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When Palo Alto changed its building code in 2022 to require that every new building be all-electric, city leaders and local environmentalists lauded it as a critical tool for moving the community away from natural gas use and key to meeting their sustainability goals.
With building emissions accounting for roughly a third of the city’s total greenhouse gas emissions, council members have made it a priority to convert people from natural gas to electricity in water heating, space heating and cooking.
“Because Palo Alto already has a carbon-neutral electric power supply, building electrification reduces greenhouse-gas emissions and also improves the indoor air quality and reduces fire risk,” George Hoyd, the city’s chief building official, said shortly before the council voted to adopt the all-electric requirement.
But after a recent court ruling struck down Berkeley’s ban on gas infrastructure, Palo Alto is now preparing to abandon its own prohibition. In a stinging setback for the city’s environmental agenda, the City Council will consider a proposal from the Department of Planning and Development Services on Feb. 26 to halt enforcement of the all-electric requirement and to consider other changes to the building code that would encourage residents and businesses to adopt electric appliances,
Palo Alto’s potential reversal is prompted by an April 2023 ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case California Restaurant Association v. City of Berkeley. After Berkeley became the first California city to ban gas infrastructure in 2019, the restaurant association filed a lawsuit challenging the ban. Then, after the court issued its ruling last year, Berkeley requested a new hearing. In January, the appeals court denied Berkeley’s request.
In denying the request and effectively striking down Berkeley’s law, the appeals court argued that the ban on gas infrastructure runs afoul of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, a 1975 law that Congress adopted in response to a crippling oil embargo that the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries imposed two years earlier, sinking the United States into a recession. The law sought to, among other things, increase energy production and promote energy efficiency.
The appeals court concluded that the law effectively invalidates Berkeley’s ban on gas infrastructure. In doing so, it rejected Berkeley’s argument that EPCA only pertains to regulations that “impose standards on the design and manufacture of appliances,” not regulations that impact the distribution and availability of natural gas.
Berkeley had argued that its gas ordinance is consistent with all state and federal laws. In responding to the suit from the restaurant association, the Berkeley city attorney’s office noted that it includes exemptions that allow new buildings that cannot meet energy-efficiency requirements to adopt a mixed-fuel — gas and electric — infrastructure. It also empowered its Zoning Adjustment Board to consider other exceptions in which installation of natural gas infrastructure may be in the “public interest.”
“This exemption explicitly contemplates that there may be circumstances where substitutes for natural gas technology are inadequate, and the public interest is served by allowing natural gas infrastructure to be installed,” the city argued in its brief.
The argument did not, however, sway the appeals court, which stated in its opinion that the federal act is “concerned with the end-user’s ability to use installed covered products at their intended final destinations, like restaurants.”
“So, by its plain language, EPCA preempts Berkeley’s regulation here because it prohibits the installation of necessary natural gas infrastructure on premises where covered appliances are used,” the court opinion states.
The court’s determination that the federal act applies to state and local building codes goes well beyond Berkeley. According to a new report from the Palo Alto’s Department of Planning and Development Services, more than 70 cities in the United States have adopted regulations requiring or strongly incentivizing all-electric building construction. Because the Ninth District encompasses Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, dozens of cities may have to reconsider their new laws.
In Palo Alto, this could mean halting enforcement of the all-electric requirement less than two years since it was enacted. The move is particularly significant given that the city is now in the midst of revising its zoning code to accommodate an addition of more than 6,000 new housing units by 2030 to comply with a state mandate.
While the Berkeley and Palo Alto laws aren’t exactly the same — the Berkeley ban is included in the city’s Health and Safety Code while Palo Alto’s part of the building code — the end result is similar: a prohibition on gas plumbing in new buildings. Given this similarity, Palo Alto “faces legal risk if it were to continue enforcement of its blanket prohibition on natural gas plumbing in new buildings,” the new report from the Department of Planning and Community Environment states.
To address this risk, staff is proposing a temporary moratorium on enforcement of the all-electric requirement that would remain in effect until the city adopts a new standard that would comply with the appeals court’s position. The approach that staff is recommending, known as “one-margin,” would impose higher energy-efficiency standards on new buildings. Though it technically does not discriminate between gas and electric appliances, it takes account of energy use of the source, which according to staff “favors the additional efficiency and lower emission of all-electric equipment using clean electricity.”
The “one margin” code is currently in place in San Luis Obispo, San Jose and Santa Cruz, according to the report.
