By Dustin Gardiner
The environmental push to stop the use of natural gas in homes may have become the latest splinter in America’s culture wars, but that hasn’t stopped Bay Area officials from aiming to be at the forefront of the movement.
Air-quality regulators for the region are considering adopting a pair of rules that would effectively ban the sale of new water heaters and furnaces that run on natural gas in less than a decade. The rules would apply to Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, along with the southern portions of Solano and Sonoma counties.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s board is expected to vote on the proposal at its March 15 meeting. If it approves the rules, they would be the most sweeping regulations of their kind in the country, proponents said.
The ban would apply to new construction and appliances that homeowners must replace, starting in 2027 for most water heaters and 2029 for furnaces. It would not apply to large water heaters, such as those in apartments and commercial buildings, until 2031. The rules would require waters heaters and furnaces to be zero-NOx emissions, which effectively is a mandate to go electric.
Proponents of the rule said it’s a matter of public health because natural gas combustion appliances create pollution from nitrogen oxide, or NOx, ozone and particulate emissions, which can cause respiratory and cardiovascular problems. Adopting the regulations would prevent an estimated 37 to 85 premature deaths and about 110 new cases of asthma per year in the Bay Area, according to the air district’s analysis.
While consumers don’t think about water heaters or furnaces when they think about pollution, gas-burning home appliances can pose just as much risk as vehicles when multiplied over millions of households. In the Bay Area, those two types of household appliances currently produce more NOx emissions than cars.
“Furnaces and water heaters are polluters hiding in plain sight,” said Leah Louis-Prescott, a senior associate with the Rocky Mountain Institute, a sustainability research think tank. “That invisible pollution comes at a serious cost to our health and our air.”
The air district’s proposal is a bold step in the growing environmental movement to get natural gas out of buildings. More than 60 California cities and counties, including San Francisco and most sizable cities in the Bay Area, have adopted ordinances that limit or ban natural-gas appliances in construction of new homes and businesses. State air-quality regulators also plan to ban gas water heaters and furnaces by 2030, though such a rule hasn’t been formally approved.
Environmentalists and public health advocates say switching to electrical appliances will reduce the amount of harmful pollutants, both inside and outside of homes, and reduce greenhouse gases that exacerbate climate change.
But the Bay Area’s effort to halt the sale and installation of two major gas appliances comes as the once-overlooked movement has found itself at the center of a national culture war. The issue exploded after a member of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said last week that a ban on gas stoves could be necessary for safety reasons.
The comment was made during an interview after the Rocky Mountain Institute, along with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the University of Sydney, released a study that estimated nearly 13% of childhood asthma cases are caused by gas stoves.
Nevertheless, coverage of the comment triggered a right-wing media firestorm and led to a torrent of misinformation.
U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, captured the unbridled furor in a tweet: “If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT!!” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, jumped in with a new GOP slogan: “God. Guns. Gas stoves.”
The federal consumer safety commission later clarified that it’s not formally considering any ban on gas stoves.
Bay Area air-district regulators are also not considering any rules related to gas stoves because they are not considered a major contributor to outdoor NOx pollution, though some cities and counties have banned gas stoves in new homes.
Regardless, environmentalists said the brouhaha over gas stoves speaks to how the fossil-fuel industry and politicians aligned with the industry have sought to kill the effort to root out natural gas in buildings.
Greg Nudd, the air district’s deputy pollution control officer for policy, said regulators are focused on water heaters and furnaces because those account for about 90% of pollution generated by natural gas combustion in homes. He said dangerous emissions from stoves are more of an indoor air pollution problem, something the district doesn’t regulate.
“We’re looking at providing health benefits as quickly as possible,” he said.
Overall, Nudd said the proposed rules seem to have elicited little concern in the Bay Area so far. Residents have until Feb. 6 to submit comments in support or opposition to the draft regulations.
One major obstacle to the proposed regulations is clear, however: electrical capacity in homes. Because installing electric water heaters and furnaces will increase load demand, some older homes will need bigger electrical panels.
Mike Kapolnek, a retired engineer who lives in Sunnyvale, has been complaining to the air district about potential unintended consequences for months. He said most homes built before the late 1970s don’t have 200-amp panels, the level that many electrical engineers say is ideal to support a fully electric single-family home, including appliances and vehicle charging.
Kapolnek said he worries that if the rule doesn’t include an exception for homes with old panels, it could force some to leave their homes. The process for PG&E to process electrical panel retrofits can take many months. Such upgrades also easily cost $2,000-$5,000.
He and his wife are in the process of having a new panel installed — a proactive move on their part — and he expects it will take eight months for PG&E to approve the upgrade.
“They can’t even support the smaller number of upgrades going on now,” Kapolnek said. “(The rule change) makes sense, but it needs to be done properly. It needs to be managed like a gargantuan public-works project, and it doesn’t seem to be.”
Nudd said concerns about the need for electric panel upgrades are why the air district is seeking to delay implementation. He said technology in the sector is rapidly evolving and reducing load demand.
Laura Feinstein, sustainability and policy director for SPUR — the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association — said the concern about electric panels in homes is a knee-jerk reaction. She said there are already a host of relatively cheap devices, including circuit sensors and smart current sensors, that allow homeowners to switch power between high-demand electrical appliances, such as water heaters, dryers and vehicles, as they use them.
“There’s a lot of ways in which people have been overestimating how many homes are going to need a new panel,” she said.
Dustin Gardiner (he/him) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dustin.gardiner@sfchronicle.com Twitter:
@dustingardiner