Berkeley Law

This analysis presents costs and benefits to the Inland Empire economy—including job gain and loss—of cap and trade, the RPS, distributed solar programs, and energy efficiency programs overseen by the CPUC. We used publicly available data to determine the costs and benefits of these programs between 2010–16, and then modeled the regional economic impacts using IMPLAN. after accounting for the full costs of these programs to industry, the region received $9.1 billion more than was spent, and saw 41,000 more jobs gained than were lost. When accounting for the ripple effects of this influx of capital (the secondary and tertiary spending that occurs), the Inland Empire saw a total of $14.2 billion in economic activity and 73,000 jobs as a results of California’s major climate programs. Over 90 percent of the direct impact is due to the proliferation of renewable energy powerplants in the region.