Sep 22, 2026 · 29 min · 10 segments
Colorado's Clean Heat Plan has made the rules on natural gas very confusing for the customers. But, is that all part of the plan? PowerGab Host Amy Cooke discusses this topic with attorney James Conde…
James CondeGuest
Amy CookeHost
Yeah, so EPCA is the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, and it's a statute that dates back to the oil crisis of the 70s.
As a President Ford initiative, the relevant portion of EPCA here requires the Department of Energy to impose efficiency standards or water use standards on a variety of appliances, both consumer appliances like your regular oven or gas range that you have in your home to industrial appliances like large boilers.
And so DOE, the Department of Energy, I'm from Washington, so I'm speaking acronyms, but the Department of Energy is supposed to set efficiency standards for all these things.
And then the compromise was that once there's an effect, an efficiency standard for one of these products, state and local governments can't regulate, or the language of the statute says, can't have regulations concerning the energy use of the appliance.
And so the whole question is, what do those kind of open-ended terms mean? concerning the energy use of appliances.
And so that's where the ongoing conflict between the courts is centered on, trying to interpret those words in the context of all the different regulations that are being implemented by blue states, from building codes to direct appliance bans, to banning gas piping, So the issue in Berkeley, you know, the city of Berkeley in California passed an ordinance saying you cannot design buildings that can pipe in natural gas from the meter.
So the issue there was not, they weren't prohibiting the distribution of gas to the property.
They were just saying you can't have a pipe that goes from the meter into the building.
So there's no other purpose to ban that last few inches of gas pipe into the home from the meter.
So the court there in the Ninth Circuit, which is the federal court that oversees California, Washington, Oregon, a bunch of the naughty states, Hawaii, Arizona.
So the court there said, The energy use in the statute includes the term energy, which is defined to include fossil fuel.
So you can't have a law that says, effectively, you can't use fossil fuel, because that's concerning energy use.
Yeah, so EPCA is the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, and it's a statute that dates back to the oil crisis of the 70s.
As a President Ford initiative, the relevant portion of EPCA here requires the Department of Energy to impose efficiency standards or water use standards on a variety of appliances, both consumer appliances like your regular oven or gas range that you have in your home to industrial appliances like large boilers.
And so DOE, the Department of Energy, I'm from Washington, so I'm speaking acronyms, but the Department of Energy is supposed to set efficiency standards for all these things.
And then the compromise was that once there's an effect, an efficiency standard for one of these products, state and local governments can't regulate, or the language of the statute says, can't have regulations concerning the energy use of the appliance.
And so the whole question is, what do those kind of open-ended terms mean? concerning the energy use of appliances.
And so that's where the ongoing conflict between the courts is centered on, trying to interpret those words in the context of all the different regulations that are being implemented by blue states, from building codes to direct appliance bans, to banning gas piping, So the issue in Berkeley, you know, the city of Berkeley in California passed an ordinance saying you cannot design buildings that can pipe in natural gas from the meter.
So the issue there was not, they weren't prohibiting the distribution of gas to the property.
They were just saying you can't have a pipe that goes from the meter into the building.
So there's no other purpose to ban that last few inches of gas pipe into the home from the meter.
So the court there in the Ninth Circuit, which is the federal court that oversees California, Washington, Oregon, a bunch of the naughty states, Hawaii, Arizona.
So the court there said, The energy use in the statute includes the term energy, which is defined to include fossil fuel.
So you can't have a law that says, effectively, you can't use fossil fuel, because that's concerning energy use.
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