This is an interesting month in the climate wars with Bill Gates issuing a statement that basically said “nevermind” after years of haranguing us, eight miles of rainforest cut down for a climate conference in Brazil and some of our local governments trying to keep their all-electric “reach codes” on life support. Per the DJ:
After some legal hiccups, cities throughout the region, including San Mateo, are revisiting policies that incentivize use of electric appliances and penalize reliance on gas infrastructure in homes and buildings.
That “legal hiccup” was the Ninth Circuit eviscerating Berkeley’s overreach on natural gas. Our neighboring city to the south is reacting with a revision that
Would require single-family homes, duplexes, townhomes and commercial buildings to install either a heat pump or higher-efficiency air conditioner at the time the original AC unit needs replacement. The potential reach code would also require the addition of electric infrastructure when certain types of renovations are already underway.
Then San Mateo broached a “scoring” system to award points to homeowners for choosing various electric-only options. You would not be wrong to compare that to the CCP’s Social Credit system. At least one councilor has a glimmer of understanding about complexity (i.e. staff time) and costs although it apparently didn’t deter her from plunging ahead.
This is already going to be really complicated to understand, but it’s also an opportunity to really bring our community along because with a number of the other reach codes, there have been real cost issues associated with them, where people thinking the cost was going to be X, and the cost ends up being X plus 50%,” Councilmember Lisa Diaz Nash said.
Here are a few of the costs that get us to X + 50% —or way more–2X, 3X?. Things have gotten even more expensive than when I wrote that five years ago. Some day I would love to see the DJ or the Daily Post survey council members up and down the Peninsula (and County supes) to see if any of them are all-electric. Aside from new construction, I’ll be it’s very very few.
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