Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, our Climate Story of the Week, as we've been doing every Tuesday on the show all this year today, how the fossil fuel industry is fueling support for gas stoves. Earlier this year, New York became the first state in the country to pass a law planning to phase out gas hookups in new constructions, essentially banning gas stoves in future buildings.

According to City Limits, the news organization, the goal is to reduce 85% of greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by the year 2050 and have 70% of New York's power come from renewable sources by 2030. These goals are in limbo now as the gas stove ban faces a lawsuit just four months after it was passed. Remember, this is not to force you to take your gas stove out of your existing apartment. This is only for new construction.

Behind this effort is a legal strategy that saw success in Berkeley, California, where a similar gas ban was halted indefinitely. Joining us now to share her reporting on the fossil fuel industry's successful legal efforts in Berkeley and how that outcome might translate to the case here in New York State is Mariana Simões, climate and environmental reporter for City Limits. Mariana, welcome to WNYC. Thanks for coming on today.

Mariana Simões: Hi, Brian. Thanks so much for having City Limits on the show. I'm always happy to be here.

Brian Lehrer: I gave a broad overview of New York State's future construction gas stove ban, but remind everybody a little more of the details of the plan to start out. How and when would it be implemented if the lawsuit doesn't succeed?

Mariana Simões: Well, as you pointed out, New York became the first state in the country to pass this law that prohibits the use of fossil fuel equipment in new construction, and this mandate is set to go into effect in 2026 for new buildings of seven stories or less, and in 2029 for larger buildings. New York is setting a precedent for other states to follow.

Brian Lehrer: Who are the plaintiffs trying to stop this policy from going into effect in New York State and what's their basic argument?

Mariana Simões: The lawsuit was filed on October 12th at the court of the Northern District of New York and it was by 13 plaintiffs. These plaintiffs include a series of small businesses and unions as well as the National Gas and Propane Association, which has been very active in putting forth anti-electrification campaigns across the country.

Brian Lehrer: At least that's transparent about who they are. This is the industry itself taking the state to court. You report that the same law firm filing this suit successfully blocked a similar policy regarding future gas stove construction in Berkeley, California. What was their winning legal strategy?

Mariana Simões: Well, in Berkeley, California, they put forth this argument that the prohibition of gas in new construction violates a federal law known as the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, EPCA for short. What EPCA really does is it gives the US government authority to set energy efficiency standards for appliances.

In reality, speaking to a lot of lawyers across the country, what they tell me is that this EPCA was actually just a standardization law that was supposed to just set a national standard to make it easy for manufacturers so that they wouldn't have to do 50 different kinds of standards for every single state. It was just more of a practicality standardization law and it got completely misconstrued and used instead for a different purpose, which was to topple the gas ban in Berkeley, California.

Brian Lehrer: Is there any reason to think that if that lawsuit succeeded on those grounds in Berkeley that it won't succeed in New York?

Mariana Simões: Well, I think that the point isn't so much if it will succeed or not. There is a chance, of course, that it could succeed. In the California case, you had three judges on there that were appointed by Republican presidents, and so some people that I've spoken with say that there was a bit of a conservative-leaning in that decision. The same thing could happen here in New York.

I think the point really is that when you're creating split decisions, so let's say if New York has a different decision than the Berkeley case, this could potentially get taken up by the Supreme Court. I think that the idea is to create enough of a doubt of whether or not this argument stands so that it becomes a national discussion. It puts other jurisdictions into a state of alarm and scares them into not putting forth similar kinds of electrification efforts if that makes sense, kind of giving other people cold feet. That's what Rob Rains, an expert that I spoke with for the piece, said. I think he's spot-on in saying this.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take some phone calls on our Climate Story of the Week today on the legal efforts to stop the laws like in New York State that would ban future gas hookups in new construction as a way of saving the climate. The lawsuit succeeded as we heard on similar grounds that we're hearing in New York, in Berkeley, California, but what would you like to see? What questions do you have about it for Mariana Simões, climate and environment reporter for the New York City news organization, City Limits? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text. The lawsuits in Berkeley and New York were both filed by the same law firm called Reichman Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg. Who are they? Does it matter?

