Governor Newsom signs bill expanding fuel options to help Californians save at the pump, amid Donald Trump’s gas price crisis

Since Donald Trump’s reckless Iran war began more than 200 days ago, Americans have spent over $110 billion on extra fuel costs, nearly $900 per U.S. household, according to Brown University. That’s money pulled straight out of family budgets to fill up a gas tank, run a farm, or keep a small business’s trucks on the road that would otherwise drive the American economy forward.

How it works

According to a study conducted by the University of California, Berkeley, and the United States Naval Academy, introducing E15 into the market could lower gasoline prices by up to $0.20 per gallon and save Californians as much as $2.7 billion annually, but it would also require infrastructure modifications throughout the state, including at retail gasoline stations.

E15 fuel has been adopted in other states and could reduce gasoline prices without posing environmental harm. As of 2023, E15 was sold at more than 3,000 stations in 31 states.

Another study from the University of California, Riverside found that increasing ethanol blending in gasoline would not affect NOx emissions and would reduce particulate emissions.

Keeping California ahead on clean vehicles

This year, California reached a major milestone: 2.5 million electric car sales — far exceeding the state‘s original goal of 1.5 million. That’s 300% growth in cumulative new ZEV sales since the end of 2019 driven by the Golden State’s effective clean transportation policies, including our nation-leading zero-emission vehicle incentive programs.

Thanks to continued investments, like the annual Clean Transportation Program Investment Plan, California now has 216,445 publicly available and shared EV charging ports across the state. Earlier this year, California surpassed 20,000 DC fast chargers, easing range anxiety for both short trips near home and long-haul travel along California’s major transportation corridors. DC fast chargers offer substantially faster charging speeds, and continued advances in vehicle and charger technology have achieved even faster speeds. 

California’s growing number of publicly available EV chargers can be found at locations that are fully publicly accessible, like grocery stores, park-and-ride lots, and even gas stations, whereas shared chargers can be found at workplaces, doctors’ offices, sports facilities, and other parking areas that may have some level of restricted access. This statewide network of public and shared chargers is in addition to the estimated 800,000 EV chargers installed at residential homes.

The facts Trump hopes you never see

❌ MYTH: More drilling more would lower gas prices.
✅ FACT: Oil trades at a worldwide price. American crude sells to the highest bidder, not at a discount for Americans. So when crude oil spikes as it has since the start of the war, American-drilled oil still sells at that elevated global price, meaning Americans see no direct price benefit from domestic production. Every $10/barrel increase in crude translates to a roughly 24 cent/gallon increase at the pump, which is why prices are spiking in Texas, Oklahoma, and every oil-producing state in America. No amount of domestic drilling stops a war from disrupting global prices. The U.S. cannot drill its way out of Trump’s global price shock.

❌ MYTH: Repealing gas taxes would bring prices down.
✅ FACT: Repealing gas taxes wouldn’t lower prices at the pump — it would hand oil companies a massive tax break with no guarantee that a single cent would be passed on to drivers. That’s exactly what happened in Florida, where a gas tax holiday was reported to have been pocketed largely by fuel companies instead of consumers. California’s gas tax — upheld by voters in 2018 — funds safer roads, bridge repairs, and proven efforts to reduce air pollution and protect public health. Gas taxes are fixed costs that don’t fluctuate with the market and have nothing to do with the price spikes that Americans are experiencing this week.  

And one thing that rarely gets mentioned: California wouldn’t need to rely so heavily on its gas tax if it received its fair share of federal highway funding in the first place. Instead, Congress allocates California less funding per capita than all but two states, meaning California drivers are already subsidizing roads in other states while paying more to maintain their own.

❌ MYTH: California hasn’t done anything to protect drivers at the pump.
✅ FACT: Over the past two years, California gas prices have been stable and significantly lower than the historic 2022 and 2023 price spikes. That stability is the direct result of tools Governor Newsom fought for and signed into law: SBX1-2 and ABX2-1, which created first-in-the-nation transparency and oversight requirements on the oil industry. According to a 2024 CEC report, those laws have delivered results. In 2024, the annual average price of a gallon of gasoline was 20 cents lower than in 2023 and 70 cents lower compared to 2022, adjusted for inflation. This equated to an avoided cost to Californians of about $2.5 billion compared to 2023 and $9.3 billion compared to 2022.

And despite what critics would have you believe, California is not seeing uniquely large price increases today. California ranks roughly in the middle of states for price increases — 31st out of 50 — showing that California’s increase is in line with what drivers are seeing across the country. 

Trump’s war is now upending that hard-won stability, but California’s tools remain in place, and we’re using every one of them.

❌ MYTH: California’s climate and health policies are making the gas price problem worse.
✅ FACT: California’s clean energy policies are the long-term solution to gas price volatility, not the cause of it. The best way to permanently insulate consumers from oil price shocks caused by wars, geopolitical instability, OPEC decisions, and market speculation is to reduce dependence on petroleum altogether. California is doing exactly that. 

❌ MYTH: California is sitting on swaths of untapped in-state oil and refusing to drill.
✅ FACT: Last year, Governor Newsom also signed SB 237 to responsibly stabilize oil production in Kern County. Since January 1st, Kern County has issued 1,160 permits for various types of well work, and CalGEM has issued 378 permits to drill new oil and gas wells, which are all under strengthened safety requirements and enhanced protections to safeguard communities from oil and gas operations.

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