SAN FRANCISCO — Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a sweeping package of bills Friday to boost oil drilling, rescue wildfire-threatened utilities and extend the state’s landmark climate program as he attempts to rein in energy costs while meeting the state’s ambitious climate targets.
Taken broadly, the package represents a compromise between increasing fossil fuel extraction — which has been on the decline in the nation’s eighth-largest oil-producing state — and continuing to ratchet down greenhouse gas emissions.
“We’ve got to manifest our ideals and our goals, and so this lays it out, but it lays it out without laying tracks over folks,” Newsom said, against a backdrop of towering redwood trees projected on the screen of a planetarium in a San Francisco science museum. “We set the tone and pace for the rest of the nation.”
State Democrats opened their legislative session in January with a promise to focus on affordability, which gained even more political urgency as wildfires and refinery closures raised the threat of higher electricity and gasoline costs. The final package of legislation came together only earlier this month, in a last-minute agreement capping weeks of talks between state lawmakers and Newsom’s office.
