The Village of Oak Park will have to defend its progressive electrification policy in federal court.
A coalition of natural gas and construction interest groups say the village broke federal law when it adopted a building code ordinance requiring all new construction to be all-electric structures built without any natural gas hookups. The parties are arguing the village doesn’t have the authority to enforce the ban.
Village officials declined to comment on the litigation.
The electrification policy is a corner stone of Oak Park’s ambitious “Climate Ready Oak Park” sustainability plan, which aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the village by 60% by 2030 and have Oak Park fully carbon neutral by 2050. Carbon emissions from residential and commercial buildings had been found to account for 70% of Oak Park’s total emissions, according to the village’s sustainability office.
The electrification ordinance passed the village board unanimously on June 20, 2023.
According to the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, Oak Park was the first municipality in the Midwest to approve an electrification ordinance.
Several village leaders have already said it’s unlikely that Oak Park reaches its 60% emissions reduction target by 2030, but potentially losing the ability to enforce the electrification provision in its building code may make hitting the mark even more difficult.
Village leaders have also pointed to increasing housing density as a key goal for development in the village, who now faces this challenge coming from several construction-related entities. The plaintiffs in the suit include natural gas advocacy group the Clean Energy Choice Coalition, operating engineers’ union IUOE Local 150, the National Association of Home Builders and NPL Construction, a nationwide construction firm with locations on Chicago’s West Side and in Naperville.
“This ordinance deprives residents and businesses of the freedom to choose natural gas, the most affordable and reliable energy source,” said CECC representative Lissa Druss in a statement to Wednesday Journal. “Eliminating this choice in new construction risks significantly increasing taxpayer energy costs, undermining energy equity, and permanently blocking the use of future innovative energy solutions that could leverage existing natural gas infrastructure.”
The CECC was registered as a non-profit earlier this week on April 21, naming local home-building firm owner Pat Cardoni as its president. Druss, a one-time River Forest trustee candidate and a seasoned Chicago public relations professional, is listed as one of the group’s directors alongside Allen Drews, another Chicagoland home-building firm owner.
Much of the content on the organization’s website promotes opposition to bans on natural gas in new constructions, particularly the ban Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson unsuccessfully tried to push past Chicago’s city council last year.
The coalition brings together both labor and management groups from the construction industry in opposition to the Oak Park ordinance.
“Natural gas is essential for keeping a balanced and reliable energy system, serving as a vital link between traditional and renewable energy sources,” James M. Sweeney, president and business manager of IUOE Local 150, said in a statement. “With thousands of Oak Park residents utilizing natural gas for cooking and heating, the village has unnecessarily put at risk the dependability of these energy sources. The failure to eliminate ordinances focused on shortsighted measures hinders any efforts to actively pursue sustainability and ultimately threatens our workforce’s livelihood.”
In addition to leading IUOE Local 150, which represents skilled construction machinery operators in northern Illinois, northern Indiana and several counties in Iowa, Sweeney also chairs one of the best funded political action committees in Illinois — The Chicagoland Operators Joint Labor-Management PAC.
The PAC has been friendly to Oak Park politicians recently, giving $5,000 to Village President Vicki Scaman’s campaign shortly before April 1’s municipal election and donating over $1.4 million to Illinois Senate President Don Harmon last year, according to state records.
The suit alleges that the blanket ban on natural gas hookups is illegal because it conflicts with federal guidelines, namely the Energy Policy and Conservation Act which limits how state and local governments can manage the use of federally regulated energy sources.
While some exceptions to the federal statute exist, the plaintiffs argued in their complaint that municipalities must display “an unusual and compelling local interest,” for local municipalities to be allowed to restrict federally regulated energy sources. The plaintiffs argued that Oak Park does not meet the standards for any of those exceptions.
The suit comes after Berkeley, California’s first-of-its-kind natural gas ban was struck down by a U.S. circuit court decision last year following a challenge from California restauranters. The decision invalidated natural gas bans in cities across the western United States, including bans in more than 70 California cities who’d followed the example Berkeley set in 2019.
Oak Park’s natural gas ban does leave an exemption for commercial kitchens.
Since the city’s ban was overturned, Berkley has looked to impose a high tax on large buildings that use natural gas, according to environmental publication Canary Media.
Natural gas is typically comprised of 70% to 90% methane. While scientists believe that carbon dioxide emissions have a longer-lasting impact on the planet’s temperature, methane emissions have a much more powerful short-term warming impact. Scientists estimate that as much as 30% of recorded global warming since the industrial revolution has been result of methane emissions, according to NASA.
Some of the largest sources of methane emissions include pipeline-leaks, livestock management and landfill waste, according to the United Nations’ Environmental Programme. While the UN identified reducing methane emissions within the agriculture, energy and waste disposal sectors as the most impactful targets in its 2021 report on methane emissions, it also recommended that government and industry leaders work to “improve the energy efficiency of household appliances, buildings and lighting” as a secondary goal.
The methane emissions impact of household appliances like gas stoves have not been studied as extensively as emissions in other sectors. In 2022 climate researchers from Stanford University published a first-of-its-kind study on emissions from natural gas stoves, finding that that yearly emissions caused by methane leaks from natural gas stoves in the U.S. is equal to the emissions released by half-a-million gasoline-powered cars every year, according to Time Magazine.
