Natural gas has worn out its welcome in buildings. That was the message from Berkeley, California, when its city council voted earlier this summer to ban gas connections to new small and mid-sized residential buildings. Instead, developers and architects will have to rely on electric appliances such as induction stovetops and heat pumps to serve those buildings, and in time they will have to do so for more projects. As written, the ban automatically expands to cover additional building types as the state certifies that they can cost-effectively forego gas.
Electrification advocates say that the city that kicked-off smoking bans in restaurants and curbside recycling in the U.S. is once again leading a movement. Several dozen California cities, including San Francisco, San Jose, and Sacramento, are racing to enact their own policies to accelerate building electrification, explains Panama Bartholomy, director of California's Building Decarbonization Coalition—an advocacy group representing electric utilities, municipalities, equipment suppliers, and designers. He says 15 to 20 towns hope to pass them within a few months so they can take effect on January 1, 2020, with the latest triennial update to California’s building code.
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