Gov. Gavin Newsom wrapped up the 2025 legislative session with the usual flurry of activity, signing several important environmental, energy and climate bills and vetoing others ahead of Monday’s deadline.

Among the newest laws in California are efforts to accelerate clean energy projects and advance the state’s position as a climate leader — but also decisions to ramp up oil drilling and reject the phase-out of forever chemicals.

Here’s a look at what happened this year:

In September, Newsom signed a blockbuster suite of bills including the reauthorization of California’s signature cap-and-trade program, which sets limits on greenhouse gas emissions and lets large polluters buy and sell emissions allowances at quarterly auctions. The Legislature extended the program by 15 years to 2045, rebranded it as “cap-and-invest” and specified how its revenues will be allocated for wildfire prevention efforts, high-speed rail and other projects.

The greenhouse gas trading program is seen as essential for the state to meet its climate targets, including reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.

“California really needed to act this year to decisively try to put in policies to meet our climate goals [and support] the economy and different sectors,” said Susan Nedell, senior western advocate with the nonpartisan policy group E2. She called state legislative efforts especially important as the Trump administration aims to erode California’s authority on tailpipe emission standards, electric vehicle initiatives and renewable energy projects, among others.

“This is the time for California to lead, and I really feel like they came through on it as a state,” Nedell said.

WHAT ELSE BECAME LAW

• One of the more controversial bills of the year was Senate Bill 237, which makes it easier to drill up to 2,000 new oil wells in Kern County. It’s a tradeoff that also makes it more difficult to drill new oil or gas wells offshore. Legislators said it will help address the volatility of gasoline prices following announcements from oil companies Phillips 66 and Valero that they are shutting down two big refineries in the state. Environmental groups were quick to condemn the bill.
• Also controversial was Assembly Bill 825, which will expand California’s participation in a regional power market — enabling the state to buy and sell more clean power with other Western states. Opponents feared that it will cede some control of California’s power grid to out-of-state authorities, including the federal government. Supporters said it will improve grid reliability and save money for ratepayers.
• January’s firestorm in L.A. led to a renewed focus on the state’s approach to fires, including Senate Bill 254, which contains various policies to address California’s aging electric infrastructure and wildfire prevention goals. It will secure about $18 billion to replenish the state’s wildfire fund — a state insurance policy for utilities — which officials say will help protect ratepayers from excessive utility liability costs. It also will establish a program to speed up the construction of power lines needed for clean energy projects.
• Assembly Bill 39 requires cities and counties with at least 75,000 residents to plan for more electrification infrastructure by 2030, including electric vehicle charging and building upgrades. The measures must address the needs of low-income households and disadvantaged communities.
• Senate Bill 80 will create a $5-million fund to accelerate research and development for fusion energy. Fusion creates energy by slamming two atoms together. The state hopes to launch the world’s first fusion energy pilot project by the 2040s. “Fusion energy has the immense potential to provide consistent, clean baseload power on demand that will help us meet our clean energy goals,” said Sen. Anna Caballero (D-Merced), the bill’s author, in a statement.
• Assembly Bill 888 creates a grant program to help low-income homeowners clear defensible space around their houses and install fire-safe roofs. It is “exactly the kind of proactive, people-first policy California needs,” said Eric Horne, California director for the nonprofit Megafire Action, which is geared to ending large wildfires.
• Senate Bill 653 means that state agencies have to pay more attention to using native species in their fire prevention work and use science-based standards to avoid introducing invasive, fire-prone species.
• Senate Bill 429 establishes the Wildfire Safety and Risk Mitigation Program at the California Department of Insurance, which will fund research into developing and deploying a public wildfire catastrophe model — a computer simulation that estimates property damage from large wildfires and helps communities better assess and prepare for risk.
• Assembly Bill 462 streamlines approvals for accessory dwelling units on properties affected by the 2025 wildfires in the California Coastal Zone, requiring decisions on coastal permits within 60 days and eliminating some appeals.
• Assembly Bill 818 accelerates local permitting for rebuilding homes and allows residents to place temporary homes, such as manufactured homes or ADUs, on private lots during reconstruction.
• Assembly Bill 245 gives residents additional time to rebuild their homes or businesses in the wake of the 2025 wildfires without experiencing a property tax increase.

