IT STARTS AT HOME
Battle over climate change is boiling over in kitchens.
Anew front has opened in the battle over climate change: The kitchen. Cities and towns across the country are rewriting local building codes so that new homes and offices would be blocked from using natural gas, a fossil fuel that when burned emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. New laws would force builders to install heat pumps instead of gas furnaces and electric kitchen stoves instead of gas burners.
Local leaders say reducing the carbon and methane pollution associated with buildings, the source of 12.3 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, is the only way they can meet their 2050 zero-emission goals to curb climate change.
But the American Gas Association, a trade group, and its members are campaigning in statehouses across the country to prohibit the new local ordinances. Four states last year adopted such laws, and this year similar legislation has been introduced in 12 more.
“Logically the natural gas industry does not want to see its business end, so it’s doing what it can to keep natural gas in the utility grid mix,” said Marta Schantz, senior vice president of the Urban Land Institute’s Center for Building Performance. “But long term, if cities are serious about their climate goals, electric buildings are inevitable.”
Campaign for change
The issue started heating up in July 2019, when Berkeley, Calif., became the first city in the nation to ban natural gas hookups in new construction or substantially renovated structures. Natural gas is marketed as the “clean” fossil fuel because when burned it produces about 30 percent less carbon dioxide than oil and 45 percent less than coal. The ordinance passed unanimously.
Since then, municipalities across the country have followed suit. In California alone, 42 municipalities, including San Francisco, changed their building codes to make natural gas use impossible or difficult. Denver’s Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency endorsed a plan that calls for newly built homes and buildings to be mostly electrified by 2027. In Colorado, Boulder changed its building code and imposed a maximum energy use per square foot on new residential construction of 3,000 square feet or larger, effectively leaving
little room for gas.
The state of Washington also is at the forefront of this campaign. Democratic Gov. Jay
Inslee has backed a bill that would phase out the gas utility service and give local governments the authority to set more stringent energy standards than the state code. On Feb. 1, the Seattle City Council voted unanimously to restrict natural gas use in new commercial buildings and multifamily homes higher than three stories. Puget Sound Energy, which distributes both gas and electricity to Washington customers, says it is “fuel neutral” and set an “aspirational goal” of being carbon neutral for its gas sales by 2045. Mary Kipp, the firm’s chief executive, said that “climate change is an existential threat that cannot be ignored.”
Fighting back
Most of the gas industry, however, is fighting back.
Southern California Gas, one of the biggest distributors in the country, set up a group called Californians for Balanced Energy Solutions with a website that makes no mention of the gas company or the group’s industry links. In the Pacific Northwest, a group of gas and pipeline companies put up $1 million to establish another front group called Partnership for Energy Progress. The group’s website lists other backers, including pipe fitters and steelworkers’ unions, farmers and
energy-intensive businesses. “Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel and provides reliable and affordable energy whenever it’s needed,” it says.
So far, laws to protect natural gas use have been adopted in Arizona, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Similar laws have been proposed in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Utah, Indiana, Arkansas, Kentucky and Mississippi.
Even in the states where the anti-natural gas movement is strongest, municipal efforts have run into obstacles. In November 2019, the California Restaurant Association sued the town of Berkeley to strike down the change in building code. The association in its lawsuit said that “many of these restaurants rely on gas for cooking particular types of food, whether it be flame-seared meats, charred vegetables, or the use of intense heat from a flame under a wok.” It added that “a patchwork approach (to natural gas) is unworkable, undercuts California’s need for reliable and resilient energy, increases the cost of housing, and denies consumers choice.”
“The average American likes choice and doesn’t want to be told what kind of fuel to use in their homes,” said Karen Harbert, chief executive of the American Gas Association. “Municipalities cannot take away that choice.”
“The natural gas industry
frames it as a choice issue; we frame it as a choice issue,” said Johanna Neumann, a senior director at Environment America, an environmental group. “The industry frames it as a choice for people who want to use natural gas. We see it as a choice for a community to decide its energy future.”
Climate considerations
Natural gas has long been marketed as the clean-burning fuel. But views of natural gas have changed. Consumers can now buy improved heat pumps and induction stoves, which can boil water in nearly half the time as a gas stove. Induction stoves also have no open flame and leave behind little residual heat once they’re turned off. But they account for only about 5 percent of new stove sales, according to Consumer Reports.
Moreover, natural gas emissions still make a large contribution to the world’s greenhouse gases. Total residential and commercial greenhouse gas emissions increased by 9 percent from 1990 to 2018.
Burning natural gas also creates equity issues, as lowincome homes tend to be smaller with kitchen stoves that are less well ventilated.
But natural gas is cheaper than electricity in most parts of the United States, at least for now. Forty-seven percent of U.S. homes rely on natural gas for heat while 36 percent rely on electricity, according to the EIA.