HomeMy WebLinkAbout2/1/2022 Item 7a, Reich
Delgado, Adriana
From:Jonathan W. Reich <jreich@calpoly.edu>
Sent:Thursday, January
To:E-mail Council Website
Subject:SLO City Council: Remove the natural gas compliance pathway for SLO's new
buildings and go all-electric
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Remove the natural gas compliance pathway for new buildings, go all-electric
Honorable Mayor and San Luis Obispo City Council Members;
I am a professor of architecture at Cal Poly, and an architect with nearly 50 years of experience in
the construction industry including having been a carpenter, a contractor, a housing developer,
and for 10 years a member of the Board of Directors of Mercy Housing, Inc, one of the nation’s
largest non-profit housing developers. I have also been certified by the California Division of the
State Architect and served as a public school construction project inspector.
I am writing to support the San Luis Obispo City Council staff recommendation to
remove the natural gas compliance pathway for new buildings,
to require new buildings in SLO to be all-electric in order to meet the city’s 2035 carbon neutrality
goals
which are crucial for the city to do its part to fight global climate change.
I was in the (very long) City Council meeting in September of 2019 in support of SLO’s all-electric
proposal.
I was very disappointed to hear then council-member now-Mayor Erica Stewart seem to repeat
misinformation spread by the bullying representatives of the natural gas industry after their
misinformation had been thoroughly rebutted by expert testimony, and then vote against all-
electric. As someone with long experience in the construction industry and as a non-profit
affordable housing developer, I can say that Mayor Stewart’s suggestions at that meeting that
natural gas is somehow less expensive than all-electric, and therefore contributes to housing
affordability is simply untrue and I hope she has learned.
Housing affordability has to be considered in terms of its first cost, its cost to operate, and its
externalities –
AND the health and safety of its occupants, (and the rest of us if such housing is contributing
greenhouse gas emissions).
Every house or apartment needs water and electricity, but natural gas is not needed.
Natural gas requires an entirely separate utility system to be added to the dwelling and to the
street that leads to the dwelling.
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And natural gas systems leak methane all along their system, from extraction from the ground to
the meter outside the house, to the stove or water heater hook-up. This leaking methane is
harmful to the occupants of the house and to the planet.
Methane is 80 times more potent a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere than CO2.
Why would anyone want affordable housing to be built to a lower basic safety standard than
other housing?
Should affordable housing be less insulated, less weather-proof, less fire-proof, less resistant to
collapse in an earthquake?
The problem of housing affordability is more the result of housing developers forever being more
interested in profit than providing a service.
Unaffordable housing is evidence of the complete failure of the idea that “the invisible hand of
the (free)market” will provide what’s needed.
The problem of housing affordability is a failure of capitalism.
In the short run and the long run, the clean, safe, eventually lower cost electrical energy provided
by solar, batteries, and wind will be better for all than the always leaky, methane emitting, global
warming, potentially explosive, indoor air polluting, asthma causing natural gas.
Finally, I was appalled by the atrocious behavior of the representatives of the gas industry at the
September 2019 meeting and thereafter.
Their specious accusations that Council Member Andy Pease, architect, had some kind of conflict
of interest because of being an architect, and their threats to spread COVID at the SLO City
Council portended the kind of tactics we saw in later threats to the Governor of Michigan, the
th
Governor of Washington, and the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. I believe the gas
company employees were misinformed and/or coerced to object to SLO's electric buildings
initiative.
The SLO City Council needs to follow the science, trust their professional staff,
and remove the natural gas compliance pathway for new buildings,
to require new buildings in SLO to be all-electric in order to meet the city’s 2035 carbon
neutrality goals
which are important both for housing occupants health and safety and crucial for the city to do
its part to fight climate change.
I share the SLO Climate Coalitions assertions:
All-electric buildings are healthier, cleaner, and more affordable.
o Children living in a home with a gas stove have a significantly increased risk of developing
asthma.
o All-electric buildings have been shown to be cost effective to build and operate.
o It would be costly for SLO to install fossil gas appliances in new buildings and then later retrofit
those buildings to remove the gas.
SLO City is falling behind on climate leadership. More than 50 California cities and counties have
already committed to phasing out natural gas in new buildings. Our peer cities Santa Barbara and
Santa Cruz have both committed to all-electric buildings.
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SLO City is committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2035. SLO City will not reach this goal at
the current rate of building electrification. It makes no sense to continue installing new fossil gas
infrastructure in new buildings.
Professor Jonathan Reich,
Architecture Department, California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo
http://architecture.calpoly.edu/faculty/reich
Cell: 805-801-8848
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