ISSUE BRIEFING:

Building Electrification in Your State

By banning fossil fuel hookups in new construction, state legislatures can help catalyze building electrification on a national scale.

Clear Policy Ask

The state legislature must require most newly constructed buildings to be fully electrified, meaning they are not equipped with fossil gas hookups. A good example is New York’s All-Electric Building Act.

❗️If you live in a conservative-leaning state, click this map to see whether your state has passed legislation preempting any fossil gas bans, even at the city level. If so, your clear policy ask is different: “The state legislature must repeal any law that prevents our state from requiring new buildings to be fully electric.”

You can use the Clear Policy Ask(s) above, verbatim, in your correspondence with state policymakers. You don’t need a bill number to make an effective ask.

If you want to get even more specific, you can try to identify an existing bill similar to the All-Electric Building Act in your state by browsing the NCEL database or using a Google search for something like “your state” + “all-electric building requirement.”

Why advocate for bills like the All-Electric Building Act?

🌎 DECARBONIZATION:

Direct emissions from residential and commercial buildings account for ~13% of emissions nationwide, and the emissions makeup in most states is comparable—with some states’ buildings accounting for as high as a third of total emissions. (Check your own state’s building emissions by adding the “residential” and “commercial” numbers). Fossil gas represents up to 87% of direct building emissions, so banning new gas hookups is particularly effective at bringing those numbers way down over time.

Sharply cutting emissions in the buildings sector is also critical to meeting the net-zero targets that several states have put in place.

⚖️ EQUITY:

Communities of color and low-income communities are disproportionately impacted by the negative health effects of indoor air pollution from fossil fuels. By fully electrifying homes, those risks are almost entirely mitigated.

Low- and medium-income (LMI) households bear 3x the energy burden as other households. Electrifying gas and oil appliances delivers considerable energy savings to households, with LMI households benefiting the most.

🚀 MOMENTUM:

New York’s All-Electric Building Act, passed through the state budget in 2023, is the nation’s first state law banning fossil fuels in new construction. Cities like New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Berkley, and Denver are already leading the charge in banning gas hookups in new builds.

STOP! You know know enough about building electrification to take action.

Want more context? keep reading below ⬇️

The Case for State Building Electrification Laws

Decarbonizing buildings is critical to reducing emissions. The U.S. residential and commercial building stock accounts for almost a third of emissions, including 10-15% from direct fossil fuel use in heating and cooking. (The other 20% comes from electricity use, which would be eliminated by decarbonizing the power sector). Research from RMI indicates that heat pump technology has matured to the point of being more efficient than gas heat in almost every state, even in cold weather. Current heat pumps range from 2.2 to 4.5x more efficient than Energy Star gas furnaces.

Timing matters for heat electrification. Because furnaces and water heaters have extremely long lifespans, every new gas heating unit sold in a brand-new building is a 15-year missed opportunity for electric heat.

Building electrification has even bigger benefits once the power grid reaches net-zero. Electrifying everything goes hand-in-hand with decarbonizing the power sector. As in the transportation sector, the benefits of building electrification are magnified when power sources are fossil-free. Since the Biden administration and 17 states have 100% clean power targets in place, and after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, we could start seeing these enhanced emissions reductions as early as 2030.

Over 60 percent of U.S. homes still use fossil fuels for heat. Retrofitting existing homes will be a massive undertaking and requires legislation on its own. It’s imperative that we don’t keep adding to the problem by building new homes and businesses that will use fossil gas lines.

There are massive economic benefits to building electrification. Research by Rewiring America found that nationwide home electrification (that includes retrofitting existing buildings) would save a collective $37.3 billion per year in energy costs, distributed across 85% of U.S. households, including substantial savings for low- and middle-income households. That’s an average of about $500 per year, per household.

Fully electric buildings are better for human health. Building electrification can deliver substantial benefits to both indoor and outdoor air quality. According to Rewiring America, electrifying indoor appliances would address the 42% increased risk of childhood asthma caused by gas stoves alone. Meanwhile, it would reduce premature deaths from the outdoor air pollution caused by building emissions, which currently total over 15,000 per year in the U.S.

Sample Social Post

Electric heating and cooking saves American households hundreds in energy costs each year and help us breathe healthier air. [@StateRep1] [@StateRep2] ban fossil gas in new construction to help ensure a clean, healthy future for [State]!

Additional Policy Resources