Mariana Simões: Yes, this law firm, they call themselves an elite law firm. I think it's interesting because they were caught up in a whole thing in California where they were actually receiving money from SoCalGas. SoCalGas is the largest utility company in the nation. They actually got $4.5 million between 2020 and 2022, which is the same exact time that the lawsuit to topple the Berkeley gas ban was underway.

There was some investigation that happened over in California through the NGO, Earthjustice. They found out that there was actually a link between this money that the utility company, SoCalGas, was using to pay the law firm and the lawsuit that was going on in Berkeley. You can see that there's an organized effort between utility companies, fossil fuel groups, and now this law firm to topple these gas bans across the country. Now, they're trying the same thing in New York.

Brian Lehrer: Which makes sense that all those interests would pour their money into something like this, but it does have a dark money overlay to it, because you reported in the Berkeley case that SoCalGas, the utility, paid Reichman Jorgensen over $4.5 million between 2020 and 2022 even though they weren't the plaintiffs in the case.

Mariana Simões: Correct.

Brian Lehrer: Who were the actual plaintiffs?

Mariana Simões: The actual plaintiff was the California Restaurant Association who, by the way, was also receiving donations from SoCalGas at this time. They use this plaintiff, the California Restaurant Association, as the head of the case. What many of my sources have been telling me is that using these small businesses like the California Restaurant Association and the same thing here in New York, there are small businesses that are part of these plaintiffs, is a strategy to create that sympathy as like, "These are mom-and-pop businesses that are going to be affected by this gas ban."

Instead of having the utility company as the front runner of this lawsuit, they're using these small businesses and unions as the face of the lawsuit. They have real complaints, these people. They feel that their jobs are at stake with the transition to all-electric, and so they have real fears that they're going to be hurt by this. It makes a lot of sense that they would leverage that to use that as the face of this lawsuit if that makes sense.

Brian Lehrer: If the restaurant association filed that lawsuit, what are the implications for restaurants of future gas stove hookup bans?

Mariana Simões: Well, they are claiming that they can't cook five-star meals, that was actually in the Berkeley complaint, without natural gas. Of course, if you're transitioning to electric, you'd be cooking the same meals. It would just be a different kind of stove that you'd be using. They seem to have an issue with this specifically, the lack of the natural gas. They became the face of this lawsuit there.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Here's Joanna in Manhattan. Joanna, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Joanna: Thank you for taking my call.

Brian Lehrer: I see you're with a national environmental organization concerned with this issue?

Joanna: Yes, it's called Energy Vision. I wanted to say that we are strongly in support of electrification on new housing. You can do that effectively when you start from scratch. For old housing, that is much too expensive to change its system. You still don't need to use fossil gas. There is another form of natural gas that is chemically the same as fossil gas, but it's made from organic waste. It's made from the captured methane emissions that are emitted by rotting organics. For old housing, for heavy industries, for heavy-duty transportation, renewable natural gas made from waste is the best option for new housing. Absolutely. Electrification is the way to go.

Brian Lehrer: Joanna, thank you very much. Are you familiar with that alternative form of gas as the caller describes it, Mariana?

Mariana Simões: A little bit, but it's interesting. I don't know enough about it. I would love to learn more.

Brian Lehrer: Here's somebody with an individual story that goes along those lines. At least to the point of even when she wasn't required to stop using natural gas, she did, and it seems to be working out. Emily in Ossining, you're on WNYC. Hi, Emily.

Emily: Hi, Brian. Thanks so much. Thanks for doing this series on Tuesdays. As environmental caretakers, so to speak, we bought an old zombie house about seven years ago. It had to be gutted because it was full of mold. We worked with an architect to make it into a passive house. To get to net-zero energy, we cut off the gas line. We've been living in the house now for three-plus years.

We have an induction cooktop. I want to know, number one, who to write to or call about this because this is so absurd to think that we're going to set back the climate concerns, issues by another plan by the fossil fuel industry. We have an induction cooktop and I invite anybody who wants to see how it works. It's fabulous. We didn't get the most high-end cooktop and it took me a little while to get used to it.

I had a gas cooktop before that and I liked it, but this is so much better. It's so much easier to clean. It's true. You do have to use pots and pans that have a Ferris flat bottom like iron and a lot of pans do that. A lot of the pans we had already worked. I had to get a few new things, but they work really, really well. Anybody who wants to can call me and come and see how our stove works. We don't have many--

Brian Lehrer: How about the economics of it, Emily? Is it net zero in that respect compared to your old place, whatever that was with gas?

