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Builders warn of skyrocketing housing costs under climate-change law
Aug 18, 2015
http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2015/08/18/builders-warn-of-skyrocketing-housing-costs-under.html
A builders trade group warns that a pending climate-change bill could stifle home construction in California and drive up the cost of new houses.
Senate Bill 32, which would extend and expand California’s pollution reduction targets into the year 2050, would likely create a mandate that all homes produce zero net energy, warned a report issued Monday by the California Building Industry Association.
That mandate could then become a weapon for anti-development groups to sue builders under the California Environmental Quality Act, said Richard Lyon, the association’s senior vice president.
“It will provide opponents of new development a new tool to demand that the mandate be applied,” he said.
Sen. Fran Pavley, an Agoura Hills Democrat and author of SB 32, dismissed the group's concerns as alarmist propaganda.
“This kind of sky-is-falling analysis is the same doomsday prediction we’ve heard for years,” she wrote in an email.
Senate Bill 32 is a companion to Pavley’s Assembly Bill 32, the state's trademark 2006 law that called on the California Air Resources Board to create programs that would reduce pollution to 1990 levels by 2030.
The new bill, SB 32, would authorize CARB to create programs to reduce pollution levels to 80 percent below the 1990 threshold by 2050. In doing so, the law would place into statute a 2005 executive order then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that called for the same policy.
A suit pending before the California Supreme Court alleges that a San Diego-area planning agency violated CEQA by failing to analyze pollution impacts under Schwarzenegger’s 2005 order.
The concern with SB32, said Lyon, is that by codifying Schwarzenegger's executive order, it would open a Pandora’s box of environmental lawsuits until builders gained the capacity to create substantial on-site energy production on every new house built.
“We know that those who are opposed to projects will use CEQA to ensure that a project be analyzed as consistent with most stringent standards that apply,” Lyon said. “If SB 32 were enacted into law and the order made into a mandate, it is clear to us that it would immediately become a goal and requirement of all new residential construction.”
Aug 18, 2015
http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2015/08/18/builders-warn-of-skyrocketing-housing-costs-under.html
A builders trade group warns that a pending climate-change bill could stifle home construction in California and drive up the cost of new houses.
Senate Bill 32, which would extend and expand California’s pollution reduction targets into the year 2050, would likely create a mandate that all homes produce zero net energy, warned a report issued Monday by the California Building Industry Association.
That mandate could then become a weapon for anti-development groups to sue builders under the California Environmental Quality Act, said Richard Lyon, the association’s senior vice president.
“It will provide opponents of new development a new tool to demand that the mandate be applied,” he said.
Sen. Fran Pavley, an Agoura Hills Democrat and author of SB 32, dismissed the group's concerns as alarmist propaganda.
“This kind of sky-is-falling analysis is the same doomsday prediction we’ve heard for years,” she wrote in an email.
Senate Bill 32 is a companion to Pavley’s Assembly Bill 32, the state's trademark 2006 law that called on the California Air Resources Board to create programs that would reduce pollution to 1990 levels by 2030.
The new bill, SB 32, would authorize CARB to create programs to reduce pollution levels to 80 percent below the 1990 threshold by 2050. In doing so, the law would place into statute a 2005 executive order then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that called for the same policy.
A suit pending before the California Supreme Court alleges that a San Diego-area planning agency violated CEQA by failing to analyze pollution impacts under Schwarzenegger’s 2005 order.
The concern with SB32, said Lyon, is that by codifying Schwarzenegger's executive order, it would open a Pandora’s box of environmental lawsuits until builders gained the capacity to create substantial on-site energy production on every new house built.
“We know that those who are opposed to projects will use CEQA to ensure that a project be analyzed as consistent with most stringent standards that apply,” Lyon said. “If SB 32 were enacted into law and the order made into a mandate, it is clear to us that it would immediately become a goal and requirement of all new residential construction.”
