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.
L.A. County CAO (fmr) David Janssen on Measure G: ‘We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know’
In 2028, Los Angeles County voters will elect the county's first executive, the centerpiece of Measure G, the charter amendment that narrowly passed in November 2024. Few people understand the job being redesigned better than David Janssen, who ran the county bureaucracy as chief administrative officer from 1996 to 2007 after 13 years in San Diego County's CAO office. TPR reached out and asked him “What problem the LA County Reform is purportedly meant to solve; whether Measure G, the skeleton reform offered, is likely to solve it; and, whether any charter reform can solve the reform challenges described.”
Powering The Digital Economy: LABC Sustainability Summit 2026
VX News shares a transcript of "Powering the Digital Economy," a panel held October 1 at the Los Angeles Business Council's 20th Annual Sustainability Summit. Moderated by Karen Skelton, founder and CEO of Skelton Strategies, the panel brought together Johnny Casana of Amazon Web Services, Rahul Kalaskar of AES, Ryan Pfaff of EDF power solutions North America, Jonathan Port of Permacity Foundation and Parag Soni of Prologis. They examined how California can capture data center investment under the seven data center bills Gov. Newsom signed September 21, including SB 886 and AB 2383 on cost allocation and SB 887 on CEQA review.
Newsom vetoes insurance-claim bills: Is it ‘petty’ politics?
Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed SB 877 and SB 878, two insurance-claims bills by Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena) sponsored by Every Fire Survivors Network and Consumer Watchdog. The bills would have required insurers to show policyholders how claim payments are calculated and imposed deadlines, with penalties, for paying claims. Nearly two years after the Eaton and Palisades fires, many survivors are still working through claims disputes. The vetoes show that California's post-disaster insurance reform remains a negotiation among the Department of Insurance, the carriers and an organized survivor constituency, and it is now likely to fall to the next governor. VX News shares CalMatters reporter Levi Sumagaysay's account of the vetoes and the response from legislators and advocates.
California Needs Water. El Niño Might Bring Too Much.
California enters what forecasters expect to be one of the strongest El Niños on record. The season will test a decade of state investment in stormwater capture and groundwater recharge, after Governor Newsom declared an early state of emergency. VX News here republishes The New York Times reporting on whether the state can bank a potential deluge underground rather than lose it to the Pacific, as recharge has fallen sharply since 2023 and groundwater storage remains 8.1 million acre-feet below 2019 levels. Read the article here.
California Legislature passes balcony solar bill
VX News here excerpts a Canary Media report by Alison F. Takemura on the Legislature's passage of the Plug and Play Solar Act (SB 868, Wiener), which would let Californians install plug-in solar kits up to 1,200 watts without the utility interconnection process required of rooftop arrays. The bill awaits Newsom's action by September 30. Takemura notes two constraints: no product has yet met the UL 3700 certification the bill requires, and a sunset restores utility sign-off in 2030. Find the original, here.
Wildfire Survivor Network’s Joy Chen on: Recovery & Accountability
Twenty months after the Eaton Fire, a pickleball WhatsApp group from the Altadena Town & Country Club has become one of the more consequential forces in California utility and insurance policy. The Every Fire Survivor's Network (EFSN)now speaks for more than 10,000 Eaton and Palisades survivors, and its executive director, Joy Chen – a former Los Angeles deputy mayor and Fortune 500 executive recruiter – spent the summer in Sacramento arguing that California does not have a wildfire liability problem so much as a fire causation problem.
Airport Authority President Tyron Hampton on Burbank Airport’s New State-of-the-Art Replacement Terminal’s October 13th Opening
On October 13, Hollywood Burbank Airport will open a replacement passenger terminal a decade in the making—the first new terminal on the airfield since 1930, and one of the largest capital projects any Southern California joint powers agency has delivered this cycle. To offer readers an advanced preview of the new terminal, TPR spoke with Councilman Tyron Hampton, the Pasadena Councilmember elected in July to a one-year term as president of the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority. The interview’s focus: 1) what a 14-gate, 355,000-square-foot building does and does not change, 2) how a three-city commission holds together under supermajority voting, and 3) what a deliberately small airport offers a region that is about to host the world in LA 2028.
California’s future water supplies depend on the outcomes of four intertwined battles
With the Colorado River nearing a breaking point and the state weighing mandatory San Joaquin River curtailments, California faces a pivotal stretch in water policy. VX News here republishes CalMatters columnist Dan Walters' commentary on four intertwined fights over the Colorado River, Sites Reservoir, the Delta Conveyance tunnel and San Joaquin diversions, and how they will determine the state's water allocation for decades. See original article here.
Excerpt: Trump's Climate Rollbacks Will Keep Emissions Higher for Longer
With the Environmental Protection Agency's repeal of greenhouse gas standards for existing and new fossil-fuel power plants, alongside a proposal to remove federal oversight of the nation's largest industrial emissions source, the Trump administration has now dismantled the core of the federal climate regulatory architecture, following February's rescission of vehicle GHG standards and the 2009 endangerment finding that underpinned them. VX News here republishes Bloomberg's analysis of what those rollbacks mean for the U.S. emissions trajectory. Drawing on modeling from Energy Innovation and Rhodium Group, the piece finds that decarbonization could be delayed by roughly a decade, with about one additional gigaton of CO₂ in 2040. Read the original article here.
California’s Electric Utilities Are Becoming Uninvestable
With Sacramento letting SB 492 stall and California's strict inverse condemnation doctrine still leaving utilities liable for grid-caused wildfires regardless of negligence, PG&E and Edison International face mounting pressure on their cost of capital just as the state needs major grid investment. VX News here republishes Bloomberg Opinion energy columnist Liam Denning's analysis of why California's electric utilities are becoming uninvestable, and of the reforms that could shift wildfire risk away from ratepayers and toward insurance markets.