VX News is the editorial voice of the annual VerdeXchange Conference, featuring in-depth interviews with industry leaders and policymakers driving innovation in clean energy, water, transportation, and climate policy.
Ruben Aronin: Can State Policy/Financial Incentives Counter Fed’s EV Pullback?
As federal incentive rollbacks, tariff pressure, and automaker write-downs reshape the U.S. EV market, California is testing whether state-level policy pull & financial incentives can substitute for federal policy headwinds. In this VX News interview, Better World Group Senior Principal Ruben Aronin – architect of the Advanced Clean Cars II and Advanced Clean Fleets coalitions – outlines a 2027–2029 strategy built on point-of-sale incentives, faster charging deployment, freight beachheads at the ports, and a new revenue source capable of funding transit and electrification without pitting them against each other.
The largest clean energy investment in North American history announced by Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney
With electricity demand climbing across North America and critical minerals supply chains under strain, Canada is moving to underwrite new generation at a scale not attempted in a generation. VX News here republishes the Government of Canada's backgrounder on the August 17, 2026 announcement by Prime Minister Mark Carney, alongside the premiers of Québec and Newfoundland and Labrador, of up to $10 billion in federal support for a nearly $70-billion package
VX Excerpt: Beyond Watershed Planning – Engaging Communities to Improve Outcomes of the LA County’s “Safe Clean Water Program”
As stormwater capture becomes Los Angeles County's principal strategy for managing flood risk, water quality, and local supply, the question of whether Measure W dollars are being deployed at watershed scale – or project by project – has become central to the program's next decade. VX News here excerpts Beyond Watershed Planning, Los Angeles Waterkeeper's assessment of the LA County Flood Control District's Safe Clean Water Program, drawn from five community workshops across four watersheds, which finds the $280-million-a-year program too reactive in structure and recommends a proactive 20-year investment cycle, clearer metrics, stronger greening targets, and deeper community and Tribal engagement.
Felicia Marcus "A New Bridge With Another Expiration Date"
In conversation, Felicia Marcus, the William C. Landreth Visiting Fellow at Stanford's Water in the West program and former chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board, assesses the plan federal officials have just accepted to cut Colorado River use through 2028 which she calls a large band-aid rather than the tourniquet the basin needs. She reflects on 25 years of living beyond the river's means, the compact arithmetic that set the overallocation in motion, and the shift required from two-year interim patches toward a durable post-2026 framework. Drawing on service at the federal, state, and municipal levels, Marcus argues that Washington has abandoned the "800-pound gorilla" role that once produced the Bay-Delta Accord and the Quantification Settlement Agreement. Her prescription rests on financing and inclusion – capital to scale conservation and retrofits, and negotiations that reach past the seven state delegations to local agencies, academics, and tribes.
CARB Fleshes Out Proposed SB 253 GHG Emissions Reporting and Assurance Requirements for 2027 and Beyond, and More, at July 21 Public Meeting
VX News here excerpts a Ropes & Gray update by Michael Littenberg, Marc Rotter, and Peter Witschi that reports that at a July 21 public meeting, the California Air Resources Board presented its latest thinking on SB 253 reporting and assurance requirements starting in 2027. That law required companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue doing business in California to disclose their Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions – which will work starting in 2027. Find the Ropes & Gray original Update on 2026 SB 253 reporting here.
Two cities burned in LA fires settle YIMBY lawsuit
VX News here excerpts a CalMatters’ Ben Christopher feature that reports: homeowners in Malibu and Pasadena, who saw their neighborhoods burn in the Eaton and Palisades fires last year, will soon be able to build up to four units on their properties now that the two fire-scarred cities have settled a lawsuit brought by pro-development activists. In the settlement: both Malibu and Altadena agreed to repeal their local anti-duplex ordinances suspending SB 9 in post-fire very high fire hazard severity zones and accept all pending and future applications filed under the law. That five-year-old housing law makes it easier for single-family home owners to divide up their parcels and build duplexes on each lot, potentially allowing as many as four small units where local rules once allowed only one. Find the CalMatters original, here.
VX2026 "Affordable Housing: Is the Model Broken?": Bob Hertzberg’s Ballot-Box Missing Middle Fix
In this excerpt from VX2026's plenary "Affordable Housing: Is the Model Broken?", Robert Hertzberg, the former California State Senate Majority Leader and Senior Advisor at Mission Possible Partnership, moves past the familiar catalog of what's broken toward what he's actually building: a November 2026 ballot measure aimed squarely at the "missing middle" – the working families priced out of both subsidized affordable housing and market-rate ownership (a Revenue Bond to be paid back by homebuyers’ mortgage payments). Read along as Hertzberg lays out the five categories of housing he sees and delivers a verdict on why California's existing housing dollars aren't reaching the people they're meant to. A recording of the entire plenary can be found here.
VXNews Excerpt: California High-Speed Rail Authority and High Desert Corridor JPA Advance Statewide High-Speed Rail Connectivity
VX News shares the California High-Speed Rail Authority's July 20 announcement of a new Memorandum of Understanding with the High Desert Corridor Joint Powers Agency. The signed MOU, a major step in advancing California’s vision for a fully connected, statewide electrified high-speed rail network, deepens coordination on environmental clearance, station integration, and design at Palmdale Station; and promises to fill a key gap in the statewide highspeed network. Beyond planning alignment, the agencies also commit to pursuing coordinated materials procurement and construction sequencing – a cost-containment posture that reflects the Authority's continued exposure to delivery economics.
VX Feature: The Solar Stupidity is Blinding
Formerly the LA Times' first climate columnist and now writing independently on Climate-Colored Goggles, Sammy Roth argues that California regulators passed up an easy win on electricity affordability when they blocked PG&E's exit from the Ivanpah solar plant. In this piece, appearing originally on Climate-Colored Goggles and republished by VX News with permission, Roth weighs the CPUC's reliability rationale against contracts priced near $135 per megawatt-hour in a market building new solar for $38. Find the original, here
VX Excerpt: National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Attributes Extreme Weather and Climate Events & Their Impacts to Human Caused Climate Change
As extreme weather grows more frequent and costly, the scientific ability to link a specific heat wave, flood, or drought to human-caused climate change has become central to how governments, insurers, and courts assess responsibility and risk. VX News here excerpts Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and Their Impacts, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's 2026 consensus study, chaired by James W. Hurrell of Colorado State University, which updates the Academies' 2016 assessment of extreme event attribution (EEA) science and extends the analysis into the emerging field of extreme event impact attribution (EEIA) — evaluating how much climate change shapes not just an event's physical severity, but its human and economic toll.