Are Californians willing to pay for clean energy?

It might depend how you ask.

Two programming notes:

• First: This week only, I’m offering free subscribers a 30% discount on paid annual subscriptions to Climate-Colored Goggles. You can sign up here. No worries if it’s not in your budget; almost all of my work will continue to be free. But if you can help me out, I’d be extremely grateful. The deal expires July 31.

• Second: Join me Tuesday 7/28 (aka tomorrow) at 4 p.m. PT for a Zoom conversation with Utah journalist Zak Podmore about his excellent book, “Life After Dead Pool: Lake Powell’s Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River.” You can register here. The video will also be available afterward, although only to paid subscribers.

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A wind turbine outside Palm Springs, seen in 2014. (Photo by Tony Webster)

A volley of stories from California’s leading news outlets left me furrowing my brow this month — not annoyed so much as perplexed.

To hear the Sacramento Bee tell it: “Even as voters say they still care about the environment, beneath those responses lies rising concern about the costs that climate and environmental policies impose on families’ pocketbooks.”

Turning to the Los Angeles Times: “Most [voters] said they back the state’s climate goals but balk at higher energy costs for renewable power.”

Or as L.A. Times columnist George Skelton put it: “People strongly favor fighting climate change — at least in concept — until it adversely affects them directly.”

Those articles and others stemmed from an environment-focused survey published by the Public Policy Institute of California, an influential think tank with a staff of nearly 100 people. Its board of directors includes a former top aide to Gavin Newsom, a senior executive at Southern California Edison, several well-connected lobbyists and two former U.S. Cabinet secretaries. When the PPIC speaks, politicians listen. Executives listen. Journalists listen.

And not without good reason. I’ve followed the PPIC’s research for years, particularly its water policy work, and found it to be interesting and insightful.

But reading about the new survey, something bothered me, and I couldn’t figure out what. So I decided to take a closer look.

Much of the coverage that piqued my interest dealt with two survey questions. Here they are, along with the results among likely voters:

• Do you favor or oppose the state law that requires 100 percent of the state’s electricity to come from renewable energy sources by the year 2045? Favor: 59%; oppose: 40%

• In order to help reduce climate change, would you be willing or not willing to pay more for electricity if it were generated by renewable sources like solar or wind energy? Willing: 40%; not willing: 59%

On the whole, the media coverage was exactly right: Californians support ambitious environmental policies but don’t want to pay more for renewable energy. The PPIC offered roughly the same analysis on its own blog, stating that Californians “value the state’s environmental goals and policies” but “are frugal about efforts that may help reduce emissions, like renewable energy.”

Here’s my finicky question, though: Why such a narrow, outdated framing of renewable energy? Especially one that pits climate and affordability against each other?

Workers install solar panels in California’s Kern County in 2024. (Photo by Sammy Roth)

Without a doubt, transitioning the economy from fossil fuels to renewables carries up-front costs — and Americans are sensitive right now to anything that might make electricity or gas more expensive. In the PPIC survey, two-thirds of California likely voters described energy costs as a “big problem.”

But simply asking folks whether they’d be willing to pay more for renewable energy perpetuates a frustrating false dichotomy.

To my mind, the not-so-subtle implication is that renewables drive up electric rates — even though the reality is far more nuanced. Solar and wind are the cheapest sources of new power; in the long run, they save us money by reducing healthcare costs from fossil fueled air pollution, lessening our exposure to volatile oil and gas prices and averting costly disasters like oil spills. You also may have heard that global warming is quite expensive!

To be fair, there’s only so much nuance you can jam into a survey question.

But I was feeling a little ornery, so I got in touch with Mark Baldassare, the PPIC’s statewide survey director. He was extremely thoughtful and open to feedback, even as he told me he didn’t think the survey implied that renewables are driving up costs.

“I feel like [that question is] neutral on the topic of whether it’s more or less costly to have renewable energy,” he said.

Baldassare said he’s hesitant to change the “willingness to pay for renewable energy” question in future iterations of the survey because he’s been asking it since 2016, giving policymakers and the public a useful trend line. This year, fewer likely voters than ever said they’d be willing to pay more for renewables — just 40%, down from a high of 56% a decade ago. Much as the question irritates me, that’s helpful to know.

To Baldassare, one of the survey’s key takeaways is that electricity has gotten way too expensive in California. He believes state officials need to take urgent action to get electric bills under control.

“People are really concerned about climate change. Those findings come out year after year, and that hasn’t changed,” he said. “The problem is the cost of electricity. To me, that’s a utilities problem.”

He’s absolutely right. California’s climate goals hinge on people choosing to stop burning stuff, like gas for home heating and oil for driving to the grocery store. But they’ll only embrace electrification if electricity is affordable. And unfortunately, electric bills are bloated, for reasons that have little to do with cheap renewable power.

That’s how we get declining support for certain climate policies — like Newsom’s plan to end the sale of (most) new gas cars by 2035. It polled worse than ever in the latest PPIC survey, with just 34% of likely voters expressing support (down from 49% in 2022).

“I would hope that people read these findings and say we need to do something about the cost of electricity,” Baldassare said.

Gavin Newsom speaks to reporters during a September 2022 heat wave. (Photo by Sammy Roth)

I hope so too. But Newsom and the Legislature have already spent several years trying to tackle affordability. And although they’ve made a few good decisions, they’ve also developed a nasty habit of killing or attempting to kill worthy clean energy programs. They’ve gone after community solar incentives, energy efficiency standards, even HVAC upgrades for overheating schools — often prodded by electric utilities or other industries that misleadingly claim these programs are too expensive.

That’s why I couldn’t help but feel frustrated by the survey question, and by the simplistic way the results were inevitably reported. “Affordability” is all the rage in center-left politics these days; same goes for “climate hushing.” Even before Xavier Becerra emerged victorious in California’s gubernatorial primary — with help from Chevron and Pacific Gas & Electric — the conventional wisdom in Sacramento was that climate action has gotten too expensive, and Californians aren’t willing to pay another dime.

Which is a shame, because climate-fueled wildfires and heat waves are increasingly making life hell in the Golden State.

Not that any of this is the PPIC’s fault. To the group’s credit, its actually asked a bunch of questions about climate impacts, finding that overwhelming majorities of likely voters see water supply, air pollution, wildfires and extreme weather events as problems. Two-thirds believe the effects of climate change have already begun.

Fact check: They’re right!

Sadly, those details didn’t make it into any of the news coverage I found. And even if they had, I doubt they would have mattered much, in terms of narrative formation or bias confirmation. “Californians don’t want to pay more for renewable energy” is an easy story to tell, especially when so many powerful voices are already telling it, and so many people want to believe it.

But I’m an optimist, and I have faith that new narratives and data points can still change what people think and say and feel over time. So I was encouraged when Baldassare told me he was open to modifying next year’s environment survey — possibly by adding follow-up questions about renewable energy. He said he might even ask for my advice.

Which is why I want your advice: If you were surveying Californians about renewable energy, what would you want to know? Think big picture: What information would it be helpful for policymakers and the public to have, coming from a well-respected source?

Share your ideas via email, or in the comments. If they’re good, I’ll pass them along.