As part of its goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045, the State of California has declared its intention to reduce toxic emissions in all aspects of life for its population.
To deserve its image as a national pioneer in the fight against climate change, the state sets ambitious goals to replace oil, gas and coal with renewable sources (sun, wind, water) for the generation and use of electrical energy.
Meeting the state’s goals will save countless human lives and it will create a possible future for our population.
By 2045, details the California Air Resources Board, a state agency, the state will “reduce consumption of fossil fuels (liquid petroleum) to less than one-tenth of what we use today – a 94% reduction in demand . It will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 85% below 1990 levels. It will reduce smog-forming air pollution by 71%.”
And by 2030, in seven years, California aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below the 1990 level.
The weak link
In California’s race to slow climate change, however, there is a weak link: pollution from residential and commercial buildings.
Over the past two decades, while emissions from transportation and electricity generation in the state have fallen by more than 20%, pollution from residential buildings has stagnated. And in commercial buildings, it increased 51%.
Together, they are responsible for 25% of these emissions. And there is no easy way to reduce them.
Explains Laura Feinstein, Director of Sustainability and Resiliency Policy at the San Francisco-based nonprofit SPUR. “Of all the top polluting sectors in California, commercial buildings are now the furthest away from meeting the state’s emissions goals”…
He adds: “…gas appliances in California homes and buildings generate four times more nitrogen oxide (NOx) pollution than the state’s gas-fired power plants and approximately two-thirds more NOx than all passenger cars in the state”.
It goes like this: In all other areas of the fight against pollution, California is visibly advancing. But not in the buildings.
“Pollution from buildings is one reason California fails year after year to meet legally binding federal air quality standards that protect health,” Feinstein writes.
This is how our gas stove occupies a place of honor in environmental pollution.
The negative contribution of cooking gas flaring to air quality and its harmful health outcomes are already well known.
For that reason, in 2021 Sacramento wanted to ban gas connections from being built in new buildings.
The state action fell short of a complete ban on natural gas in new construction, which had been proposed by environmental groups, but included new requirements that make it easier to install solar and energy storage systems and more difficult to continue using gas.
“Building electrification provides a low-cost, low-risk strategy to decarbonize buildings and achieve climate goals by 2030 and 2050,” according to a study submitted to the California Energy Commission.
The decision and the steps leading to the fulfillment of its objective deserve our support. They are an important step in the right direction.
SoCalGas behind the scenes
But cooking gas is not the enemy. The gas has no conscience, no memory, no money, no intentions.
Those who do have it are those who profit from gas and who therefore try to reverse history.
SoCalGas, a Sempra company, produces only one thing, gas. And it supplies it to 21 million Californians.
In its fight against gas stove replacement, according to a recent Sacramento Bee study, confirmed elsewhere, SoCalGas is breaking the rules of the game.
The company has earmarked millions of dollars to slow the move toward a zero-emissions economy. SoCalGas, says the SacBee, “sought to recruit Asian and Latino restaurants, businesses, and community leaders as spokespersons to advocate against electrification.”
To do this, the newspaper adds, this public service company created a front organization, Californians for Balanced Energy Solutions (C4BES) “to lobby government officials and state agencies, largely with money from customers.”
SoCalGas, says the Bee, funded this fake grassroots organization.
C4BES, they claim, posed as a popular grassroots organization and tried to get the positions of that organization to be taken into account as if they came from consumers, which is not true.
In March of this year, C4BES asked to be named an official party to a Public Utilities Commission proceeding over the future of gas use in the state.
In the application, C4BES did not disclose any relationship with a utility company and did not mention Southern California Gas once.
The reason is that it is not a grassroots group, but the brainchild of SoCalGas or Southern California Gas Co., says investigative reporter Michael Hltzik in the Los Angeles Times.
Since then, the organization has disappeared.
Enter the restaurants to the fore
In addition to C4BES and in a successful move, the Bee claims, SoCalGas allied with a group that fears, for its own reasons, the consequences of electrification. The California Restaurant Association (CRA).
Sempra and its subsidiaries SoCalGas and San Diego Gas & Electric’s contributions to the CRA increased from $174,594 in the years 2015 through 2018 to $1.8 million from 2019 through 2022, a tenfold increase.
CRA sparked a passionate debate about an unexpected kitchen tool: the wok. Restaurateurs argued that cooking a traditional Chinese stir-fry is simply impossible without an open flame.
So he organized his opposition to removing gas from new buildings, which would put Chinese and other Asian restaurants out of business. Thousands of years of culture were at stake, they said.
In 2019, the City of Berkeley had passed the first nationwide ban on gas hookups for most new buildings.
In this, Berkeley was a pioneer as it has been many times in the past in the history of the state. Seventy-six California cities have passed similar ordinances as of the beginning of this year, according to this list published by the Sierra Club.
And in May of this year, New York State became the first in the country to ban gas stoves in the construction of new residential buildings.
A year earlier, the CRA sued Berkeley in court. A press release announcing the lawsuit said that restaurants “rely on gas to cook certain types of food, whether it’s grilled meats, charred vegetables, or the use of intense heat from a flame under a wok.”
In court, the CRA also argued that the Berkeley ordinance contradicted federal energy law.
In April 2023, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, after initially rejecting the lawsuit and then resuming it, ruled in favor of the CRA and struck down Berkeley’s gas ban as a preempt of federal gas law. energy.
Here you can read the arguments of the judges.
climate survival
The ruling threw cold water on the state’s push to electrify local buildings.
No new city has since joined the initiative, and those of San Luis Obispo and Santa Cruz have suspended their respective rules.
That ruling could now stymie clean energy policies across the country. The danger that this represents for the health of the population is concrete.
Culinary experts say the CRA’s claim about the need to cook with gas is not universally accepted. An increasing number of professional chefs prefer electric or induction cooktops. Included for woks.
Regarding these claims, a SoCalGas spokesperson said that “The inappropriate disclosure of a standard disclosure contract and other carefully selected materials dating back several years are part of an ongoing effort by certain stakeholders to misrepresent SoCalGas public policy positions.”
fight for the future
Yes, that’s right, SoCalGas was fighting for its future. Even for his life. That’s not why it had to do it by lying to regulators and violating ethics and other rules in the process, the Public Defenders Office, an independent watchdog that represents taxpayers in proceedings within the CPUC, said in 2019. (California Public Utilities Commission https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/)
SoCalGas critics in the Earthjustice and Sierra Club organizations say SoCalGas should not be able to spend shareholder or customer money to create a “separate” group to have a second voice.
To move closer to ambitious environmental goals, California’s goal is to upgrade all 14 million homes and 8 billion square feet of commercial building space to run on clean energy. The way was opened by electric cars, which were initially reserved for the very rich and are only now reaching the middle class. Initiatives such as the one attacked by SoCalGas and others currently in the legislative process will give impetus to this crucial stage in the fight for climate survival.