Governor Gavin Newsom signed a memorandum of understanding with U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband on Monday, pledging collaboration on climate change, a deal that includes nearly a billion dollars in California clean tech projects from British energy company Octopus. The announcement landed with a thud among critics who see it as the latest symbolic gesture from a governor presiding over the most expensive energy market in the continental United States.
California drivers are paying an average of $4.58 per gallon for gasoline, the highest in the country. Two major refineries have either closed or are closing. And more than 40% of the state's imported gasoline in November was routed through the Bahamas, a record high. Against that backdrop, Newsom flew abroad to ink a deal with a country whose electricity prices rank among the highest in the world.
According to the New York Post, Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton posted a video to social media, tearing into the pact. He connected the dots that Newsom's office apparently would prefer to ignore:
"What a genius idea that is, the UK with the highest electricity prices pretty much in the world teaming up with California the highest electricity prices anywhere in America apart from Hawaii to do more of the insanity of offshore wind that is planned already to destroy our beautiful coastline in California."
Hilton also told The California Post what millions of Californians have been thinking for years:
"We are so sick of Newsom endlessly flying around the world lecturing everyone about climate change while spewing out carbon emissions, all while his insane climate policies give us the highest gas prices in America and the highest electric bills after Hawaii."
The response from Newsom's office was revealing. Director of communications Izzy Gardon replied: "Who is Steve Hilton?" That's the caliber of engagement Californians get from their governor's team when confronted with substantive criticism about energy costs. Not a rebuttal. Not a data point. A dismissal.
The state that consumes the most transportation fuel behind Texas is systematically dismantling its ability to produce it. Phillips 66 shuttered its fuel production in 2025. Valero's refinery in Benicia is phasing out operations and will close early this year. That leaves California with just eight operating oil refineries producing transportation fuel, according to the California Air Resources Board.
Dr. Wayne Winegarden, a senior research fellow at the Pacific Research Institute, told the Post that the situation has been deteriorating for nearly a decade. He pointed to regulations, including low-carbon fuel standards and inventory requirements that are pushing refineries out of the state.
"Over the last eight years it has definitely gotten worse."
Winegarden didn't dismiss the goal of reaching net-zero emissions. He underscored that the path matters as much as the destination, and California has prioritized its climate ambitions over what he called "key aspects of affordability and reliability." His assessment of the state's alternative energy situation was blunt:
"When the conditions are right we have been getting significant power from alternative energy, but when the conditions are wrong, we have lack of stability."
That instability isn't an engineering mystery. It's the predictable result of building an energy grid around sources that depend on weather, while shutting down the sources that don't. Winegarden suggested natural gas as a bridge fuel in the interim, noting that steady emissions reductions over 10, 20, or 30 years would represent meaningful progress. The alternative, as he put it, is a state that governs based on aspiration rather than reality:
"We rely on more of what we want to be true or even what we think could possibly be true in a few years rather than what's true today."
That single sentence could serve as the epitaph for California energy policy.
Tom Manzo, founder of the California Business and Industrial Alliance, laid the blame squarely on Sacramento. He pointed to Newsom's "overregulation and anti-business climate" for driving up energy costs and pushing companies out of the state entirely.
"The clean energy dream — you know, we have the highest prices in the nation because they chased out the refiners."
Manzo also referenced a solar farm in the Mojave Desert that cost $2.2 billion and is closing after producing only 75% of its capacity. Billions spent, results that fall short, and now the facility is shutting down. That's not a transition. It's a money pit.
His verdict on the UK deal was the simplest and sharpest critique anyone offered:
"You're not helping the state of California by going and making some made up deal with with somebody from from the United Kingdom."
Newsom, described as a Democratic presidential hopeful, issued a statement back in early January following Valero's closure announcement. He highlighted laws he signed to combat rising fuel prices, including efforts to boost oil production in Kern County and grant the California Energy Commission regulatory and data transparency tools to ensure a stable fuel supply during the state's energy transition.
Read that again. The governor who has spent years imposing regulations that drove refineries out of California is now touting laws meant to boost oil production and stabilize fuel supply. He broke it, and now he wants credit for attempting a patch.
This is the cycle California has perfected:
Meanwhile, the state imports record amounts of gasoline through Caribbean shipping routes, which does nothing for emissions and everything for costs. The carbon isn't eliminated. It's just relocated, along with the jobs and tax revenue that used to stay in California.
Nearly a billion dollars in clean tech investment sounds impressive in a press release. But Californians don't live in press releases. They live in a state where filling a gas tank costs more than almost anywhere else in America, where the electrical grid wobbles when conditions aren't ideal, and where the policy response to every failure is more of the same philosophy that caused the failure.
The UK deal is vintage Newsom: global in ambition, disconnected from the kitchen-table reality of the people he governs. He collaborates with foreign energy secretaries while his constituents watch refineries close and prices climb. He speaks the language of the future while Californians pay the price of the present.
Newsom said California is "doing the actual work." The work is costing $4.58 a gallon, and nobody asked for it.
