by the Legislature and signed into law by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

At that time, AB 32 required statewide greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced to at least 40% below the 1990 level by 2020. But the state achieved that in only a few short years, largely because California does not have much greenhouse gas pollution, so lawmakers moved the goal posts out to 2030, which allowed the state to continue passing more and more strict regulations and laws.

Those goalposts were then moves out to 2045 to achieve “carbon neutrality.”

In the past decade, the California Public Utilities Commission has approved rate hikes nearly three times higher than inflation. The utility companies are happy, while ratepayers were given the middle-finger.

In 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 1221 which authorized the CPUC to approve up to 30 pilot projects that facilitate cost-effective decarbonization in priority neighborhood decarbonization zones. The pilot projects are intended to provide state decision makers with a greater understanding of the challenges that arise when decommissioning parts of the natural gas system.

Click here to read the full article in the California Globe