Background
Climate change is driving an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events globally and in California, including heatwaves, droughts, flooding, and a significant increase in the incidence and severity of catastrophic wildfires. These extreme weather events impose profound risks to public health, natural resources, infrastructure, and California’s economy.
To address this emerging climate-fueled economic crisis, California must evaluate new models to equitably socialize risk that balance the state’s goals of providing Californians with safe, affordable, and reliable energy, maintaining progress toward the state’s climate goals, stabilizing the insurance markets to protect both insurance access and affordability, mitigating the incidence of and harm from wildfires and other disasters, and providing swift and fair compensation to those harmed.
Senate Bill 254
The California Legislature passed and Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB254, which requires a comprehensive assessment to analyze and develop long-term reforms that protect access to insurance, reduce litigation costs, provide fair and expeditious compensation to claimants, support wildfire mitigation, safety, and community resilience, and ensure large electrical corporations are accountable for safety and also have the financial health to attract low-cost capital on behalf of ratepayers.
Governor Newsom’s Executive Order
California Governor Gavin Newsom issued his Executive Order (N-34-25) on September 30, 2025, to launch the next phase of his “whole-of-government response” to the economic and insurance consequences of the climate crisis and to direct robust governmental participation in the SB 254 Study.
The Governor’s press release regarding this Executive Order contains additional information regarding his administration’s collaborative support of the SB 254 study.
Next Steps
The California Earthquake Authority (CEA), in its capacity as Administrator of the California Wildfire Fund will oversee the preparation of the assessment (study) and seeks input from the stakeholder community. Planning and logistics have begun, and CEA is required to deliver a report on the study to the Legislature and Governor by April 1, 2026. Upon completion and delivery, the report on the natural catastrophe resiliency study will be published on this page.
Request for Stakeholder Contributions
The deadline we set for written submissions has now passed, but we encourage you to register as an interested party to receive study updates and notices about upcoming webinars and other potential opportunities for engagement and contributions.
Stakeholder Contributions Received
We appreciate all the interest in the SB254 study and the submissions. They have been reviewed to ensure that they do not contain any overt political statements, commercial content, inflammatory tone, and other inappropriate material, as determined by CEA in its sole discretion, and thus will not be accepted for publication as part of the Study report.
All submissions received and reviewed prior to the December 12, 2025 deadline are now posted.
Additional Resources
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