A new law in Seattle is the latest in a wave of local efforts to electrify homes and other buildings. Under the city’s Building Emission Performance Standard, signed by law last week, all existing commercial and multifamily residential buildings over 20,000 square feet will have to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Achieving that target would effectively require building owners to replace oil- and gas-fired furnaces, water heaters, gas stoves and others. appliances with electrical alternatives such as heat pumps and induction stoves. Buildings in Seattle generate 37 percent of the city’s total emissions, and the new law is expected to cut that number by more than a quarter.
Seattle’s ordinance reflects a growing push to eliminate the use of fossil fuels in buildings, which would reduce indoor air pollution and reduce carbon emissions. But some other local electrification policies have hit a wall. In April, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals Berkeley, California’s first-in-the-nation ban on natural gas struck in new buildings. The ruling caused several cities across the 9th Circuit region, which spans 11 western states and territories including California, Oregon and Washington, to suspend similar policies. Despite the setback, clean energy experts told Grist that governments still have many options for electrifying buildings. Cities and states like Seattle; Ashland, Oregon; and Washington state is sidestepping Berkeley’s legal challenges by finding creative alternatives to banning gas outright — including by setting emissions targets, updating building codes and limiting indoor air pollution.
“The determination of elected officials and regulators to address this issue has not gone away,” said Dylan Plummer, a senior field organizing strategist at the Sierra Club. “They just have to work through new avenues that are legally defensible.”
In 2019, Berkeley became the first city in the country to ban new buildings from connecting to natural gas lines. The California Restaurant Association quickly mobilized to file a lawsuit against the city for its policy, backed up with over $1 million in funding from SoCalGas, the nation’s largest gas distribution utility. In 2021, a federal district court ruled against the restaurant industry, but in April 2023, a three-judge panel in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s decision and struck down Berkeley’s ordinance. The justices ruled that because national efficiency standards for appliances under the federal Energy Conservation Policy Act prevent cities and states from setting their own standards, local governments cannot ban infrastructure to prevent the use of fossil fuel-powered appliances.
“The decision doesn’t make a lot of sense legally,” Jan Hasselman, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, wrote at the time. Since the ruling, other cities in California, including Encinitas, Santa Cruzand San Luis Obispo, reversed their own natural gas ban. Eugene, which was the first city in Oregon to pass a natural gas ban modeled after Berkeley’s, also suspended its ordinance in June. The Berkeley City Attorney’s Office did request to rehear the case before 11 judges on the 9th Circuit, which could lead to a new decision.
Meanwhile, Hasselman told Grist that building emissions standards like the one passed in Seattle are one way for cities to dodge legal hurdles by avoiding an outright ban on gas. The Seattle Policy set benchmarks that increase every five years for large buildings to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and let building owners decide how they want to meet those standards. Theoretically, they could hold on to their oil and gas devices, although Plummer pointed out that avoiding electrification is likely to become increasingly difficult over time. Commercial buildings covered under Seattle’s new law must achieve net-zero emissions by 2045, and multi-family buildings by 2050 — a requirement that would effectively require fossil fuel appliances to swap out heat pumps and other electric options. (Carbon offsets purchased by utilities will be allowed to count toward buildings’ net-zero calculations.) A handful of other cities have also passed building performance standards to reduce emissions, including Boston, New Yorkand Washington DC.
Updating building energy codes is another viable way for cities to pursue electrification without running afoul of the 9th Circuit decision, Hasselman said. Recent changes to Washington state’s building energy codes, which set minimum efficiency standards for buildings, will soon require new buildings to achieve the same energy performance as buildings using electric heat pumps. Much like Seattle’s new building standards, the update doesn’t specifically require builders to install heat pumps, although “it also makes active gas pretty impractical,” Hasselman said. The legal somersault was intentional: Washington state policymakers the new codes slow down and revise in response to the 9th Circuit’s ruling, as a previous draft would have required heat pump installation.
Creating stricter indoor air quality standards is another option for phasing out fossil fuel appliances without outright banning them, Hasselman said. Ashland, Oregon, is currently considering maximum thresholds for indoor air pollutants such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and methane emissions which will effectively eliminate the burning of fossil fuels in buildings. In March, California’s Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which regulates air pollution in nine counties in the San Francisco metropolitan area, adopted rules to phase out sales of gas furnaces and water heaters that produce nitrogen oxide emissionsciting health impacts including coughing, wheezing and a higher risk of asthma attacks.
Meanwhile, opposition from the gas industry continues to loom over the move to “electrify everything.” In the past few years, at least 24 states have passed laws to prevent local governments from banning gas in buildings, galvanized by support from trade groups such as the American Gas Association and gas utilities such as Dominion Energy. In Eugene, Oregon, gas utility NW Natural funded a highly coordinated campaign to oppose the city’s ban on natural gas. But even with ongoing legal challenges and industry backlash, Hasselman said Seattle’s new law “reflects how unstoppable the shift to electrification is.”
“Momentum has slowed for a bit, but it’s picking up again as cities and local governments usher in the future away from burning gas in homes,” he said. “And this is the future. It’s just a matter of how fast it’s going to happen.”
