The City of Irvine, California preliminarily approved an ordinance to require most new building developments in the city to be all-electric during an April 11 meeting, with some exceptions for restaurants.
Under the proposal, new commercial, residential, and city buildings will be required to be designed fully electric, containing no combustion equipment commonly used in some plumbing, water heating, cooking appliances, dryers, and gas-powered fireplaces, for example. The ordinance, if officially adopted later, will be effective 30 days after its adoption.
The change is meant to assist the city in meeting its previously set goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2030, among other objectives. Irvine was the first city in the county to set such an ambitious goal.
“This is such a great opportunity. If we’re the first city in Orange County to take the lead, then other cities might follow,” Councilwoman Kathleen Treseder said in a March 28 meeting.
Some exemptions were made in the ordinance for non-residential businesses that use commercial kitchen appliances to cook with a flame for “unique cuisine style and traditional cooking methods involved,” the ordinance reads.
Also, multi-family apartment complexes that have already had projects approved using gas-powered water heating systems will have until July 1, 2024, to switch over to electric-powered systems.
Councilwoman Tammy Kim proposed the exemption, noting that developer giant Irvine Company has recently approved projects that would be delayed otherwise.
“We’re already midstream. If I tell them they have to redesign everything, that may take away the affordability,” Kim told The Epoch Times.
During the reading of the ordinance on April 11, Councilman Mike Carroll claimed the exemptions were giveaways to the special interests of developers and restaurants, while single-family homes were being left out to dry.
“I want the exemptions entirely removed so we can actually do something here rather than make a statement that purports to do something, and really just targets single-family homes,” he said.
As for restaurants, Kim also noted that popular places to eat such as Korean BBQ-style restaurants need flames as an “absolute requirement,” she said.
“We would have taken away future opportunities to have Korean BBQ restaurants and high-heat wok Chinese cooking as examples,” she said. “We would have been basically telling those businesses you cannot do business here in the City of Irvine.”
The ordinance states that the transition to fully electric-powered systems can help protect against fires in buildings that release greenhouse gases, as well as protect against the potential for earthquakes damaging underground gas infrastructure that could explode in the event of seismic activity.
Gas appliances also release emissions with a “wide range of air pollutants including carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter,” which have been linked to “various acute and chronic health effects,” the ordinance reads.
The combustion of natural gas for heating buildings, water, and food, also releases gases such as methane, which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, according to the ordinance.