Emily: Well, we have solar panels and a lot of insulation and tight windows and doors.

Brian Lehrer: A lot of initial investment, very low energy bills is what that comes down to, right?

Emily: Big initial investment, although now that we have a plug-in hybrid car that is taking up a lot of power and we just got a bill from ConEd for $315. That's the highest bill we've had.

Brian Lehrer: Emily, thank you very much. Mariana, there's a lot to digest in that call. It sounds like you want to jump in on one particular point. Go ahead.

Mariana Simões: I do because I am actually very familiar with the passive house concept. I wrote an article about that too. It's an environmentally friendly solution to building standards. Basically, you design the building with elements as Emily pointed out like insulation, air tightness, and heat recovery to consume less energy. When we're talking about all-electrification efforts and the gas ban, we're really talking about new construction, right?

If you just build from the beginning, a building that has all those qualities that already consumes less energy, you are getting closer to net zero, right? You're already doing that from the get-go. Instead, as she pointed out, digging into a building that's already existing and trying to retrofit that, you're going to spend a lot more money and it's going to be a mess. If you're just doing it from the beginning and you're thinking of the design of the building as environmentally friendly, it goes a long way.

Brian Lehrer: Chris in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Chris.

Chris: Yes, hi. Thank you for having my call. I just wanted to comment that the environmental implications of switching from gas to electric, to which electrifying is good for some things, I'm not sure if it's good for all things, especially with gas being much, much cheaper than electric. Given the fact that when I'm cooking, I can actually see how much heat is going into my food. It's much easier for me as a visual person to cook that way. I think that, especially with winter, winter safety if the electric goes out.

Our electric grid is already very overburdened. We're converting or building new buildings as electric. That's a lot of strain on-- and we just had a power outage maybe about a week ago here in the city. A transformer blew up or something like that. Just because it's electric doesn't necessarily mean that it's more or less environmentally friendly. The health impacts that were cited as the motivator for switching from gas to electric, I actually personally think it's more of a ventilation problem.

A lot of these old buildings, they have the gas. They don't have the ventilation. That's where maybe some of the respiratory illnesses can come out of that. Other than that, I think that it might be cheaper and easier to just give better ventilation rather than to actually switch over from gas to electric. Now, when gas breaks down, it's just carbon. Carbon can be recycled by trees and other means, but electric, there's a lot of-- anyway.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, Chris, I've got you. Thank you. Thank you very much. That indoor air pollution from the burning of gas in your gas stoves, that's something that's old but has come to light recently, but that's not the main reason for the policy. The policy is because of the climate. I guess a couple of things about that, Mariana. One is he talks about as a visual person, he likes to be able to see the flame under the pots and that sort of thing. The previous caller, Emily from Ossining, loves her induction stovetop.

I have a friend who has a gas stove but doesn't really use it anymore because they bought one of the electric things that you can just put on top of the stove or next to the stove on the kitchen counter and they love it so much. He does raise a point about electricity. We have a couple of people writing in to say things like this. Here's a text message. "As a renter in New York City, gas is included in my rent, but I have to pay for electricity. If I go with an electric stove, I'll have more money coming out of my pocket. There's another issue for conversion and for future construction requirements, right?

Mariana Simões: Right, they raise really good points. This is something that I think is an ongoing discussion. There are people that feel really strongly about their gas stoves. I think that has a lot to do with just not being used to something. I think the reason why the all-electrification act is also for new construction, not only is it because it's more costly to retrofit as I mentioned, but also because it's a way to phase it in so that we can do it in the long run.

In other words, it'll be a slow, gradual change for folks. I think we do need to change the way that we use certain things. It's the same thing with recycling. You learn to recycle. Then in the long run, that's better for the environment. With regards to the cost, I think that the cost right now is the way it is because not enough people are doing it, right? Once everybody is on board, I think that's going to take a long time until we get there, of course, until we're at the point where we're all electric.

