Advocacy at USGBC California
At USGBC California, advocacy is our mission in action. We champion climate-forward, people-centered solutions by influencing policy, amplifying community voices, and building coalitions across the state.
Whether we’re supporting legislation, convening stakeholders, or hosting trainings, advocacy runs through everything we do. From our members to our events, from local governments to national partners, we believe in the power of collective action.
We advocate for:
- Sustainable, high-performance buildings
- Climate resilience and emissions reduction
- Equitable & affordable access to safe and healthy homes
- Affordable and abundant clean electricity
- Public and private sector innovation
- Green economy job opportunities and training
- Policies that reflect the voices of the people most impacted
Current Priorities & Core Strategy
USGBC California has identified the following as Current Priorities in our policy and advocacy work:
Our Core Strategy is anchored in the following:
- Furthering relationships with public agencies, local governments, the state legislature, and mission-aligned organizations in California
- Interweaving advocacy efforts throughout all of USGBC California’s programs, events, & culture
- Educating USGBC California members on our advocacy priorities and inviting their ideas and involvement in our initiatives
- Bringing awareness of climate policies, initiatives, and new technologies to our community
- Working with USGBC California’s Regional Leadership Advisory Boards and Committees to fortify a strong volunteer network for advocacy and policy initiatives
- Organizing ‘California Green Building Advocacy Day’
- Fostering dialogue between our membership and public agencies related to code updates, code implementation efforts, and our advocacy + policy priorities
- Collaborating with the Advocacy Team at USGBC National to coordinate and deliver resources to our collective membership base
Advocacy Day
The annual California Green Building Advocacy Day (Advocacy Day) is a day for USGBC California, its members, and other mission-aligned partner organizations to convene in Sacramento and advocate for legislation related to shared industry priorities. We mobilize our community to ensure our collective voices are heard by the Legislature and other decision-makers who can shepherd green building policies for a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable California.
Our main objectives for Advocacy Day are to update Legislators on current issues, concerns, and perspectives related to green building and sustainable development, influence state-level policymaking by bringing awareness on how bills in the Legislature impact the community on the ground, and establish ourselves as an ongoing technical resource for these leaders and their teams.
Advocacy Day 2026 was a Success!
This year, USGBC-CA’s California Green Building Advocacy Day took place on April 15, 2026.
We organized and delivered on 32 meetings with legislators or their staff about 40+ legislative bills (and much more), stewarded by a 20-member coalition from all regions of California, pumped and ready for 8 consecutive hours of engagement and impact, followed by a 50+ person-attended Gratitude Happy Hour celebration in Sacramento, all on One Fabulous Day in April!
See our member testimonials HERE and photos from the event below.
Building Toward & Beyond Advocacy Day 2026:
Our advocacy here at USGBC-CA does not start and end with Advocacy Day. It is year-round. We begin each year with an open memberwide meeting about our strategy for the next 12 months and what we hope to achieve, with an invitation for creative input from participants. From there, we move forward with a number of milestones for the first half of the year, particularly around tracking and taking position on bills for the current legislative season (see below for more specific information about our bills of interest). The dates below indicate our focus and efforts for this past year related to state-level advocacy.
- January 21st – Be the Change in 2026: A Conversation on Advocacy and Policy
- February 20th – 2026 CA Legislature: Last Day for Bills to Be Introduced
- Late February – USGBC-CA State Bill Review Sessions with Membership
- March 2nd – “45 Days of Advocacy” Remote Campaign
- March 11th – Key Legislature Meetings & Sacramento Region Mixer Event
- March 31st – Advocacy Day Virtual Training (for Advocacy Day Participants Only)
- April 15th – Advocacy Day + Gratitude Happy Hour
- May 13th – Advocacy Day Virtual Recap and Next Steps
The remaining half of the year will involve continued active monitoring of the momentum on state bills through the end of the legislative season (September), as well as additional touchpoints with key State representatives, State Public Agencies, and other Sacramento-based organizations with mission-aligned goals.
How to Get Involved with USGBC California Advocacy
- Become an Advocacy Lead for one of our RLABs or Committees
- Contact your Assemblymember or State Senator’s office to tell them why you care about sustainable, resilient, and equitable buildings.
- Contact the USGBC California Advocacy + Policy Team at advocacy@usgbc-ca.org
State Legislative Priorities
- AB 1577 (Bauer-Kahan) Data centers: reporting.
- AB 1642 (Harabedian) Wildfires: contamination standards.
- AB 1653 (Lackey) Pupil instruction: health framework: heat illness.
- AB 1738 (Carrillo) State Housing Law: remote inspections.
- AB 1934 (Bennett) State Fire Marshal: home hardening certification program implementation plan.
- AB 1960 (Bennett) Wildfire Prevention Grants Program: identified cohesive fire communities.
- AB 2182 (Irwin) Electrical corporations: Industrial Decarbonization and Energy Efficiency Program.
