Gas Industry Blocks Building Codes Meant To Make Going Electric Cheaper

The natural gas industry pulled off an 11th-hour victory in its campaign to strip climate-friendly rules out of the latest update to the homebuilding guidelines used in most of the United States.

Houses and commercial buildings constructed to this year’s standards were supposed to include the circuitry for hooking up electric appliances or car chargers, potentially adding a few thousand dollars to a new home’s asking price but saving homeowners tens of thousands in renovation costs to rewire existing walls and even more on utility bills.

As the International Code Council — the private nonprofit that convenes local governments, lobbyists and industry professionals together every three years to update the energy codes — finalized this year’s codebook last fall, trade associations representing gas utilities and furnace manufacturers filed formal appeals to strip out the pro-electrification measures.

The ICC’s appeals board rejected all the challenges earlier this month and urged the organization’s board of directors to do the same.

On Monday, the ICC’s board of directors took the unusual step of going against its own experts to side with the fossil fuel companies, scrapping key codes meant to make electric cars, solar panels, induction stoves and heat pumps more affordable.

Instead, all the codes the trade groups challenged will now be relegated to the optional appendix section of the codebook, essentially eliminating the chances of widespread adoption across the country.

“Really bad and surprising news,” Mike Waite, the director of codes at watchdog American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy and a volunteer who helped author this year’s commercial building codes, wrote in an email to HuffPost. “The ICC Board