What a lot of folks that I speak with in the environmental world say is that these prices will adjust in the long run when we have enough of a market for it if that makes sense. It's the same thing as buying a bunch of parts to create renewable energy. Renewable energy is costly right now because a lot of the parts that we use to create these kinds of things come from abroad. There's not enough of a demand in the US right now to manufacture these kinds of things and that makes sense. It's the same thing with this. You don't have enough people on board quite yet, but the hope is that we will get there in time. These laws are being put in place to create that transition.

Brian Lehrer: A few more minutes in our Climate Story of the Week, which we do every Tuesday on the show. We've been doing that all this year today with Mariana Simões from the news organization, City Limits. They had an investigative report on how, among other things, utilities money is going into the lawsuits that are trying to block the policies in New York State and in Berkeley, California that would require no new gas hookups on future construction electricity instead. Danny in Bayside has a basic factual question on this. Danny, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Danny: Hello?

Brian Lehrer: Hi, Danny.

Danny: Hi. My question is, how much does gas doves contribute to the problem of global warming? Then like what the other caller was saying, if we move everything to electric when you have an outage, you can't do anything. Your refrigeration's out. You can't cook the food that's going to spoil because, now, your stovetop is electric. Can't charge your car, can't charge a phone. I was a chef in college and I used conduction stoves. I've used gas stoves and I've used electric. There's definitely a difference. You have much more control over your cooking when you're using a gas stove. I'd be happy to give up my gas heating, but my gas stove, it's like you're going to have to take it over my dead body.

Brian Lehrer: Danny, thank you very much. Let me go back to the thing he started that call with, which is the basic information question of how much do new gas stove hookups contribute to the carbon problem, to global warming. Is there an easily quantifiable answer on that compared to all the other sources, cars, trucks, industrial emissions? What percentage does this contribute if you know?

Mariana Simões: I don't know that I can single out just gas stoves, but I can tell you that 70% of New York's greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings, which is huge. I think that the point of the all-electrification is to reduce the emissions of buildings so that we could bring that number down and then reach the climate goals that are set forth by the state.

Brian Lehrer: Danny, thank you for raising that. I think we go from Danny in Bayside to Lawrence in Bayside as our last caller who wants to further that piece of the conversation. Lawrence, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Lawrence: Hi, Brian. This is a misnomer. It's a red herring by the gas industry. Less than 3% of the natural gas used in the United States is used for cooking. More than 90% of it is used for heating purposes. The natural gas industry has focused on people who like to cook and all chefs and restaurants like to use natural gas, but this is just a distraction. Now, you have people talking about how they're going to lose their stoves and have to learn how to induction cook and it's all nonsense. It's about converting over to heat pumps for most buildings or new buildings and the higher level of insulation and air infiltration that'll have to be used for that.

Brian Lehrer: Lawrence, I'm going to leave it there because we're running out of time. That's such an important point to at least discuss because if 70% of the carbon emissions in New York City come from buildings and those generally come from gas, do we know, Mariana, is Lawrence right that the vast majority of that comes from the heat, not the stoves? That leads to a question, could they allow gas hookups for cooking but not for heat?

Mariana Simões: That's a good question. I don't know if it's possible to do that because you're creating a whole new building type that runs on electric energy. I will say something that I think is important just to add to what he said. Yes, the heating is a huge part of this. It is the major part of this. In fact, that is why the National Propane Gas Association, which is a plaintiff in this lawsuit, says they're investing at least a million, upwards to $2.5 million, on combating these kinds of laws across the nation.

They have a huge stake in this because propane is a fossil fuel that is currently used in 50 million American households in stoves, fireplaces, and furnaces to heat the water supply. These folks are really being affected by the all-electrification effort and they're putting in money. They have said, and in my reporting, I note this, that they approved an initial outlay of $25,000 to financially back this New York lawsuit. There's a lot of money behind this kind of thing to keep this kind of fossil fuels alive.

Brian Lehrer: Utility companies, fossil fuel companies. You spoke with some plumbers and HVAC contractors around New York State who were part of the coalition of plaintiffs trying to stop this new policy of banning new gas hookups. The lawsuit goes on. The policy debate goes on. We leave it there with Mariana Simões, climate environment reporter for City Limits. That's our Climate Story of the Week. Mariana, thank you so much.

Mariana Simões: Thank you. Thank you so much.