California has been spearheading climate-change regulation for years and NCG members are helping to do it again with the most recent legislation push.
Gap and eBay are among the dozens of corporations who signed two letters last week pushing to require California pushing further greenhouse gas reductions. In the article below, The Huffington Post discusses corporate advantages to supporting two upcoming bills. The first, SB 350: Golden State Standards, sets to reduce petroleum use and implement enforcement mechanisms and accountability for energy efficiency in buildings. SB 32: Maintaining Economic Growth through Climate Pollution Reduction aims to set longer-term climate pollution targets.
While cutting down on emissions is costly, California's aggressive stance on curbing them is also bringing it business.
Proterra, a company that makes fully electric buses, is moving much of its corporate staff to California from South Carolina. Proterra CEO Ryan Popple told HuffPost that California's 2006 law allowed alternative energy companies to flourish there.
"The advantages that incumbent industries have are just enormous. There is no industry larger and more entrenched than energy. I don’t think that California protects big monopolistic industries in the way other markets do," he said. Because of that, new companies like his can compete.
Already, after just a few years ,"the cost [of electric bus technology] is dropping so quickly that we’re already approaching a point where we are competing with natural gas technology," he said.