The gas ban that lost in court, and what it means for San Francisco

I. The law Berkeley lost on

The federal law at the center is the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (a 1975 statute, usually shortened to EPCA, that sets national efficiency standards for appliances like furnaces, water heaters, and stoves). EPCA also bars state and local governments from writing their own rules concerning the energy use of those covered appliances. Berkeley's ordinance, passed in 2019 as the first of its kind in the country, never mentioned appliances. It banned the gas pipe itself.

Ruling on the case in 2023, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (the federal court that covers California and the rest of the West) found a distinction without a difference: cut off the pipe and you have regulated the appliance's energy use down to zero, which is the thing EPCA forbids. The full court declined to rehear the case in early 2024, and Berkeley agreed to stop enforcing the ordinance and later repealed it. For now, a Berkeley-style flat ban on gas piping is off the table anywhere in the Ninth Circuit, which includes San Francisco.

II. What San Francisco actually did

San Francisco did not copy Berkeley. The city's all-electric requirement for new construction, in effect since about 2021, runs through the building code: it sets the performance standard a new building must meet rather than banning one product by name. Above that sits the state, where the California Energy Commission (the agency that updates California's building energy code on roughly a three-year cycle) has steadily tilted its standards toward electric heat pumps for space and water heating.

Whether that code-based approach is safe from the same EPCA argument is the part no one can honestly promise. Reading the Berkeley ruling narrowly, some cities kept electric-preferred building codes in place on the theory that a performance standard is not the same thing as a pipe ban. Others paused or rewrote their rules to be sure. San Francisco's electrification push also leans on tools EPCA does not touch at all, like CleanPowerSF (the city's public electricity provider, run through the SFPUC) and Hetch Hetchy Power's largely hydroelectric supply, which together shape what plugging in actually costs on your block.

III. What a loss would, and would not, touch

Should a future suit knock down a code-based electrification rule, the first thing to understand is what would not change. Your existing gas stove, your current furnace, the line already running into your flat: none of that is what these rules address. The fight is about new construction, and in some places major renovations, not a mandate to pull out what is already behind your walls. Rebates and incentives to switch, which are voluntary, would also survive untouched.

What a loss would reach is the forward-looking requirement, the rule that a new building in the fog belt goes up all-electric by default. A broad ruling against building-code electrification would push cities back toward the slower tools, incentives, electric rates, and public power supply, instead of a clean code mandate. It would not end the transition in a city where a lot of new heating already runs on heat pumps, but it would make the rulebook messier and the timeline less certain. That uncertainty, more than any single permit, is what this desk is watching.

IV. Worth watching this month

1. Whether the California Energy Commission posts any update tied to the next building energy code cycle, routine housekeeping that nonetheless sets the baseline every new San Francisco project must meet.

2. Any move by the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection or the Board of Supervisors to amend the all-electric new construction rules, which would signal how the city reads its own legal exposure.

3. A new preemption lawsuit filed in another part of the country, which matters more than it sounds, because a split between federal appeals courts is what could carry this question to the Supreme Court.

4. Any CleanPowerSF rate or program notice from the SFPUC, since public power pricing quietly decides whether going electric pencils out for a given building.

5. Federal appliance-efficiency rulemaking from the US Department of Energy, routine on its face but the ultimate source of the EPCA preemption everyone is arguing over.

Frequently asked questions

References

• San Francisco Department of Building Inspection (sf.gov), City building authority; where the all-electric new construction requirements and code amendments are administered., www.sf.gov/departments/department-building-inspection.
• California Energy Commission, building energy efficiency standards (energy.ca.gov), State agency that writes and updates California's building energy code on a roughly three-year cycle., www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/programs/building-energy-efficiency-standards.
• U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, opinions (ca9.uscourts.gov), The federal court that decided the Berkeley gas-ban preemption case; search here for the opinion itself., www.ca9.uscourts.gov/opinions.
• CleanPowerSF (SFPUC public power program), The city's public electricity provider; rates and program terms shape what electrifying a building costs., www.cleanpowersf.org.
• U.S. Department of Energy, appliance and equipment standards (energy.gov), Administers the federal efficiency standards under EPCA, the law at the heart of the preemption argument., www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/appliance-and-equipment-standards-program.