Marin Conservation League
Climate Action Working Group Meeting
Wednesday 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
In-person/ Zoom Hybrid

Register: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwoduysrDMsGt16JMYC3r6_mA1R0EYqLgKn

May 20th- California’s Climate Future: The Climate Center’s 2026 priorities

As California confronts worsening wildfire risk, grid instability, extreme heat, and the challenge of reducing carbon emissions, many of the decisions being made in Sacramento right now will shape how Californians power their homes, charge their vehicles, and manage land for decades.

Few organizations have been more deeply involved in shaping those conversations than The Climate Center, and few people have been more central to those efforts than Barry Vesser, the organization’s Chief Program Officer. Barry has worked on California climate and clean energy policy for more than two decades and helped lead the Climate Center’s Community Energy Resilience initiative, which secured $170 million in California Energy Commission investment in community-scale energy projects.

At the May 20 Climate Action Working Group meeting, Barry will discuss several of The Climate Center’s major policy priorities for 2026. One of the most consequential is the future of California’s Cap-and-Invest program, the carbon pricing system that generates billions annually for climate programs statewide. How that money gets raised, allocated, and spent is one of the central climate fights in Sacramento right now.

Barry will also discuss efforts to use electric vehicles as backup power sources that could help stabilize the grid during heat waves and outages, along with the growing movement to treat forests, wetlands, grasslands, and working farmland as carbon infrastructure that can store carbon while reducing wildfire risk and protecting water supplies.

He will also touch on enhanced geothermal energy, a promising source of around-the-clock clean power that could complement solar and wind.

For anyone trying to make sense of where California climate and energy policy is heading next, this is a rare opportunity to hear directly from someone helping shape it.

Please register here to join us.