The Climate Innovation Program was created by Assembly Bill (AB) 209 (2022) to provide financial incentives to California-headquartered companies to develop and commercialize technologies to help California meet its climate goals. These goals relate to greenhouse gas emissions reductions and resilience, and can apply to any sector, including but not limited to transportation, lithium processing, manufacturing, agriculture, and drought and wildfire prevention.
California has a superb track record of setting and attaining ambitious goals for addressing climate change. In 2016, California reached its AB 32 (Núñez, Chapter 488, Statutes of 2006) goal of 1990-level greenhouse gas emissions four years ahead of its 2020 target. In 2018, the state met its goal of 33 percent renewable energy two years ahead of its 2020 target. Deeper investments in technology can support California’s global leadership in addressing climate change, helping meet the state’s clean energy and climate goals more quickly and at lower cost. The Climate Innovation Program was created to provide up to $525 million to support the development and scale-up of clean energy and climate change technologies, and to support economy-wide goals such as carbon neutrality by 2045 (AB 1279, Muratsuchi, Chapter 337, Statutes of 2022).