New York state is one step closer to banning fossil fuels in new buildings.
On Friday, the State Fire Prevention and Building Code Council voted to recommend major updates to the state’s building code, which is updated every five years and sets minimum standards for construction statewide. The draft updates include rules requiring most new buildings to be all electric starting in 2026, as mandated by a law passed two years ago.
The vote came after the code council went missing in action for more than two months, leaving some advocates nervous that the state might be wavering on the gas ban. With the rules now entering the final stage of the approval process, New York remains on track to be the first state to enact such a ban.
The new draft code also tightens a slew of other standards in a bid to make buildings more energy efficient and save residents money over the long term. But it leaves out several key provisions recommended in the state’s climate plan — possibly running afoul of a 2022 law.
Specifically, the draft energy code leaves out requirements that new homes include on-site energy storage and be wired such that owners can easily add electric vehicle chargers (when the property includes parking space) and solar panels. The state’s 2022 climate plan listed these three provisions as “key strategies” to achieve New York’s legally binding emissions targets. On-site energy storage also makes homes more resilient when disasters strike, the plan noted, providing backup power in the event of a blackout.
A separate 2022 law required the state to take those recommendations into account when updating its building code.
“Updating the infrastructure for those things is a key part of what this transition is,” said Michael Hernandez, New York policy director at the pro-electrification group Rewiring America.
The Department of State, which oversees New York’s code development process, did not respond to a request for comment.
Buildings are New York’s largest source of emissions, according to the state’s accounting, amounting to nearly one-third of all climate pollution. New York’s buildings burn more fossil fuels for heat and hot water than any other state’s, according to the clean energy group RMI. That contributes not only to global warming but also to local air pollution, with deadly consequences: A 2021 study by Harvard researchers found that pollution from New York’s buildings causes nearly 2,000 premature deaths a year.
Cutting that pollution will require major upgrades to the state’s aging housing stock — an enormous challenge. But climate hawks stress that the first and easiest step is to stop digging the hole deeper, by making new buildings as climate-friendly as possible. Making them all electric is a key part of that. But other, subtler changes can also play an important role.
The fossil fuel industry, for its part, is taking those changes seriously. Gas trade groups led a major fight to keep provisions such as the EV-ready requirement out of the national building code that provides a model for states including New York. After nearly five years of wrangling, the International Code Council — actually a national nonprofit — that oversees the process voted not to include the provisions as requirements, siding with the gas groups over the advice of its own experts.
Among the parties who stood up for the stricter energy code: a New York state code official, who joined advocates like Hernandez one year ago in urging the International Code Council to keep the requirements in. Yet the state is now following the national group’s lead and relegating the solar, electric vehicle, and battery standards to the appendices of its draft code. That means they can still serve as templates for localities that want to adopt the tougher standards, but they’re not required.
Fossil fuel interests and some Republican lawmakers have argued that including such mandates would only drive up the cost of new homes at a time when housing is already deeply unaffordable. But climate advocates point out that it’s far cheaper to install electrical infrastructure up front than add it in later on — as much as six times cheaper in the case of an EV charger, for example.
That’s in keeping with many of the green rules that New York did include in its new draft code. Chris Corcoran, a code expert at the state energy authority NYSERDA, told the code council on Friday that adopting the full suite of proposed energy rules will add about $2 per square foot to the up-front cost of new homes, but save residents more than three times that over 30 years.
It’s not entirely clear who in New York has pushed to leave the storage, solar, and EV provisions out. Only eight groups disclosed that they lobbied on the building and energy codes last year, and it’s not obvious that any of them had a specific interest in opposing those rules.
Officials speaking at Friday’s meeting did not explain why they left out the requirements. One lawyer who helped draft the updated energy rules, Ben Kosinski, left the Department of State just this month to work as chief counsel for the Senate Republicans, for whom he also worked before joining the code office, according to his LinkedIn profile. The GOP caucus has voted almost unanimously against the laws driving the pro-electrification updates to the code. (Kosinski did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)
Although the council voted unanimously on Friday to advance the all-electric rules, not all members supported the move. William Tuyn, a builders’ representative from the Buffalo area, noted that the state adds roughly 40,000 homes a year — a tiny fraction of the roughly 7 million that already exist.
“We don’t even make a dent in the issue of climate change by focusing there,” he said, in the final minutes of the meeting. “The legislature did what they did. That ship has sailed… [but] we really need to concentrate on renewables or improving the grid if we’re really going to be able to do something and we’re not just going to simply crash the economy of the state of New York.”
Several lawmakers urged the council on Friday to include the full suite of climate provisions in the final rules.
“These provisions are not trivial add-ons. They are the backbone of a truly effective energy code,” said Neil Jimenez, legislative director for Assemblymember Yudelka Tapia. “Their exclusion weakens the very foundation upon the policies we’ve fought so hard to put into place here in Albany.”