State Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, is an environmental trailblazer. She has authored laws to accelerate the transition to zero-emission vehicles, expand rooftop solar, mandate clean energy storage, increase the energy efficiency of buildings and appliances, and reform clean energy financing.
Her legislative achievements also include jumpstarting California’s use of green hydrogen, a multi-faceted fuel that has the potential to decarbonize challenging sectors of our economy while protecting good-paying jobs. In addition, she has authored laws to maximize nature’s ability to store climate-changing carbon in the soil, grasslands, wetlands, forests, and other natural systems throughout California, and to require all packaging in California to be recyclable or compostable by 2032.
Sen. Skinner has also been a proponent of dense housing in urban areas since the 1990s, when she launched an initiative to create greenhouse gas inventories for cities. Such inventories are commonplace today and show that the single-largest source of greenhouse gases in California come from the transportation sector — due in large part to policies that block housing near job centers.
In the California Legislature, Skinner has authored laws to prevent local governments from denying housing projects that conform to existing rules and speed up housing construction by easing local regulations and barring downzoning and housing moratoria. She has also authored laws to spur more housing units for low-income and unsheltered Californians and has led budget actions directing billions of dollars to help address the state’s homelessness crisis and its shortage of affordable housing.
Sen. Skinner is chair of the Senate Housing Committee, and serves on the Senate’s Environmental Quality, Energy, and Budget committees. She began her public service in 1984 as the first and only student elected to the Berkeley City Council, and while on the council, she introduced the nation’s first Styrofoam ban. She is also past member of the East Bay Regional Park District Board of Directors.