Palo Alto stops enforcing all-electric building requirement

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Environmentalists cheered last year when Palo Alto adopted a new building code that effectively banned gas infrastructure in new development and required new buildings to be all-electric.

But the mood turned darker on Feb. 26, when the City Council unanimously agreed to stop enforcing its ban so as to comply with a recent decision by the Ninth Circuit Board of Appeals. The federal court last year struck down a similar prohibition on gas infrastructure in Berkeley, a ruling that has forced dozens of cities to reconsider their environmentalist ambitions.

In Palo Alto, this means that any developer who has applied for a building permit since the newly adopted all-electric requirement will now be able to revise their application to include gas infrastructure. Council member Vicki Veenker, an attorney who sits on the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, said she was disappointed by the court’s decision, which she argued was based on “very poor reasoning.”

“This really pains me to do this. … I regret that not only we, but all the cities in the Ninth Circuit jurisdictions, are facing this problem,” Veenker said shortly before the vote.

While the policy represents a setback for the council’s environmental agenda, including its goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emission by 80% by 2030, council members are hoping they can achieve environmentally sound construction through other means. With its vote, the council authorized staff from the Utilities and Planning and Development Services departments to make further code revisions that would encourage electric water heaters and space heaters.

Rather than explicitly require that builders install such appliances, the new code will include strict energy-efficiency standards that developers would have a hard time meeting with gas appliances. Known as “One Margin,” this approach has been adopted by other communities, including the cities of San Luis Obispo, San Jose and Santa Cruz, according to a report from Planning Director Jonathan Lait.

But even though the new code would strongly encourage adoption of electric water- and space-heating appliances, builders would now have more flexibility when it comes to installation of gas stoves and outdoor equipment such as fire pits.

Christine Tam, senior resource planner at the utilities department, said that because water and space heating accounts for 80% of a home’s greenhouse-gas emission, she does not expect that the suspension of the all-electric reach code will result in substantially more greenhouse-gas emissions from homes.

Lait also noted in his report that the California energy code, which would apply in Palo Alto, already includes several measures that “effectively require heat pump space conditioning and water heating in Palo Alto’s climate zone.”

“Heat pumps are required for both space heating and water heating in new single-family homes, and for space heating only in new multifamily residences and most commercial uses,” the report states. “While the base CEC allows a developer to show that an alternative approach is just as energy-efficient as heat pump space and water hearing, the vast majority of developers use the pre-approved path.

But for local environmentalists, the moratorium on the all-electric requirement was a stunning setback. Former Mayor Larry Klein, who has been advocating for a phase-out of the gas utility, called the council’s move “a necessary retreat from a very bad decision by the Ninth Circuit.” He urged the city to move quickly on adopting a new building code.

Julia Zeitlin, executive director of the Palo Alto Student Climate Coalition, lamented the mixed message that the moratorium would send to the community, particularly at a time when the city is aggressively trying to encourage people to install heat-pump water heaters.

“We can’t tell residents of existing buildings to electrify and then allow new gas hook-ups in new buildings,” Zeitlin said. “It’s not sustainable and it just doesn’t make sense with our current climate goals.”

While she said that the One Margin approach is better than not having any standards, it “does not set the all-electric standards that we desperately need.”

The council’s vote directed utilities and planning staff to survey One Margin ordinances in other communities and return within six months with a proposal based on those models but customized for Palo Alto.

The council agreed that city staff need to move expeditiously in adopting the stricter building standards now that the moratorium is in place and gas infrastructure is once again allowed. Council member Julie Lythcott-Haims said she was concerned that some people would take advantage of this interim period to install gas appliances.

“If the moratorium takes effect and it takes us a while to get the new One Margin reach code, we could conceivably have a flurry of people who file applications seeking to catch us in this window,” Lythcott-Haims said. “We can’t predict to what extent it’s going to roll back our progress, but whatever we can do to compress this timeline when the moratorium on enforcement goes into effect and when we have this code in place.”

City leaders also hope to reduce the impact of the court decision by educating residents and builders about the economic benefits of electrification, particularly as renewable energy gets cheaper. Klein and Vice Mayor Ed Lauing also stressed the importance of informing the public about the city’s ultimate objective to go all-electric, a goal that could deter installations of gas infrastructure.

“To the extent that we can get reasonable cooperation, maybe we don’t lose much from this little speed bump,” Lauing said.