In cities and states around the country, conflicts over climate-friendly standards for buildings are heating up

On Sept. 9, 2020, California Energy Commission Chair David Hochschild opened a scheduled meeting with a somber observation. That morning, Bay Area residents woke to darkness, as wildfire smoke blotted out the sun and an eerie orange glow enveloped the region.

“It is ten o’clock in the morning and it looks like midnight,” Hochschild said, looking outside.

The commission was set to discuss “reach codes”—building efficiency standards that exceed state requirements—for two Bay Area jurisdictions. The timing was apt: Evidence of the need for climate-friendly buildings was just outside, according to people who attended the virtual commission meeting and connected the air quality to increasingly treacherous wildfires fueled by climate change. One public commenter called the scene outside his San Francisco window “a literal hellscape.” All urged the commission to adopt the more efficient codes, and to go further to rule out the use of natural gas in new buildings statewide.

“We have the lights on in our house because there’s no sunlight,” said Sasan Saadat, a policy analyst at Earthjustice, who dialed into the meeting from Berkeley. “This is not the outlier. It is the trend.”

“You all have this opportunity on your lap to set a new precedent for the end of fossil fuels in our built environment,” Saadat told the commissioners.

To date, more than 40 California jurisdictions have established policies that either entirely ban natural gas in new construction or encourage electrification. And in the months since San Francisco’s sky glowed orange, the California Energy Commission has proposed state building standards that require “electric ready” equipment and encourage electric heating rather than the use of natural gas.

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