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

Democratic California Gov. Gavin 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’s press office summarized some of the governor’s comments at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City on Wednesday, in which he touted California’s green energy policies and branded his state as a model for “large-scale environmental leadership.” California has invested in green energy initiatives but also has some of the highest energy costs in the U.S., which several energy policy experts told the DCNF are partly driven by Newsom’s aggressive policies.

“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.”

Newsom also heavily criticized President Donald Trump’s comments in his speech to the United Nations (UN) on Tuesday, in which Trump pointed out that large global warming projections haven’t come to pass, while slamming European green energy policies. Trump also branded climate change as the “greatest con job ever perpetuated” and that the concept of a “carbon footprint” is a “hoax.”

While California does lean heavily on green energy power sources, several energy experts who spoke to the DCNF said that the facts and figures noted by Newsom’s press office do not display the full story of the state’s energy policies.

“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.”

California residents suffer from the second-highest electricity rates in the country, behind only Hawaii, according to one report from the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. In 2023, the national average price of electricity was ¢12.68 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), while Californians paid nearly double at ¢24.87 per kWh, federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) data shows.

“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.”

The state has adopted ambitious climate goals, with Newsom aiming for an 85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and carbon neutrality by 2045. A release from the governor’s office in July 2025 touted that the energy infrastructure had reached 67% renewable energy.

“Sources eligible under the state’s Renewables Portfolio Standard – such as solar and wind – made up 43% of the power mix in 2023, up from 39% in 2022,” the release stated, “Other zero carbon resources continue to power the grid with large hydro accounting for 12% and nuclear power at 12% in 2023.”

California’s aggressive green targets could cost residents between $17,398 and $20,182 from 2025 through 2050, according to an analysis by the Pacific Research Institute.

California’s buildout of green energy technology has also caused it to generate more solar and wind power than it can use, so it pays neighboring states to take its excess electricity and has needed to develop massive battery storage facilities.

Newsom’s office told the DCNF that Californians are set to receive refunds on their electric bills, averaging $61 in October. The office cites that, due to legislation the governor recently signed, Californians will save up to $60 billion in electricity costs starting next year through 2045.

The California governor’s Deputy Director of Communications Daniel Villaseñor told the DCNF that some energy sector experts speaking up against the state’s policies are “likely backed by fossil fuels” and “confusing California for Texas.”

Villaseñor told the DCNF that California hasn’t “experienced rotating outages since 2020,” while Texas is the “true blackout state.” While Texas does experience regular blackouts, so does California, and both states have heavily leaned into building out intermittent green energy power sources.

“As the Governor said, California is proving that one of the largest economies on the planet can make the shift to cheap and abundant clean energy,” Villaseñor told the DCNF.

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.”

Notably, Newsom recently signed a set of energy bills that aim to keep funding initiatives like California’s long-overdue high-speed rail project and to expand drilling in oil-rich Kern County. Californians might be facing $8 gas as two major refineries prepare to shut down in the next year after Democratic officials have enforced numerous stringent regulations that have helped prompt closures.

“What each of these facts means for everyday consumers is that if you live in California you get to have the highest gas prices, the highest home energy prices, and, depending upon where you live, intermittent blackouts,” O.H. Skinner, Executive Director of Alliance For Consumers and legal expert, told the DCNF, referencing the post from Newsom’s press office. “Governor Newsom is focused on his green check boxes for his E.S.G. scores and his donor summits and seems to have lost site of the pocketbook priorities of the everyday consumers who must live with the downstream consequences of his peacocking on stage.”

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