Sonoma County Halts Enforcement Of All-Electric Building Code

SONOMA COUNTY, CA—A federal court ruling prompted Sonoma County to suspend its enforcement of a building code that bans natural gas or propane appliances in most new residential construction.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California Restaurant Association vs. City of Berkeley found earlier this year that the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act preempts state and local regulations that effectively ban natural gas appliances. The ruling means that Sonoma County’s all-electric reach code, adopted by the Board of Supervisors in 2022 to help the County meet its climate goals, is overridden by the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act, county officials said Wednesday.

Circuit Judge Patrick Bumatry wrote: "By completely prohibiting the installation of natural gas piping within newly constructed buildings, the City of Berkeley has waded into a domain preempted by CongressThe Energy Policy and Conservation Act (“EPCA”), 42 U.S.C. § 6297(c), expressly preempts State and local regulations concerning the energy use of many natural gas appliances, including those used in household and restaurant kitchens. Instead of directly banning those appliances in new buildings, Berkeley took a more circuitous route to the same result. It enacted a building code that prohibits natural gas pipingin those buildings from the point of delivery at a gas meter, rendering the gas appliances useless. The California Restaurant Association, whose members include restaurateurs and chefs, challenged Berkeley’s regulation, raising an EPCA preemption claim. The district court dismissed the suit. In doing so, it limited the Act’s preemptive scope to ordinances that facially or directly regulate covered appliances. But such limits do not appear in EPCA’s text. By its plain text and structure, EPCA’s preemption provision also encompasses building codes concerning the energy use of covered products. And thus EPCA preempts Berkeley’s building code because it prohibits natural gas piping in new construction buildings from the point of delivery at the gas meter."

County Supervisor David Rabbitt, chair of the Board of Supervisors, confirmed Permit Sonoma has stopped enforcing the all-electric building code because of the court ruling.

"We still encourage new residential construction to look for suitable alternatives to fossil fuel-burning appliances, and we will undoubtedly revisit this issue during our next building code update," Rabbitt said.

Some local jurisdictions have worked around the federal preemption of all-electric building codes by adopting "electric-preferred" efficiency standards, which are permitted. Requiring homes to be as energy efficient as they would be if they used heat pump technology incentivizes developers to build all-electric structures since using natural gas would require developers to compensate with other energy efficiency improvements, the county said.

Permit Sonoma is moving forward with this efficiency approach for its next building code update before the Board of Supervisors next year. The state of California and Sonoma County’s building codes are updated every three years, with the next update expected in 2025, effective Jan. 1, 2026.

See the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision here.