Liberal city tries to tax buildings using gas after court smacked down its outright ban on gas stoves

A deep blue city in California is teeing up a tax on larger buildings that use natural gas after a federal court rejected the city’s attempt to ban gas hookups and stoves, according to The Daily Californian.

The city council of Berkeley, California, voted on July 30 to put an initiative on the upcoming ballot that would impose taxes on buildings that are 15,000 square feet or larger and use natural gas, according to The Daily Californian. In 2019, the city tried to enact an outright ban on constructing new buildings with natural gas hookups, and gas stoves by extension, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned the ban in April 2023 following a legal challenge against the policy brought by California Restaurant Association.

The official title for the ballot measure is the “Large Buildings Fossil Fuel Emissions Tax,” and it would affect more than 600 buildings in Berkeley if a simple majority of voters approve it at the ballot box, according to The Daily Californian. The measure’s proponents characterize it as an important step to fight climate change, but its opponents in the food service industry and beyond are concerned that the tax will place a steep burden on businesses and force commerce out of the city.

REP. CORI BUSH: “This proposed rule is not a ban on gas stoves! We are regulating indoor air pollution.”

And they called you paranoid for thinking they were coming for your gas stoves…They’re just ‘regulating indoor air pollution.’ pic.twitter.com/5ZkMKLSPvr

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 24, 2023

“The gas equipment I purchased is intended to last decades. My intention in growing my business in Berkeley is to be here for decades,” Emily Winston, the owner of a Berkeley bagel shop called Boichik Bagels, wrote in a letter to the city council, per The Daily Californian. “But if I am going to be socked with a nearly half-million dollar penalty every year, I will have to look seriously at moving out.”

Other organizations, including nonprofits, are also concerned about the possibility of a new tax imposing steep costs on their operations, according to The Daily Californian.

The David Brower Center— a nonprofit that works to advance the environmental movement — wrote to the city council to warn that the policy would create a “significant expense for the building, particularly considering that since the beginning of the pandemic, [it has] been running breakeven or at a loss,” according to The Daily Californian. The Berkeley Repertory Theater, a local performing arts venue, similarly wrote the city council to express its concern that “while we support electrification, this well-intentioned ballot measure with its immediate implementation would be very harmful to our struggling organization.”

Berkeley’s voters will also soon decide whether to adopt the so-called “Healthy New Buildings” ordinance, which would ban the sale and installation of appliances like gas stoves and furnaces that produce nitrogen oxides starting in 2027 if it is passed, according to The Daily Californian.

The Biden administration is also pursuing a broad building decarbonization agenda that favors the use of electricity for appliances and heating buildings instead of fossil fuels. The administration has barred the use of natural gas in new federal buildings starting in 2030, spent large sums of money to assist state and municipal governments in developing green building codes, and defined zero emissions buildings as those that are “free of on-site emissions from energy use” and “powered solely from clean energy” in June.

Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. told Bloomberg News in January 2023 that “any option is on the table” with regard to a possible gas stove ban and that “products that can’t be made safe can be banned,” though the Department of Energy (DOE) contends that any suggestion that the government wants to ban gas stoves is “misinformation.”

Officials from the Biden Justice Department and DOE notably filed a June 2023 amicus brief with the Ninth Circuit asking the court to reverse its decision that overturned Berkeley’s 2019 gas hookups ban, but the court ruled in January that it would not be revisiting that decision.

“The City of Berkeley, whose natural gas ban was recently struck down by the 9th Circuit, now wants to try imposing a tax on facilities that use natural gas,” Steve Everley, a senior managing director at FTI Consulting, wrote in a Wednesday post to X, referencing The Daily Californian’s story. “But remember, no one is trying to ban gas stoves.”

Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín and City Council Members Rashi Kesarwani, Terry Taplin, Ben Bartlett, Igor Tregub, Sophie Hahn, Susan Wengraf, Cecilia Lunaparra, and Mark Humbert did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

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