City Limits: New York Moves Forward in Banning Gas Equipment in New Construction—For Now
New York just took two important steps forward in its quest to enforce the All Electric Buildings Act, a law passed in 2023 that requires most new construction in the state to run on clean electricity instead of climate-change-inducing fossil fuels.
On Friday, the New York State Fire Prevention and Building Code Council voted unanimously to update the state’s building code, codifying the law and allowing it to go into effect. And a few days earlier, the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York upheld the state’s all-electric law and rejected arguments put forth by fossil fuel industry groups to challenge its legality.
Lawmakers and environmentalists saw these decisions as a resounding victory for on-going efforts to move New York off fossil fuels.