The California Supreme Court just gave state officials a golden opportunity to revitalize the rooftop solar industry, helping millions of homes and businesses lower their electric bills and fight the climate crisis.

Unfortunately, there’s little chance Gov. Gavin Newsom will do it.

When the California Public Utilities Commission voted in 2022 to slash rooftop solar incentives, environmentalists sued the agency. They won a big victory this month, with the state’s top court ruling that a lower court was wrong when it said environmentalists couldn’t challenge the agency’s logic in cutting payments to solar customers. Now the lower court will need to take another look.

This would be a perfect time for Newsom to make the lawsuit irrelevant and demand that lawmakers pass a bold plan to advance rooftop solar. He could deliver a huge win for climate progress amid President Trump’s attacks on clean energy. And he could highlight his own climate credentials ahead of a possible presidential run.

Alas, Newsom has made clear that rooftop solar is not a priority. It was his appointees who slashed incentives.

If rooftop solar were Newsom’s only climate failure, that would be one thing.

But critics feel he is increasingly shying away from the climate ambitions that have long defined California. As a result, they fear, the state is starting to backslide as a global leader — at the worst possible time.

“It’s super disheartening to see [Newsom] pivot to the middle,” said Alex Nagy, program director at public affairs firm Sunstone Strategies, which works with environmentalists. “It’s all with the oil industry whispering in his ear.”

Case in point: Right now, in the last weeks of the legislative session, Newsom is pushing lawmakers to streamline oil drilling in Kern County and elsewhere, with less environmental review — a sharp reversal for the governor.

Oil companies say more drilling is needed to ensure sufficient gas supplies and stable prices at the pump, ahead of two in-state refinery closures planned for the next year. Some climate advocates reluctantly agree.

But even environmentalists who see a need for more drilling say Newsom is pushing for more concessions than necessary. Harsher critics believe additional oil extraction won’t help with gas prices at all.

“Big Oil is the richest and most powerful industry on Earth. They’ve always been the biggest bully in California, and they’ve just spent tens of millions of dollars beating up on things they don’t like,” said Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “People are intimidated by that.”

If you don’t follow California politics closely, the idea that the oil industry still holds sway might sound ludicrous.

But just this year, the industry and its allies killed a bill that would have held climate polluters financially liable for damages caused by their emissions. They also blocked legislation that would have let victims of extreme weather disasters sue Big Oil for fueling the climate crisis. In both cases, Newsom stayed silent.

Newsom has also basically abandoned his pledge to quickly close the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage field, 10 years after a giant leak spewed heat-trapping methane and fouled the air in San Fernando Valley neighborhoods. Southern California Gas says its customers need the storage field to supply fuel for heating and cooking.

Closing Aliso would be easier if more Angelenos switched from gas to electric appliances, which can lower energy bills and reduce pollution. But Newsom signed a bill putting a six-year pause on building code updates promoting electrification. New York, by contrast, recently prohibited gas appliances in most new buildings.

The icing on the methane cake? Last year, Newsom vetoed a bill that would have required new gas stoves to come with health warning labels, despite a growing body of research revealing they emit nitrogen dioxide, benzene and other potentially deadly pollutants. A similar law in Colorado took effect this month.

Plastic recycling has been another sticking point. Critics have accused Newsom of stymieing implementation of a landmark single-use plastics recycling law he signed several years ago, amid renewed pushback from the plastics and fossil fuel industries. (Plastics are typically made from oil and gas.)

As environmentalists have grown more critical, the governor has refused to admit fault. Asked for comment for this column, Newsom spokesperson Daniel Villaseñor said California “has no peers when it comes to the actions we’ve taken to address the climate crisis and their scale as the fourth largest economy on the planet.”

“Any other conclusion is radical spin that makes Trump look like an honest broker,” he said in an email.

I’ll let you decide whether I’m presenting radical spin. But as to whether California has no peers on climate action — well, we’re definitely still making progress. Two-thirds of our electricity is now climate-friendly. Electric cars and plug-in hybrids account for more than one in five light-duty vehicle sales, even with Tesla on the ropes.

Newsom has benefited from market trends, and from laws passed before he took office. But he’s also stepped up, holding firm to the state’s long-term goals and committing to end most gas car sales by 2035. He sued the Trump administration to defend the gas vehicle phaseout. He sued the oil industry over its history of climate denial.

The thing about the climate crisis, though, is it’s either an existential threat — as Newsom says it is — or it isn’t. If you want to be a global leader, you can’t just file lawsuits you may not win while throwing rooftop solar under the bus and handing the oil and gas industry major victories to avoid short-term political pain.

The rooftop solar issue is complicated because utilities and some consumer advocates say the incentive program that Newsom’s appointees voted to gut, called net metering, has raised utility bills for non-solar homes. But even if that’s true — not everyone agrees— Newsom has done little to boost flagging solar sales. Critics say he’s doing the bidding of investor-owned utilities, which have long fought to minimize rooftop solar.

Maybe this month’s state Supreme Court decision will prompt a return to net metering.

“We’re hopeful. We do believe the law is on our side,” said Roger Lin, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued the Public Utilities Commission. (Full disclosure: My father-in-law, an energy attorney, was on the legal team for one of the other litigants.)

Personally, I would err on the side of not returning to net metering, for fear of pushing electric rates even higher — but only if Newsom steps in with a new plan to support solar. We need a lot more solar roofs, ASAP.

There are similar cost concerns with gasoline — hence the governor’s push for more oil drilling, and the dilemma facing climate-friendly lawmakers like state Sen. Henry Stern.

When I spoke with Stern, he told me he never could have imagined himself supporting more fossil fuel extraction. But the announcements that Phillips 66 would close its L.A. County oil refinery and Valero would shut its Bay Area refinery rattled him. He believes lawmakers have to allow more drilling, if they want to avoid exorbitant gas prices that could derail support for clean energy and stop other governments from following California’s lead.

“None of it feels very satisfying,” Stern acknowledged.

He still sees California as a global climate leader. But he’s learning the energy transition can be messy.

“I don’t know if you call it a backsliding, or maybe a begrudging acquiescence, or just ugly practicality,” he said.

The path forward won’t always be smooth. But in a state suffering ever-more-powerful heat waves, wildfires and floods, that’s no excuse for backsliding. State officials will sometimes need to make hard choices. But we can also expect them not to make stupid choices that sacrifice climate progress for political expediency.

Hopefully, Newsom’s successor takes that lesson to heart.

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