The Clean Energy program focuses on the link between California’s environment and economy and aims to help identify challenges, opportunities, and trends as the state looks to grow its economy while achieving ambitious environmental goals. The flagship publication within this program area is the annual California Green Innovation Index, the latest of which is the 15th edition, published in 2024. It tracks a variety of environmental and economic indicators over time, comparing California’s performance to states across the U.S. and to some of the world’s largest economies. Other recent work in the Clean Energy program has focused on the future of California’s grid, challenges to meeting our zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) goals, and environmental and economic impacts of some of the state’s leading climate policies, such as cap and trade, in disadvantaged communities.
2025 California Green Innovation Index
The 17th annual California Green Innovation Index finds total greenhouse gas emissions fell between 2022 and 2023, dropping by 3.0% to 360.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e), an improvement over the 2.4% reduction the previous year. Notably, emissions in 2023 were also 2.4% lower than they were during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown in 2020. Most of the decrease in emissions came from the transportation sector, which fell by 4.6% from 2022 to 2023 (Figure 1). This was driven by a significant 17.2% decrease in emissions from the heavy-duty vehicles sub-sector, while emissions from light-duty vehicles also fell by 0.6%.