Gas Industry Loses Bid To Block Green Building Codes

The natural gas industry lost its initial bid to strip key climate-friendly measures out of national homebuilding guidelines, HuffPost has learned.

The rules in the model building code will require new homes to come equipped with the circuitry to hook up induction stoves and electric car chargers, and will be used as a benchmark in almost every state.

In November, trade associations representing gas utilities and furnace manufacturers launched a last-ditch effort to gut the provisions, which will be released this year.

The International Code Council, the nonprofit organization that works with industry groups and local governments to write the generic codes enshrined into law across most of the country, even bent its own rules to grant players like the American Gas Association and the American Public Gas Association extra time to file appeals, HuffPost reported last month. The fossil fuel groups challenged codes that would make it cheaper for homeowners to opt out of gas, arguing that the proposals either fell outside the bounds of what the energy code was meant to do or were forged through improper procedures.

But the ICC’s appeals board this week rejected all nine challenges to the latest energy codes, ruling that the “appellants have not demonstrated a material and significant irregularity of process or procedure.”

The gas companies will have one more chance to make their case in a two-hour hearing later this month before the ICC’s board of directors, which will make a final decision at its March 18 meeting. The trade groups that filed the appeals say they plan to push the top executives to overturn the decisions.

“ This issue is, in fact, not concluded,” said Francis Dietz, a spokesperson for the