“Given the significantly higher efficiency of electric heat pump equipment compared to gas equipment, it is easier to comply with the One Margin code with an all-electric design,” the report states. “In fact, the standards being established by most One-Margin codes currently being developed are high enough that while an all-electric home can meet them with thoughtful efficiency measures, a mixed-fuel home would require the highest level of efficiency and the addition of on-site solar and storage to meet the standards.”
The city hopes to adopt the new code by this fall, according to the report.
Good. Meanwhile the City Manager issues tips on “How to prepare your EV for power outages” while people increasingly freeze in the dark, can’t charge our cell phones, waste money on food spoilage — all to keep fueling the hot air virtue signalling as we watch OUR money fund their posturing, their studies, their lawsuits against “over-charging” us, their ads telling us which toothbrushes to use, etc etc??
How about some common sense like underground wiring, testing those power outage maps and just maybe reining in our utility rates??
Well said
FWIW, one issue with those ideas, which do seem like common sense, is that undergrounding is expensive. I recall hearing millions of dollars per mile. It’s not only expensive to do, I think it’s also expensive to maintain. So how does that jive with your very sensible wish for lower utility rates. For that matter, so does maintaining a gas system that is less used over time. So … ? Sometimes I wish we could underground the electric wires in the old gas mains…
For those who are interested in more background, take a look at my blog post from a few weeks ago: https://www.paloaltoonline.com/blogs/a-new-shade-of-green/2024/01/21/are-all-electric-mandates-illegal/
Just wanted to thank you for this article, Sherry. I read it maybe 5 days ago? Found it very thorough and accessible for us non-lawyer types!
Meanwhile, every time it rains or it’s windy, the power lines go down and huge sections of Palo Alto are left in the dark without electricity. Nice to know Palo Alto city wants us to convert to all electricity and become more electricity dependent!
Well said
Good. Focusing on overall energy use is better approach. I assume this will also put aside any notion of stopping residential gas service.
I continue to be skeptical about the cited figure “building emissions accounting for roughly a third of the city’s total greenhouse gas emissions”. Where did that come from? Reference? For comparison on the EPA site at
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data#Sector
says building only account for 6% of total emissions. Even if the 1/3 is true, what are the other 2/3 from? Better to focus on that.
@BobH, it’s because of what accounting rules say is included in city emissions. It doesn’t include where we fly, what we eat, what we buy, etc. Municipal emissions include transportation to/from/within the city, housing (e.g., gas and electricity emissions), and waste (for the most part, only what is treated within city boundaries iirc). For Palo Alto, it also includes the airport. In the case of Palo Alto, it’s about 59% transportation and 38% housing. Of the transportation, my recollection is that only about 1/3 is residents, the rest is commuters and visitors. It’s something like that, anyway. More here: https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/files/assets/public/v/1/agendas-minutes-reports/agendas-minutes/city-council-agendas-minutes/2023/20230605-item14-scap/attachment-e-2021-ghg-inventory.pdf Hope this helps some.
@Sherry
To clarify, it’s buildings in general, including commercial, not just housing. From your very helpful link, in 2021 it was 18.9% residential, 15.5% commercial, 3.4% industrial. So, a 50-50 split between residential and commercial/industrial.
Also noted there is “…carbon offsets are being purchased in an amount equal to the GHG emissions caused by natural gas (methane) use within the City. However, offsets are not included in this GHG inventory.” So in reality our inventory overstates our net emissions, unless the offsets show up as corresponding negative emissions in someplace else’s inventory.
Could it be that the PA City Council is actually thinking of the financial impact of try to adhere to the narrative of going electric? This is a beginning as electric rates are rising and will rise over the years creating harmful utility bills.
Great!
Re: “Because Palo Alto already has a carbon-neutral electric power supply”
But Palo Alto similarly already has a carbon-neutral gas supply, via the offsets and cap and trade fees visible on our monthly utility bill.
Indeed. I was going to add the same comment.
There is a very good reason to phase out residential gas service in addition to emissions. This is a major earthquake area so we live in wooden cities here. In a major quake the gas mains will break at the same time the water mains break making fighting the fires difficult or impossible.
For Berkeley, the Hayward fault runs right through the city and some professional opinion suggests that the next Big One will be there. However, we realize that the ’89 earthquake was just a sampler should the San Andres system have a major break. Perhaps ‘when’ would have been the better word.
New families of power semiconductor devices, with their scale/demand increasing because of EV’s, will enable electric stoves rivalling the control characteristics of gas-powered ones. I use a present glass-surfaced electric stove and it’s easy to use and clean though disliked by someone who uses gas at home. Device suppliers can do some application engineering as they always do. Appliance makers can be encouraged to bring themselves up to date. They certainly have already taken to microprocessor-based controls, timers, and the like some time ago.
