“New York Votes to Ban Gas Stoves and Heaters in New Buildings by 2029”

The State of New York voted overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday the total ban in 2029 of stoves and heaters using gas and other fossil fuels in all new residential, office and administrative buildings, a first in the United States.

The Parliament of the fourth state of the country (20 million inhabitants), led by the center-left Democrats, approved a budget for 2023-24 of 229 billion dollars, which plans to impose ovens, plates and electric heaters in the future construction, according to a press release from the New York parliamentarians and the Washington Post, which revealed the information.

“Changing the way we produce and use energy to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels will help ensure a healthier environment for us and our children,” said Carl Heastie, speaker of the New York Legislative Assembly.

The gas ban, if the law is enacted and not overturned in court, will have to apply in small residential and office buildings of less than seven floors by 2026 and three years later for towers. According to the Washington Post, this is unprecedented in the United States, where a controversy over gas stoves stirred the political world in January.

Outcry

In an interview with the Bloomberg agency, Richard Trumka, member of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), said that due to the pollution and health risk of this type of cooker, their ban was possible.

Faced with the outcry among Republicans and within the American gas lobby, the White House had to assure that President Joe Biden “did not support a ban on gas stoves” and that the “independent commission would not ban them”.

Two recent scientific studies, which have been debated, pointed to gas cooking as being responsible for more than 12% of childhood asthma cases in the United States and the European Union, where respectively 35% and 30% of kitchens run on gas. This rate is 52% in New York State.

“In this budget, we are taking important steps to reduce our carbon emissions and switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources (…) in order to become a cleaner and greener state”, welcomed Didi Barrett, parliamentarian New York Democrat, where environmentalists make their voices heard.

Even if environmental and energy standards, particularly for housing, are less strict than in Europe, the State of New York adopted an ambitious climate law in July 2019.