• Senate Bill 614 will establish new regulations for the safe transport of carbon dioxide captured from large polluters or removed from the atmosphere. The legislation will authorize the development of dedicated pipelines to move CO2 to underground geological formations for permanent storage, and was described by Newsom as a vital next step for the state’s burgeoning carbon capture, removal and sequestration market.
• Assembly Bill 14 expands the “Protecting Blue Whales and Blue Skies Program” statewide. The program encourages large vessels to voluntarily reduce their speed in designated areas in order to reduce air pollution and reduce the risk of fatal vessel strikes and harmful underwater acoustic impacts on whales.

WHAT WAS VETOED

• The governor vetoed Senate Bill 34, which would have required the South Coast Air Quality Management District to consider certain factors before implementing regulations at the region’s ports. Opponents, including health and environmental groups, said it would have ultimately weakened its authority and ability to meet clean air standards. In its place, the air district and the ports are pursuing a voluntary cooperative agreement that will include obligations for zero-emissions infrastructure and other clean-air efforts. “With the current federal administration directly undermining our state and local air and climate pollution reduction strategies, it is imperative that we maintain the tools we have,” Newsom wrote in his veto.
• Assembly Bill 740 would have directed the state’s energy agencies to create an implementation plan for “virtual power plants” — networks of small energy resources such as smart thermostats, home batteries and rooftop solar panels that can help reduce strain on the grid. Newsom vetoed it earlier this month, stating that it would result in additional costs for the California Energy Commission’s already depleted operating fund. But Edson Perez, California lead at the nonprofit Advanced Energy United, called its veto a “costly mistake” and said the bill would have saved ratepayers more than $13 billion.
• Newsom this week also vetoed Senate Bill 682, which would have phased out the use of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” in consumer products such as nonstick cookwear and products for infants and children. The governor cited concerns about affordability in his veto.

Earlier this year, the governor also signed the most significant reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, since it originally became law in 1970. Signed in June, Assembly Bill 130 and Senate Bill 131 exempt a broad array of housing development and infrastructure projects from CEQA in an effort to ease new construction in the state. Supporters said it will help address the state’s housing crisis, while many environmental groups were outraged by the move.

“While California was able to advance on grid regionalization, strengthen energy affordability, uphold local air quality protection, and protect endangered species, we’re frustrated by the Governor’s vetoes of measures that would have banned forever chemicals, prioritized cost effective energy consumption, expanded virtual power plants to lower electricity bills, and banned microplastics,” said Melissa Romero, policy advocacy director with the nonprofit California Environmental Voters.

Tens of thousands of Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers in California and Hawaii walked off the job early Tuesday as they urged the nation’s largest not-for-profit medical provider to increase salaries and address staffing shortages.

Up to 31,000 registered nurses, nurse anesthetists, pharmacists, midwives, physician assistants, rehab therapists, speech language pathologists and other specialists are involved in the planned five-day strike.

“We’ve been really clear, our workers are trying to keep up and catch up with the cost of inflation,” said Charmaine Morales, president of United Nurses Assns. of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, known as UNAC/UHCP.

Morales said the union’s request to raise wages a total of 25% over four years was necessary to compensate for the far smaller increases workers received in their 2021 contract negotiations, when they received a 2% raise in the first year. She also said the company neglected to meet with various groups of workers at planned bargaining sessions last week to discuss solutions to short-staffing.

“We need to be able to hire more permanent staff. We’re looking for long-term solutions to staffing burnout,” Morales said.

The union has proposed an internal registry of on-call nurses who are union members, so that the company doesn’t have to rely on contract traveling nurses. Morales said the proposal “didn’t go anywhere.”

