Laserfiche WebLink
CLK-Pamela Aguilar <br />From: Dan Johnson <dan@beyondefficiency.us> <br />Sent: Monday, October 28, 2019 1:17 PM <br />To: GRP -City Council <br />Subject: Reach Code - please go beyond staff proposal, all -electric buildings, keep up with other <br />cities <br />This e-mail is from an external source. Please do not open attachments or click links from an unknown or <br />suspicious origin. o5xim <br />City Council: <br />Thank you for considering the adverse impact that gas-fired heat in buildings is having on our health, safety, <br />and climate crisis. I urge you to go beyond the staff proposal, to follow the sensibility of other local <br />jurisdictions who share your values, to prohibit gas piping in new buildings, starting January 1, 2020. <br />I am a licensed architect and HVAC designer, and I consult on a full range of building types. I have been <br />designing all -electric homes with induction cooking since 2009. <br />Why the urgency to do this now? <br />• New Title -24 code cycle takes effect 1/1/20 <br />• New Energy Code removes all barriers to compliance for electric -only homes <br />• Just in the last 10 years, the California electric grid is increasingly clean ---35% renewables in 2019 and <br />—100% by 2045. Yet we still risk our health & safety by burning gas for heat, at greater cost & risk to <br />ourselves than alternatives <br />• Electric heat pumps have leaped in efficiency over the last 10 years, now 300-500% efficient. Electric <br />heat pumps are now at operating -cost parity with gas. <br />If all -electric buildings are less expensive to build than gas buildings, why aren't developers doing this <br />already? <br />We can ask similarly, if not -smoking is so much cheaper and healthier, why do people still smoke? <br />Developers are conservative and therefore backward -facing; the market looking backward prefers gas; <br />however, market sentiment is a lagging indicator, and we need to acknowledge that CA early adopters <br />have already shifted to electric: HVAC, cooking, laundry <br />This is an easy win for the Council: you can take credit for reduced housing/construction costs, while <br />improving health, safety, and climate protection in your city <br />Science -based targets say we need to cut fossil fuel combustion to zero by 2045, to have a chance of <br />preserving life on earth as we know it: <br />A prohibition on gas piping is a politically easy move, literally the least of what needs to be done <br />The Council needs to start somewhere; a gas ban has precedent in 11 other local jurisdictions; this is <br />now consensus among policy makers. <br />AIA architects are bound by their professional ethics code to cease the use of fossil fuels <br />