Contra Costa County pauses all-electric building requirements, natural gas ban for new construction

MARTINEZ — Contra Costa County officials will stop enforcing building codes that require most new buildings to be all-electric — at least for now.

The about-face comes after a three-judge panel in April struck down Berkeley’s first-in-the-nation ban on natural gas in new construction, ruling that cities do not have the authority to prohibit the installation of natural gas plumbing in buildings.

The Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors agreed to pause enforcement on Tuesday, attempting to avoid litigation or other legal issues because the ordinance that went into effect June 2022 was similar to Berkeley’s now-illegal ban.

There’s a growing wave of local governments reconsidering their approach to embracing clean, carbon-free energy in residential and commercial buildings — currently the source of roughly a quarter of California’s emissions, according to the California Energy Commission.

San Mateo County also recently halted enforcement of its building “reach” codes, and the city of San Luis Obispo announced a similar pause in July. It’s unclear what elected officials in Oakland, San Jose and San Francisco are planning to do about similar rules that are now caught in these legal crosshairs.

Notably, the ruling doesn’t impact cities that have taken a building code-based approach to natural gas bans, including Mountain View, Palo Alto and Santa Clara. Amy Turner, a senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, said that’s because specific exceptions have been carved out of the federal law to allow cities to add requirements or strong incentives for all-electric new construction into building and energy codes — an alternative to banning gas piping, itself.

However, local officials still encourage residents and businesses to continue installing all-electric building systems and appliances.

“Contra Costa County remains committed to reducing the use of fossil fuels in buildings,” Supervisor Federal Glover said in a statement. “We are eager to identify new and innovative ways to continue to pursue our goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings.”

On Tuesday, the board asked staff to report on alternatives for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings and report back to the county’s sustainability committee meeting scheduled for March 18.

After the Berkeley City Council passed its ordinance in 2019, the pioneering approach to reducing carbon emissions and pollutants subsequently spread to nearly two dozen cities in the Bay Area and more than 70 cities across California, as well as local governments in Massachusetts, New York, Washington, Oregon and Colorado.

But the California Restaurant Association quickly filed a lawsuit seeking to safeguard natural-gas kitchen appliances, claiming that food cooks better over gas. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed with the restaurant trade group’s argument that the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act, originally an oil-crisis-era attempt to regulate the nation’s energy, restricts local governments from controlling the energy use of equipment.

Last summer, Berkeley City Attorney Farimah Faiz Brown attempted to help prevent the current wave of reversals, fearing that the appellate court ruling would invalidate a host of other state and local efforts to craft safety regulations on essential matters such as food, fire safety and water quality.

In January, a full federal appeals court refused to grant Berkeley a new hearing. Unless the Supreme Court decides to review the case, the ruling is final for Berkeley.