
Natural gas stove. (Photo: Katy Grimes for California Globe)
Deceitful So Cal Gas Water Heater Ban Back
What happened to ‘If you like your gas stove, you can keep your gas stove?’
By Katy Grimes, June 3, 2025 7:06 am
They are coming for your gas-powered car, your gas stove, your gas water heater, your gas furnace, your gas dryer, your gas grille, your gas blower, your gas fireplace, and any other gas-powered appliance or vehicle you can think of, the Globe warned in December.
In the interim Donald Trump was sworn in as President, and his U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced in March the Department of Energy has further postponed the implementation of three of the Biden-Harris administration’s restrictive mandates on home appliances. Yes, the Trump Administration’s Energy Department is rolling back the Biden Administration’s draconian regulations on appliances.
Yet the South Coast Air Quality Management District has a June 6 vote to ban gas powered water heaters and home furnaces in Southern California – despite that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Berkeley’s attempt to ban gas powered water heaters.
Could it be time for more federal funding pulled from California?
Jon Fleischman explains today:
The South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) initially proposed a draconian mandate to ban new gas-powered water heaters and furnaces in Southern California, targeting 17 million residents. The original plan would have prohibited these appliances in new construction by 2026 and mandated electric replacements in existing homes by 2027. This outrageous overreach sparked tremendous pushback from homeowners, renters, small businesses, and industry groups, with over 13,000 comment letters flooding in, along with resolutions of opposition being passed by many local jurisdictions. The outrage forced a revision, but the new proposal remains an imprudent disaster, cloaking its reckless intent in a deceptive facade of flexibility.
The Revised Proposal: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
Gone is the outright ban, replaced by a fee-based system to penalize those choosing gas water heaters, set for consideration on June 6, 2025. Manufacturers face a two-tiered mitigation fee: $100 for space heaters and $50 for water heaters if within sales targets, jumping to $500 and $250 if exceeded. This equates to roughly $4 yearly for furnaces over 25 years and $3.30 for water heaters over 15 years—seemingly minor, but a deliberate scheme to make gas options unaffordable. The plan ratchets up over an 11-year period, with targets starting at 100% zero-NOx and dropping to 10% by 2036, pressuring adoption of costly electric heat pumps ($2,000-$8,000 upfront). A mid-2025 Go Zero incentive launch only deepens the financial burden. It’s a not-so-sly push toward electrification without admitting the ban’s failure.
As the Globe explained in December:
California is set to become the first state to ban natural gas heaters, water heaters, and furnaces by 2030, a policy of the California Air Resources Board, entirely made up of appointees by the governor, I reported in 2023 in The Tangled Government Web Behind the Push to Ban Gas Stoves, where we link Harvard Health Publishing, the Rocky Mountain Institute, MDPI International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, and U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) National Library of Medicine. NIH is the largest source of funding for medical research in the world. The WHO is named in the studies, as are many Chinese studies.
These groups were behind the Biden administration’s attempt to ban gas stoves and gas appliances, together with the International Code Council, as explained here.
Why do they keep coming back with gas appliance bans?
Wynne Armand, MD in September 2022 claimed “Cooking with gas stoves creates nitrogen dioxide and releases additional tiny airborne particles known as PM2.5, both of which are lung irritants. Nitrogen dioxide has been linked with childhood asthma. During 2019 alone, almost two million cases worldwide of new childhood asthma were estimated to be due to nitrogen dioxide pollution.”
Total rubbish.
As we’ve reported for many years, Dr. James Enstrom of UCLA long ago debunked the PM2.5 epidemiology. He found no robust relationship between PM2.5 and total mortality. However, this claim about these airborne particles have been used for decades by the government and American Cancer Society “as the primary justification for many costly regulations, most recently the Clean Power Plan,” as Dr. Enstrom explained.
The SCAQMD members and the above rent-seeking organizations don’t care if it bankrupts you or causes you undue hardship. They don’t care if your public transit system is a hellhole on rails, when they take away your gas-powered car. They don’t care if you have to walk 5 miles to work. They don’t care. Just remember that they don’t care about you. They only care about their autocratic rules – and power.
A California Globe reader sent me a powerful and poignant email about the South Coast Air Quality Management District plans to rid the region of gas heaters, asking if the members of the district have already replaced theirs:
Your upcoming plans for electric water heaters and home heating units will hurt the poorest of California residents.
Have you all already replaced all the heaters in your homes? Please share at your next meeting what was the total cost and how much your electric bills increased. I’m retired and on a fixed income and will need to know how much to save before I have to take cold showers and wear a sweatshirt in the house.
Have you required your gardeners to use electric tools when they work on your landscape?
Do you all drive only electric cars wherever you go? (Tho you might take the bus).
Are your backyard grills all electric?
Do your swimming pools use electric heaters?
Or do you live by “do as I say, not as I do” ?
The same Globe reader just sent this response:
AQMD Board,
How much did it cost you to install your new tankless water heater? Please include the cost of upgrading your electric panel. I wanted to know if your gardeners use all electric power tools while maintaining your gardens and lawns. Do you use a clothes line to dry your clothes? ( The ultimate use of solar power). Did you ride your bikes to your board meeting? Or take rapid transit?
Looking forward to hearing from you.
OC Register’s Susan Shelley provided public contact information for the governing board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District: aqmd.gov/docs/default-s
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Brick by brick , the California Left is going to bury itself. They are going to die politically, on the Climate Alarmism/ Energy Scarcity hill they created out of thin air.
I feel that when they lose, it will be for a long time.
It’s comin’……
Nothing seems to have slowed them yet, though I keep praying for a lightening bolt or something Biblical! It’s insanity.
Please yes? Oh I hope and pray you are right about this. Fingers crossed
Voting (d) party members should be deprived of any benefit, starting with food processed or distributed with devices that consume fuels derived from mining or drilling of any kind.
Yaknowwwww, those of us from the Motorcycle Rights Community……have dealt with false statistics for decades. You can not have 2 truths, only the facts and your perspective and perspectives are not necessarily fact based. POLICY needs to come from the BEST FACTS AVAILABLE not some groups feelings. This is BS, it’s been debunked and yet it’s being taught in our schools most likely.
Their plan – force everyone onto electricity for everything, hike the rates to astronomical levels and then turn off the power leaving you to freeze in the dark. You, not them, they will have their own elite power sources not available to the little guy.
the title of this is deceiving as the gas company in southern Kalifornistan is called SoCalGas, so it looks like it is them banning the water heaters. Maybe the authors of this story is just click baiting.
The insanity just keeps increasing. Anyone interested in seeing the consequences of these policies just has to look at what is going on in New York state and Germany and many other smaller locals.