Washington board moves closer to natural gas ban in new homes

Published by The Center Square: – The Washington State Building Code Council’s Technical Advisory Group on Friday morning passed a motion disapproving of a code proposal that would require new residential buildings to be built all-electric. But it was largely a moot point in that earlier this month the group passed two proposals that would translate into an effective ban on traditional HVAC systems and natural gas in residential buildings. One would require space heating to be all-electric, and the other would require water heating to be all-electric.

“We do think that electrification is a very important step for Washington, but based on previous actions of this TAG – and both discussion and testimony that we’ve already heard – we think that the TAG’s time would be better spent elsewhere, so we’d actually like to request disapproval, so that we can just move on to other topics,” said Sean Denniston, senior project manager at Portland, Oregon-based New Buildings Institute, who introduced all three proposals.