Sacramento will not enforce a key climate change initiative — at least for the time being
At a Planning and Design Commission meeting last week, associate city planner Laura Tuller disclosed that Sacramento will back off — at least for now — on enforcing what has been touted as a key policy in combating climate change.
“The city will not currently preclude mixed fuel development,” Tuller told the City Council-appointed commission. during an update on the city’s building electrification strategy.
Her statement referred to enforcing an ordinance passed by the council that would, with some exceptions, ban natural gas hookups in new construction projects starting in 2023.
Methane from natural gas is a potent contributor to greenhouse gases and climate change. State and local leaders in California have identified what is called “building decarbonization” — relying on cleaner electric power — as a crucial way to achieve its zero carbon emissions goal by 2045.
Tuller explained that the decision to pause enforcement is the result of a recent court ruling. Other cities such as San Luis Obispo and Santa Cruz have made the same determination.
In April, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the city of Berkeley’s building electrification ordinance in a lawsuit backed by the Sacramento-based California Restaurant Association. The court said that the city had stepped on the federal government’s role regulating energy markets.
The ruling has, for the moment, put a chill on what building decarbonization advocates say is a sensible movement. Prior to the Berkeley ruling, 76 cities from Los Angeles to Sacramento had passed electrification ordinances banning natural gas hookups in new construction. Sacramento leaders say they can’t enforce the gas ban until they see what happens with the City of Berkeley’s appeal of the decision.
State policymakers are similarly nervous about the implications of the Berkeley ruling.
A Sacramento Bee investigation earlier this month found that donations to CRA and its foundation from SoCalGas, the nation’s largest gas utility, soared after CRA launched its lawsuit.
Critics of SoCalGas as well as the California Public Advocate’s Office, which is an independent state watchdog arm of the California Public Utilities Commission, have accused SoCalGas of financially backing the Berkeley lawsuit with millions of dollars.
“It strains credibility to suggest that the utility did not fund research that supported the California Restaurant Association’s litigation,” the watchdog said in a filing this month.
The restaurant association has vigorously denied any coordination with Southern California Gas Co. on the lawsuit. The CRA said its motivation for the lawsuit was purely to protect new restaurants who prefer using gas, especially Chinese restaurants that prefer gas-powered woks.
SoCalGas has vehemently denied that it in any way funded the CRA’s lawsuit.
The recent Bee investigation noted that contributions to the CRA and its foundation from SoCalGas and its parent company Sempra grew from $174,594 in years 2015 to 2018 to $1.8 million from 2019 to 2022 — a tenfold increase.
The original Sacramento electrification ordinance passed in 2021 and went into effect, albeit briefly, on Jan. 1. Restaurants, however, were exempted until 2026. But through its role as members of a technical advisory panel advising the city, the CRA along with two allies connected to Chinese restaurants, argued the gas ban was culturally insensitive to the tradition of wok cooking.
Several Asian chefs that The Bee spoke to, including celebrity chef Martin Yan, pointed out that induction wok cooking is becoming more common in Asia, and that the industry needs to do its part to combat climate change. Many chefs believe cooking with electric-powered induction woks —although more expensive — is better than cooking with gas-powered woks, especially when environmental and health effects are considered.
At the technical advisory panel’s recommendation, in November 2022, the city council adopted “infeasibility waiver guidelines” that included a key clause;: If the business was found to make a legitimate claim that precluding them from using natural gas would “prohibit socio-cultural traditions that communities practice,” they could be exempted.
“I was shocked when I read that. It just felt like this secret gutting,” Rosie Yacoub an activist with the climate group 350 Sacramento told The Bee. She added, “What does that even mean? It seems like anyone could make that case.”
At a City Council meeting on Tuesday, Mayor Darrell Steinberg and City Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela said that The Bee investigation raised questions about the city’s conflict of interest policy for advisory groups like the technically advisory panel, though stopped short of any specific suggestions for reforming the process.
Charlie Spatz, research manager at the Energy and Policy Institute, said that the conflict of interest issue raised thorny questions.
“The question here is whether the utility money was motivating or influencing the restaurant association’s engagement with the city council,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with restaurants engaging in electrification policy, but it’s important to remember that gas utilities are spreading disinformation to restaurants with the goal of blocking electrification policy.
“It’s a bad faith campaign designed to drive unfounded fear in the restaurant industry and it only serves the interests of gas utilities.”
That disinformation, Spatz and others note, centers on what they believe are dubious studies that try to undermine research such as that performed by Stanford University that concludes gas cooking can be harmful without proper ventilation.
There are signs that even if the Berkeley decision is not overturned, market conditions at least in Sacramento, which has through SMUD some of the lowest electric rates in California, are pushing new construction to be all-electric.
A tool that the city links to called Xerohome appears to typically show cost savings in utility bills of $600-$1,100 annually when homeowners opt for modern all-electric appliances.
Brian Hanly, president of Next Generation Capital, says his company has increasingly opted for all-electric developments in Sacramento, including the 21-unit development, Icon @14C, which was completed in 2020.
“We were a bit afraid of the consumer response in the beginning,” Hanly told The Bee. He added, “It’s above my pay grade to understand the environmental ramifications between natural gas and electric, but we’ve had a positive experience.”
This story was originally published August 28, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
