After a years-long authorized battle that garnered nationwide consideration, Berkeley’s pure fuel ban has fizzled out.
As a part of an settlement final week to settle a lawsuit from the California Restaurant Assn., Berkeley agreed to right away halt enforcement of its first-in-the-nation ban on putting in pure fuel piping in newly constructed buildings.
Berkeley has additionally “agreed to take steps to repeal the ordinance,” stated restaurant affiliation president Jot Condie.
“Each metropolis and county in California that has handed an analogous ordinance ought to observe their lead,” Condie stated in a assertion.
Farimah Faiz Brown, Berkeley’s metropolis lawyer, confirmed that the town has ceased enforcement of the ban, saying cities had been “uniquely accountable for defending their residents” from the climate-change harms posed by burning pure fuel.
“Berkeley will proceed to be a frontrunner on local weather motion,” Brown stated in a press release.
Combating local weather change has been a main argument put ahead by proponents of such bans. Pure fuel burned in properties and companies accounts for about 10% of California’s planet-warming air pollution — and state plans to attain carbon neutrality by 2045 have relied on phasing out pure fuel home equipment amid a 90% discount in demand for pure fuel.
Condie stated that local weather change stays a priority, however that the coverage was not the suitable resolution.
Fuel ban supporters have additionally cited public well being as a rationale. A 2023 examine from Stanford College and nonprofit PSE Wholesome Vitality discovered that cooking with fuel stoves can expose folks to roughly the identical most cancers danger as respiration secondhand cigarette smoke.
Berkeley was the primary U.S. metropolis to approve a ban on fuel hookups in most new properties, in 2019. Greater than 70 different California cities and counties — together with Los Angeles — have since adopted swimsuit and successfully banned new fuel home equipment.
The destiny of these insurance policies, in addition to dozens of others outdoors the state, is unclear.
In an April 2023 ruling, a federal appeals courtroom sided with the restaurant affiliation in opposition to Berkeley’s ordinance — ruling that the town couldn’t preempt federal statutes in trying to manage the piping that carries pure fuel right into a constructing as a approach to regulate the home equipment themselves.
After the appeals courtroom declined to rehear the case on Jan. 2, the 2 events spent months engaged on a settlement, in line with the restaurant affiliation.