As striking workers picketed at facilities across Southern California, Kaiser Permanente called the strike “unnecessary and disruptive” and said the demands would “dramatically increase” its current $6.3-billion annual payroll. The company also insisted that staffing was not central to the union’s demands.

Kaiser spokesperson Candice Lee said in an email that while the union’s “public messaging emphasizes staffing and other concerns, the core issue in this negotiation is wages. That’s the reason for the strike.” Lee said that Kaiser’s staffing ratios meet or exceed all California-mandated nurse-to-patient ratios, and that the company “has been proactive in hiring and retaining staff to ensure we deliver the care our patients expect and deserve.”

The company has called the workers’ request for a 25% salary increase “out of step with today’s economic realities and rising health care costs.” Kaiser’s offer of a 21.5% pay raise would increase payroll by nearly $2 billion by 2029, the company said.

“To support this level of increase, we’re reducing internal costs and optimizing operations. Anything beyond 21.5% will require us to further increase rates for our members and customers, at a time when health care costs are increasingly unaffordable and many of them are having to make the difficult choice to go without coverage,” read a statement on the company’s website.

The company said it has plans to fill in care gaps during the strike, and has hired 7,600 temporary nurses, clinicians and other staff as substitutes. Many of those personnel have worked at Kaiser Permanente before and are familiar with its facilities, Kaiser said. The company also noted that 1,000 of its employees volunteered to be reassigned to work in strike locations.

The union’s collective bargaining agreements with Kaiser Permanente expired Sept. 30. Negotiations between the union and the company over wages and benefits have been ongoing for about three months, although some of the union workers have been in talks since March.

The first day of the strike — which is planned to continue until 7 a.m. Sunday — coincided with the onset of a potent storm that swept across Los Angeles early Tuesday.

Surgical nurse Tonja Sweeney marched with hundreds of others from a nearby park to Kaiser South Bay Medical Center through a downpour early that morning. The crowd of drenched healthcare workers carried signs, and their blue ponchos whipped in the wind.

Sweeney, 54, who has worked at Kaiser Permanente for 20 years, had been on the picket line for hours. “I’m super soaking wet, but it’s OK. We’re advocating for the right things,” Sweeney said.

The Harbor City facility was among 20 sites that were picketed across the state, with most of them concentrated in Southern California. Actions are planned in Hawaii and Oregon later in the week.

Sweeney said she often struggles to manage five patients, particularly if other staff members, such as nutritionists and aides, are tied up. If two patients, for example, are delirious upon waking from surgery, they both need someone to sit by their bedsides, even as a third or fourth patient may need assistance walking to the toilet.

“It’s not easy to walk away from our patients, but if we don’t advocate for them, who will?” Sweeney said. “We’re the people taking care of them. It’s hard but we have to do it.”

Romy Timm, a physical therapist, joined the picket line with other union members on strike.

Timm said problems of short-staffing are prevalent for physical therapists as well, and at least ten of her co-workers in recent years have reduced their work hours to part-time from full-time because it became too exhausting for them to consult with 16 to 20 new patients a week.

“We often work on paperwork through our lunches,” Timm said.

Timm, who for six years worked as an ergonomist for the company, would evaluate workspaces for nurses and pharmacists who had filed requests because they were starting to experience repetitive stress injuries from long hours caring for patients or filling prescriptions, she said.

Demands for higher wages come amid rising healthcare costs. Average monthly premiums for families with employer-provided health coverage in California’s private sector nearly doubled in 15 years. Costs rose from just over $1,000 in 2008 to almost $2,000 in 2023, according to an analysis of federal data by KFF Health News, which is not affiliated with Kaiser. That increase is far greater than the rate of inflation.

Some major medical facilities face other financial headwinds, with uncertainty of federal funding due to impending Medicaid cuts. Facilities including Sharp HealthCare, UC San Diego Health and UCSF Health have in recent months announced plans to cut public health services and conduct hundreds of layoffs.