With help from Alex Nieves, Wes Venteicher and Camille von Kaenel

SUBNATIONAL GURU: Gov. Gavin Newsom’s trip to China may be over, but Lauren Sanchez’s work has just begun.

Sanchez, Newsom’s senior climate adviser, is in charge of implementing the five climate-focused memorandums of understanding his office signed last month with local, and regional and national Chinese agencies.

She’s a veteran of international climate negotiations — she previously served as senior adviser to U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and was on former President Barack Obama’s negotiating team for the U.N. Paris Agreement — and has done stints at the California Air Resources Board and at CARB’s parent agency, CalEPA. This was her second trip to China this year.

We talked with her about how she’s working to implement the MOUs, which cover the gamut of climate solutions: electric vehicles, batteries, methane, building decarbonization, land use and more — and how she’s hoping California can help China address emissions from coal in particular. (China produces a third of the world’s greenhouse gases; 60 percent of those are from coal.)

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

China is a huge leader in EVs and clean energy, but it also burns a lot of coal — what have you learned about China’s struggles with cleaning up its grid?

Ten years ago, in China, the grid was super dirty. Now it’s dirty, but a little bit cleaner. But we can’t wait for the grid to get 100 percent clean before plugging in the cars and buildings.

In China, if you look at the entire grid, the number we kept hearing was, they have 1,300 gigawatts of clean energy right now on the grid, which is more clean energy than the entire United States of America[’s grid capacity].

Both things can be true: that they are building out more clean energy than anyone in the world, and that, because they still need a ton of power, and they’re dealing with these energy shortage issues, and they have this really abundant domestic source of coal, they’re still really dependent on coal power.

What does California have to offer China in terms of improving energy reliability?

We are doing more than most other states, if not countries, but we can’t be on our high horse. We had to extend our nuclear plant, we have to extend our natural gas plants; the transition is really hard. What’s been most impactful in California [in terms of dealing with energy shortage issues] is batteries. We built out from 250 megawatts; it’ll be at 8,500 by the end of the year. If you look at China’s ability to overnight implement things, if they’re able to build out battery storage technologies, they won’t need to build additional coal.

In 2005, when Shanghai port officials came to California, [they] saw that the Port of LA and Long Beach were plugging in ships, and now the entire port of Shanghai is electrified. I’m not going to say that’s causal, but there’s certainly an element of here’s what we are doing: Here’s what we have learned, here’s what is still difficult for California.

What did Chinese President Xi Jinping have to say about all this?

He has a deep understanding of how important subnational engagement is, and I think a lot of that is also the reverberation of the national tensions, and seeing a pathway to strengthening U.S.-China relations, via subnational cooperation.

The governor was able to share with the president that climate was a top priority for his trip, and that our economy is one of the largest in the world, not despite our climate agenda, but in part because of it. There’s a lot of focus on the Chinese economy, similar to the exact same conversation we were having at the passage of AB 32. Everyone said the economy is going to be ruined. And what California has proven over the last 16-17 years is that you can enact these really aggressive policies, and it doesn’t kill the economy.

EASY FOR FORMERS TO SAY: Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) and 31 other California House Democrats raised concerns today with Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara’s plan to woo insurers back to the state amid record-breaking wildfire losses.

In a letter to Lara, they warned that some of the elements of his plan could diminish the authority of the insurance commissioner as well as the consumer protections established in Proposition 103 in 1988. But they also told Lara he has the power to stabilize the statewide insurance market and should move swiftly.

Garamendi served two terms as insurance commissioner in the 1990s and 2000s. Other signatories included Reps. Katie Porter, Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee, who are vying to fill the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) seat.

EV REALITY CHECK: U.S. regulators are betting they can spread California’s explosion in EV sales across the country over the next decade.

But convincing drivers on the other end of the political spectrum to make the switch is going to be hard, new research from UC Berkeley’s Energy Institute at Haas finds.

The study found a significant — and potentially intensifying — correlation between a state’s concentration of Democratic voters and its share of electric vehicle sales.

Researchers found that even in counties that share similar characteristics that past studies link to EV ownership, like high household incomes, population densities and gasoline prices, a clear divide in vehicle preference exists between Democratic and Republican voters.

And the partisan divide hasn’t abated as EV sales have grown: EVs now represent more than 5 percent of the market in most blue states, and less than 5 percent in all but a few Republican states. California leads the way, with EVs making up more than 20 percent of sales this year. About half of EVs are concentrated in the 10 percent of most-Democratic counties. (Nine of the top 10 counties in terms of EV penetration are in California.)

The study “suggests that it may be harder than previously believed to reach high levels of U.S. EV adoption,” the authors wrote.

Another hurdle to getting emissions cuts from EVs: They’re being driven far less than their internal-combustion counterparts, according to another study out today by researchers at George Washington University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

That study found that used electric cars and SUVs were driven on average 4,500 fewer miles annually than gas vehicles. That trend even applied to Tesla drivers, who benefit from an extensive network of charging stations and vehicle models with longer ranges. EPA’s latest modeling, however, assumes that EVs are driven the same number of miles as conventional gas cars.

“If federal agencies are overestimating true mileage, that results in overestimating the emissions savings,” study coauthor John Helveston said in a release.

WATER CAPTURE: Most devices that remove carbon dioxide from the air use lots of water, but a new version being unveiled today in Bakersfield produces water instead, according to a release from the technology’s Los Angeles-based developer, Avnos.

California’s plan to reach carbon neutrality by 2045 leans on direct air capture to remove carbon from the atmosphere, but critics have raised concerns about upstream emissions from the energy-intensive process and about where to store the carbon after it’s captured.

The new technology, which pulls water from the air, uses half as much energy as other direct air capture technologies, according to the company. Avnos is working with Southern California Gas on the Bakersfield pilot project, which it says will capture 30 tons of CO2 and produce 150 tons of water per year.

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