Newsom Touts California Energy Success While Experts Say Policies Raise Costs and Strain Grid

Gavin Newsom Tries To Own Trump By Bragging About ‘Absurd’ California Energy Policies

California’s governor took a victory lap in New York, blasting President Trump while selling his state’s green energy record as a model for the nation. Newsom’s press office blasted President Donald Trump for his “climate denial” on Wednesday before touting California’s energy policies, which experts who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation have characterized as problematic.

Newsom presented sunny statistics and framed California as the example of large-scale environmental leadership, insisting the state’s energy transition is proof of a new paradigm. He repeated sweeping claims about the grid and the economy, and he suggested the state’s policies are a template other states should follow. Critics say that sales pitch skips the damage done to households and industries footing the bill for expensive and unreliable power.

“We’re the only game in town right now as it relates to large-scale environmental leadership,” Newsom said Wednesday. “67% of our electricity grid is completely green and clean. … Get this: nine out of 10 days in 2025 we’ve run the fourth largest economy in the world at 100% clean green energy. 100%. … We’re proving the paradigm.”

Republican-leaning energy experts and free market advocates tore into that narrative, pointing out how numbers can be massaged while families pay higher bills and face rolling outages. They argue the real story is about costs, reliability, and the hidden subsidies needed to prop up an intermittent grid. Those are not small caveats; they shape whether a policy is exportable to the rest of the country.

“Gavin Newsom’s green energy statistics are as misleading as they are absurd. Fossil fuel jobs are superior to green jobs. They are permanent jobs that pay workers much better and produce much more energy for consumers per job. California’s ‘clean energy’ grid is a disaster,” Steve Milloy, senior fellow at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, told the DCNF. “When it’s operating, Californians are paying more than twice as much for energy as the average American. When it’s not operating, which is anytime demand for electricity is high, Californians are in blackout, brownout and/or are being rationed. All this pain is for no purpose. … Green policies are nothing but fraud and disaster. Expect Newsom to keep lying about them from now until the 2028 election.”

The raw numbers undercut the cheerleading: residents face some of the highest electricity prices in the continental United States, and ratepayers are absorbing the cost of large-scale buildouts and backup systems. Where California roars as a proving ground for renewables, it often leans on imports, battery subsidies, and costly grid fixes to keep the lights on. Those fixes don’t come free, and the bill lands with ordinary consumers.

“California has the highest electricity prices in the lower 48 states and the highest gasoline prices in the entire country,” James Taylor, President of the Heartland Institute, told the DCNF. “It would be even worse if California didn’t sponge off other states by importing electricity from them. California is also uniquely, perennially, and unnecessarily vulnerable to electricity blackouts. This is hardly a blueprint for the rest of the nation to follow.”

Analyses from think tanks tracking economic impacts put a hard number on the tradeoff, estimating California’s green push could cost households many thousands of dollars over the next decades. Those projections include direct energy costs, new infrastructure charges, and the economic fallout of higher fuel and power prices. For voters and families, those are not abstract figures; they translate into tighter budgets and postponed plans.

California’s buildout of solar and wind has created a new problem: more generation than the state can use at times, forcing it to pay neighboring grids to take excess power or to spend heavily on storage. Officials celebrate megawatts installed while ratepayers cover the complex logistics of balancing an intermittent supply. The result is a system that requires continuous intervention and heavy taxpayer support.

Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the DCNF that the massive California solar plant now scheduled to shut in 2026 “is the latest entry in the long list of so-called green energy failures.” “After $2.2 billion in subsidies and wasted money, taxpayers are left holding the bag while California’s grid is no more reliable,” Isaac said. “Meanwhile, American oil, gas, coal, and nuclear deliver affordable power every day without bailouts, only needing defense against climate lunatics.”

Even as Newsom touts clean percentages and grand milestones, his administration has signed bills to keep funding high-profile projects and to expand some drilling, illustrating the messy politics at play when reality bites. Lawmakers and officials now juggle refunds, credits, tax changes, and regulatory tweaks to blunt voter anger over bills and pump prices. Those maneuvers show the limits of a purely ideological approach when costs and reliability collide with everyday life.

Newsom’s office told the DCNF that Californians are set to receive refunds on their electric bills, averaging $61 in October, and that legislation will save up to $60 billion starting next year through 2045. Promises of rebates may help short-term optics, but they do not erase years of elevated prices and the policy choices that produced them. For critics, that’s lipstick on a pig when the structural issues remain unresolved.

The governor’s communications team pushed back at skeptics by suggesting critics are paid by fossil fuel interests and by noting comparative blackout records. They specifically accused some experts of being “likely backed by fossil fuels” and of “confusing California for Texas.” Those jabs are familiar political talking points, but they do not answer technical questions about capacity factors, storage economics, and long-term affordability.

For Republicans and conservatives watching, the California story reads as a cautionary tale: aggressive green targets plus heavy subsidies can create a fragile system that needs constant bailouts and defensive regulations. If Newsom’s model is sold as a national template, the sales pitch should come with full accounting for who pays and how often the lights go out. Voters deserve honest tradeoffs, not stagecraft.

At its core this debate is about choices: favoring reliable, affordable energy that powers jobs and growth, or prioritizing an expensive transition that risks household budgets for political bragging rights. Republicans will argue the answer is obvious and that energy policy should start with serving American families and workers first. California’s experiment should be a warning, not a blueprint.