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That’s the opinion of David Crane, chief executive officer of NRG Energy, a wholesale power company based in Princeton, N.J. What’s afoot is a confluence of green energy and computer technology, deregulation, cheap natural gas, and political pressure that, as Crane starkly frames it, poses “a mortal threat to the existing utility system.” He says that in about the time it has taken cell phones to supplant land lines in most U.S. homes, the grid will become increasingly irrelevant as customers move toward decentralized homegrown green energy.

Over the past 18 months, a group of plaintiffs’ lawyers who got rich suing the tobacco industry have turned their litigious attention to what they hope will be the next big thing: challenges to healthy-sounding food labels they allege are misleading. Hailing from across the U.S., the lawyers decided to sue in federal courts in Northern California, where the consumer-protection laws are expansive and the jury pool nutrition-conscious.

The demand for labor explains a lot of migration patterns. Where the uneducated once moved to staff large industrial centers, now those with the means and a college education flock to feed the Innovation Economy that is rising from their ashes.

The California Business Roundtable will unveil its new database on the state’s economy Thursday morning.

CropScience, a division of Bayer AG, in West Sacramento, California. The new facility will serve as the U.S.-based R&D operations for the vegetable seed and crop protection products. The approximately 164,000-square-foot facility on ten acres will employ 300 at full capacity. The company will also acquire an additional non-contiguous site on which to construct a greenhouse and test plot facility. The project will have an economic impact of more than $127 million in output (the value of goods and services in the Sacramento Region economy on an annual basis generated through direct, indirect, and induced activities of the company.)

The insurance industry has provided over 210,00 jobs in 2010 and provided a payroll that totaled $14.9 billion, just in California!

Nearly 180 California hotels changed hands in the first half of 2013, a 12% increase from the number sold in same period last year, according to a mid-year report by Irvine consulting firm Atlas Hospitality Group.

Wells Fargo is cutting staff as higher rates cool residential mortgage lending, which has been on a tear in recent years.

Los Angeles lawmakers Wednesday agreed to pursue further analysis of an ambitious $3-billion proposal to fix thousands of miles of the city’s most deteriorated streets.

California’s largest greenhouse gas-emitting businesses paid $12.22 per metric tonne (1.1 tons) for the right to release carbon this year, lower than expected and down almost 13 percent from the previous sale in May, the state said on Wednesday.

Carbon prices in California have slumped to the lowest level this year as the state weighs increasing the number of free permits offered to polluters in an effort to kick-start the fledgling market.

With the legislative session drawing to a close–and with Steinberg continuing to juggle proposed amendments and work to keep the governor interested in CEQA–more and more voices outside Sacramento have begun to pose this very question: What exactly will Steinberg’s bill do to streamline CEQA for infill projects–and is the Senate leader’s approach good policy for the economy, for communities, and for the environment?

The Port of Oakland wants to reroute that trip, and is battling powerful rivals in a competition for precious goods. Its leaders have rolled the dice on a bold, $1.2 billion solution: turn the old Oakland Army Base into an ultra-efficient port that links ships directly to trains, reducing truck traffic, expanding the port’s cargo business and securing the Bay Area’s role in the 21st-century global shipping economy.

California is the second-most-expensive state in which to operate a motor vehicle, according to a new study released by Bankrate.com.

Your car may drive the same no matter where you live. But the costs are different matter altogether. The price of everything from gasoline to muffler repairs varies wildly across the country. Here are the average costs of repairs, insurance premiums, gasoline and taxes and fees in all 50 states, according to Bankrate’s first Car Cost Index. The costs are ranked from highest to lowest.