New York Moves Forward in Banning Gas Equipment in New Construction—For Now

The state updated its building code to green-light the “all-electric” law that prohibits the use of gas equipment in new buildings. A court for the Northern District of New York also rejected a legal challenge from fossil fuel industry groups to get rid of it.

New York just took two important steps forward in its quest to enforce the All Electric Buildings Act, a law passed in 2023 that requires most new construction in the state to run on clean electricity instead of climate-change-inducing fossil fuels. 

On Friday, the New York State Fire Prevention and Building Code Council voted unanimously to update the state’s building code, codifying the law and allowing it to go into effect. And a few days earlier, the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York upheld the state’s all-electric law and rejected arguments put forth by fossil fuel industry groups to challenge its legality.

Lawmakers and environmentalists saw these decisions as a resounding victory for on-going efforts to move New York off fossil fuels.

“It’s a really important step and I think it also reflects that down here in New York City and in the environmental advocacy community, we’re not going anywhere but forward,” said New York State Sen. Liz Krueger at a press conference Friday.

The law aims to curb the spread of planet-warming gasses from buildings, which are responsible for approximately 30 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.

It does this by prohibiting fossil fuel equipment from being installed in most new construction. For smaller buildings up to seven stories tall, the law goes into effect in 2026 and for all other larger buildings, the start date is 2029. Some properties, like food establishments, hospitals, laundromats, water treatment plants and manufacturing facilities are exempt from the gas ban. 

The state law was inspired by New York City’s own prohibition of gas equipment in new construction known as Local Law 154. In the Big Apple, where buildings account for 70 percent of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, the law went into effect last year for smaller buildings, with larger buildings to follow suit by 2027.

But fossil fuel industry groups launched legal challenges against both the state and local gas bans, as part of a series of concerted efforts to get rid of similar laws across the country.

The National Gas and Propane Association (NGPA), one of 13 plaintiffs in the New York State lawsuit, has spearheaded these efforts. Last year it launched a strategic plan to push back against gas bans by lobbying decisionmakers, financially backing opposition groups and launching lawsuits in places like New York.

In a press release published when the suit was filed, NGPA and the plaintiffs claimed that prohibiting gas equipment in new construction will pose a threat to local businesses that rely on selling the fuel “sparking layoffs and reducing hiring needs.” 

They also argue it will jeopardize “the reliability of an already overburdened electric grid,” as not enough clean energy projects have managed to come online to meet the rising demands for more electricity from new industries and recent electrification efforts. 

Only about 29 percent of the Empire State’s electricity currently comes from renewable sources like wind and solar thanks to inconsistent funding, long timelines for the completion of these projects and recent pushback from the Trump administration. 

“Our clients are strong supporters of the State’s climate goals, but the ban puts our clients and their members at risk,” said Sarah Jorgensen, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the New York lawsuit.

Jorgensen is a founding partner at Reichman Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg, the same firm that successfully managed to topple the California city of Berkeley’s own ban on gas equipment in new construction in the spring of 2023. 

After that victory, the law firm and NGPA set off to do the same in New York. They even used the exact same legal argument: they claimed the all-electric act was “preempted” or blocked by a higher ranking federal law known as the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) of 1975.

EPCA was created as a response to an oil crisis that took hold of the United States in the early 1970s. The legislation put in place energy conservation standards for various products to ensure that appliances functioned more efficiently and used up less energy, that way the U.S could curb some of its dependency on foreign oil imports. 

In the Berkley case, three judges decided that banning gas in new buildings impacts the “quantity of energy directly consumed by” household appliances like hot water heaters and furnaces that are covered by EPCA.

But New York environmental lawyers like Dror Ladin, a senior attorney at Earth Justice, called the decision “absurd” explaining that while EPCA creates an efficiency standard for appliances, it doesn’t regulate the actual energy consumption in a home. 

“[Fossil fuel industry groups] really viewed the Berkley decision as an opening for them to try to short circuit the whole process of electrification across the nation,” Ladin said.

But for now, New York’s prohibition of gas equipment in new construction is safe.

In March, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed legal challenges to New York City’s gas ban, Local Law 154.

But that decision is being contested at the Second Circuit court, which is the court of appeals that sits over New York. An appeal for the state decision is also on the table, and will likely be headed there too.

And nationally, the battle is far from over. 

Lawsuits to topple gas bans have spread throughout the country, from Colorado to Washington state. If enough split decisions come out of circuit courts across the country, meaning that they either follow in Berkley’s footsteps or disagree with it, the U.S. Supreme Court could choose to take a look at the issue and provide a final decision for the entire judicial system to follow. 

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