Most winter evenings when I leave my home, I am “hit” with the pollution from wood burning fireplaces. (Since I bought my home in 1997, I never used my wood burning fireplace and quickly converted it to natural gas, which I use often. It doesn’t stink up my home or the outside air.) The air pollution from our area travels to my hometown of Fresno (and other cities) where the smog is “trapped” in the San Joaquin Valley between the mountain ranges. If the City of Palo Alto really cared about pollution, outlawing the use of wood burning fireplaces is an excellent and obvious place to start.
Your point is well-made. Electrification focuses on greenhouse gas emissions with almost no health impact, while non-fossil burning like wood, with no net greenhouse gas impact, does have significant health impacts.
When you say that greenhouse gas emissions have almost no health impact, I think you mean to say that you don’t believe they have any immediate impact on your own health? Because you know by now that the accelerating warming and other changes we are seeing from our continued burning of fossil fuels pose considerable health hazards for people and animals alike. You’ve seen the news about the enormous loss of wildlife and habitat caused by wildfires and marine heat waves in recent years. People are vulnerable as well. Here is one of many references: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health . Maybe we can say that wood smoke is bad without saying that greenhouse gas emissions are not?
Maybe “direct impact” is a better phrasing. My understanding is that the direct health effects of wood smoke are orders of magnitude greater than any indirect health effect due to our CO2 produced by burning natural gas leading to climate change (I could be wrong – a real analysis would help although may not be practical). And of course we know the wildfire intensity increases are due to a century of human fire suppression rather than human-caused climate change.
Hmm. FWIW, I don’t know that. Once again I am surprised by your insistence on either-or statements. Either wood smoke is bad or greenhouse gas emissions are bad. Either wildfires are made worse by climate change (drought, disease, heat), or wildfires are made worse by fire suppression. Either we can reduce one or the other. Why so black and white? I’m trying to understand where you are coming from. Maybe what you are saying is that, bang-for-buck, accounting for uncertainty, you believe it is cheaper to reduce the harms of wood smoke from home fireplaces than the harms of climate change, so we should go for the imminent harm first. We are certainly wired to pick the imminent one. Whether that is the “right” one probably depends on your discount rate (how you value damage to future generations vs the current one), among other things.
@Sherry
Not either/or, but rather a matter of prioritization (much as you suggested). The government claims to be making evidence-based rules to improve health, but ignores the objectively larger health impact in favor of a politically trendy policy. Wood smoke OK, gas heating banned. Interior exhaust gas stoves OK, externally-vented gas water heaters banned.
As I’ve noted before, such seeming hypocrisy corrodes public confidence in good government and sets the stage for sudden opposite political swings as seems to be happening with the raft of initiatives this year in WA state.
Maybe we can ask that users of gas to bear the cost of maintaining the gas infrastructure and any damage resulting from the use of gas? As more people and companies electrify their houses and buildings, I suspect that the user cost will be keep rising.
This is related to my question about the new proposal – maybe it stops us from getting sued NOW but could someone theoretically sue us later on down the road for allowing them to add new gas infrastructure – when we knew that they would bear the brunt of the cost to maintain once everyone else went electric?
That seems fair. After all, that’s the way it works today. Looking at current gas bills, even a doubling of the distribution costs (e.g. half the number of customers) wouldn’t be too terrible an increase. Commercial users will take much longer to electrify, so I would expect it to take two decades or more to even drop that much.
@TripleL, it’s certainly the easiest thing to do, let the market play out. The concern is that doing so will disproportionately hurt renters and lower-income households, who cannot move away from gas but also cannot afford to pay higher bills. So then we have to find funds to help mitigate this, or some other compensating policies.
On the news when they say that specific locations have lost power I say YEAH for Palo Alto – I am watching the news on TV and have power. I have gas heated water and heat. YEAH! That is a victory that PA can overcome the disasters that are occurring in other locations. That is because we are NOT dependent on only one utility function to keep this city running. Always have back-up contingencies to keep the lights on. Given this location’s dependence on technology we have provided gas in a safe manner. Gas is a plentiful approach to keeping our cities warm. I consider this a victory for the city.
WE are trying to build houses here. The gas hook-ups are established and working. Gas is plentiful and can be integrated into the new buildings quickly. That is opposed to issues with PG&E which cannot provide electrical transformers to SF buildings now and they have to wait a year. Reality is that we can use gas now in our planning while electricity is being controlled by forces outside the city. The Government is going to allocated it based on some criteria that keeps changing. Worse – water is also limited with it allocated by the county. This city does not have control over these issues – they are controlled by outside agencies. Go with the GAS – YEAH!