A policy to make Bend home builders pay more for installing natural gas appliances in new construction is almost to the finish line.
The Bend City Council is set to vote Wednesday on the proposed Climate Pollution Fee, designed to fight climate change by encouraging builders to power homes with electricity instead of natural gas, which contributes to global warming.
If adopted, Bend will become the second city in Oregon, behind Ashland, to impose such a fee.
A public hearing will also precede Wednesday’s vote, promising to draw ample interest both from supporters and opponents. Climate advocates and residents say the fee is needed sooner rather than later to making headway in decarbonizing the city’s future housing stock, while business groups, developers and power suppliers say the City of Bend is moving ahead too quickly, jeopardizing affordability while reducing energy choice.
Most members of the Bend City Council have backed the fee and will likely approve it this month, barring a major shakeup. The fee wouldn’t go into effect until April 2027.
The vote marks a major milestone about two years after the City Council first started discussing electrification, and 10 years after the Bend first set goals to reduce local greenhouse gas emissions.
Brennan Breen, campaign lead with Energize Bend, a coalition pushing for electrification, called the upcoming vote an “important inflection point.” Breen and other advocates have argued all-electric homes will not only be better for the environment but more affordable for homeowners in the long run because of cheaper power bills.
The fee will apply to gas furnaces, dual-fuel heat pumps with gas furnaces, gas water heaters, gas stoves, gas dryers and gas fireplaces. It will apply to single-family new construction only, not existing homes or multifamily construction.
The City Council has advanced the fee despite warnings from builders and the energy industry that it will drive up housing costs and strain the electrical grid.
According to a staff memo provided to the City Council in Wednesday’s agenda packet, the fee will cost builders between $1,300 and $3,000 per home, depending on size. The fee is calculated based on the difference in carbon emissions between gas and electric appliances, multiplied by a portion of the social cost of carbon, a metric created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to estimate damages to humans and the environment from effects of climate change like drought and natural disasters.
In February, the City set the fee amount at 20% of the social cost of carbon. Advocates feared the fee wouldn’t be high enough to encourage builders to switch to electric, while opponents said it was still too high.
In April, the Bend Chamber of Commerce wrote that while the increase may not seem like much relative to the cost of a home, it comes alongside rising construction costs, economic uncertainty and other new regulations that might tick up building costs, including home hardening for wildfire and the tree preservation code.
The fee is expected to generate about $1 million annually for other electrification efforts, although those haven’t been identified yet.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Water seems to be a bigger issue in Central Oregon. I’m surprised they have not prohibited swimming pools, water features and grass lawns or instituted a fee for those too. Fee per sf of grass. Fee per faucet and shower head. “Luxury tax” for water not used for drinking or bathing.
They are just getting warmed up.
And when the electrical grid fails? I’m with the unions on this one. The vote might provide a worthy challenger to the Mayor in November.