- AB 2313 (Berman) Gas corporations: gas distribution service line replacements: alternatives.
- SB 222 (Wiener) Residential heat pump systems: water heaters and HVAC: installations.
- SB 868 (Wiener) Electricity: portable solar generation devices.
- SB 886 (Padilla) California Technology Innovation and Ratepayer Protection Act.
- SB 887 (Padilla) California Environmental Quality Act: environmental leadership development projects: data centers: clean energy powerplant projects.
- SB 908 (Wiener) Residential windows: retrofitting: residential window replacement projects: California Building Code compliance.
- SB 913 (Becker) Resource adequacy: aggregated distributed capacity resources.
- SB 943 (Becker) Public utilities: electricity: transmission charge: industrial transition usage.
- SB 973 (Becker) Wildfire County Coordinator Program.
- SB 1048 (Becker) State Seal of Climate Literacy.
- SB 1159 (Cabaldon) Artificial intelligence: transparency and governance.
- AB 1704 (Mark González) Greenhouse gases: embodied carbon building materials.
- AB 2748 (Quirk-Silva) Building standards: affordable housing developments: electric vehicle charging.
- None
Resources for Local Government
USGBC California has a number of policy, program, and workforce development initiatives to support local government. You can find a brief overview of these offerings here.
Partnership with USGBC National Advocacy Team
We partner closely with USGBC’s Advocacy Team, which tracks policy at the federal level and across states. USGBC has been critical in advocacy for ENERGY STAR. The team hosts a monthly advocacy call to discuss federal policy and allow members across the country to share updates.
Policy Spotlights
Replacing gas furnaces with heat pumps is one of the most powerful actions a homeowner can take to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. California has established a goal of installing six million heat pumps by 2030, but we are not on track to meet this goal. For new construction, the state building code that went into effect in January 2026 strongly encourages heat pumps. But the policy to transition furnaces in existing buildings to heat pumps has largely stalled.
Counterintuitively, the most cost-effective policy for transitioning to clean heating may be to focus on air conditioners. Heat pumps, also known as 2-way ACs, are essentially a conventional air conditioner with the addition of a reversing valve that allows it to switch from cooling to heating. Because of this, 2-way ACs have similar manufacturing and installation costs as conventional 1-way ACs, and can be installed within the same space and using the same electric wiring.
Proposed AC to Heat Pump policies (known colloquially as AC2HP), which require air conditioner replacements to have a heating mode, are popping up in cities across the state. These policies can help residents save money (by eliminating future furnace replacements) while helping clean the air and address climate change.
If you want to help advocate for an AC2HP policy in your community, please fill out our form.
Balcony solar, also called plug-in solar, is a new alternative to rooftop solar that empowers everyday people to produce their own power without the need to spend tens of thousands of dollars, hire an installer, get permits, apply for rebates, or even own their own roof.
The trick of these systems is that they are small enough to hang from a balcony (hence the name) or any other sunny location. They don’t provide nearly as much electricity as a rooftop system, but they are much less expensive than rooftop systems and cut out many of the challenges associated with rooftop solar. Combined with portable batteries, they can offset some household electricity usage when electricity is most expensive.
Like rooftop solar, plug-in solar scaled up first in Germany, where more than a million individual panels have been plugged into household outlets across the country. In the U.S., plug-in solar kits are beginning to be available but fall into a legal gray zone. The non-profit Bright Saver is working to make plug-in solar affordable, accessible, safe, and legal.
In 2025, Utah enacted the first state policy defining safety standards for plug-in solar and establishing the right of households to use the systems without a permit. Underwriters Laboratories (UL) is working to begin certifying the systems, and legislators in more than two dozen states have proposed similar policies this year. This includes California, where Senator Scott Wiener has introduced legislation (SB 868: Electricity: portable solar generation devices). Canary Media has a tracker of all the states that have considered balcony solar legislation this year.
Building Performance Standards (BPS) are policies that states or local governments can adopt to require large existing buildings to report their energy use and/or greenhouse gas emissions annually and improve their performance over time. By providing clear targets, long timeframes, and flexible compliance pathways, BPS are one of the most cost-effective ways of reducing emissions from the built environment.
USGBC California has been an active proponent of BPS. This includes:
- Facilitating the California BPS Peer Learning Collaborative (CalBPS PLC) for 50+ local governments and other key stakeholders to learn from each other and work together on BPS policy development and implementation
- Releasing Model BPS Policy Guidance, in collaboration with the CalBPS PLC
- Developing the California Building Performance Hub with resources to help building owners and managers benchmark their buildings’ performance, understand BPS policies, connect with contractors and service providers, develop strategic building decarbonization plans, identify incentive opportunities, and get retrofit financing.
- Membership in the Building Performance Partnership Network (BPP) Network, which brings together local high-performance building hubs across the country to accelerate measurable, equitable, and sustainable action to improve the health, comfort, and performance of buildings.
You can learn more about our BPS work here.
