Seventeen California reach codes from 15 cities and counties are sitting at the Building Standards Commission without a decision, and some have been there close to a year. Canary Media reported Monday that the queue includes ordinances from Alameda, Glendale, Marin County, Palo Alto and San Luis Obispo. Until the commission signs off, and the Energy Commission after it, none of them can be enforced at a permit counter.
For contractors that’s a planning problem more than a climate one. A rule your building department adopted last winter may or may not apply to the job you’re bidding this fall.
How AB 130 froze California reach codes
The holdup traces to Assembly Bill 130, last year’s housing package. From Oct. 1, 2025 through June 1, 2031, the law bars cities and counties from changing building standards that apply to residential units, green building standards included. The commission is told it “shall reject” local filings that don’t fit one of six exceptions.
Local electrification rules have to squeeze through the fifth. It allows an amendment that aligns with a general plan approved on or before June 10, 2025, that permits mixed-fuel residential construction consistent with federal law, and that incentivizes all-electric construction as part of an adopted greenhouse gas reduction strategy. All three conditions, at once.
The mixed-fuel language is there for a reason. It keeps local ordinances clear of the 2023 Ninth Circuit ruling that struck down Berkeley’s gas hookup ban.
What’s in the pending local energy codes
According to Canary, 21 jurisdictions have passed reach codes since the freeze began. Fourteen adopted some version of the same idea: when a one-way air conditioner fails, the ordinance pushes the owner toward a heat pump that can cool and heat. Nobody is told to pull a working furnace. The heat pump is simply already in place when the furnace dies.
That’s replacement work, which is to say HVAC contractor work. In 14 jurisdictions the installed-equipment mix on residential changeouts depends on whether a state office clears a filing.
The commission told Canary it has approved seven reach codes in the past year and processed 440 of roughly 500 local ordinances of all kinds. The 17 still pending “contain more complex amendments,” it said, and it hopes to start issuing response letters soon. An Alameda official told commissioners in August that the city answered the agency’s follow-up questions in February and hasn’t heard back.
Reach code approval and the statute’s own shortcut
Here’s what stands out in the bill text. The same section that orders the commission to reject non-qualifying changes also says the commission, in deciding whether a filing meets an exception, “may rely on a statement by the local agency to that effect.” The Legislature gave the reviewer a fast path. The reviewer isn’t required to take it, and on these 17 it hasn’t.
A public-agency energy manager quoted by Canary said this vetting used to take days. Advocates say several other cities have paused their own adoption work until they see how the 17 come out.
California has been busy on the nonresidential side in the meantime, including a $50,000-per-violation ceiling for large buildings that we covered last week. And states that want electrification without a code fight are paying for it directly, as New York did with $75 million in heat pump incentives.
The residential freeze has 56 months left to run. If one ordinance takes 11 of them to review, the exception won’t get much use before June 2031.