NY plans to change the way you heat your home. Gas, oil, propane furnaces to be phased out
Syracuse, N.Y. – A state commission today approved plans to phase out fossil fuel-burning furnaces beginning as soon as 2025 as part of New York’s aggressive program to address climate change.
The plan adopted today by the state Climate Action Council requires energy-efficient electric heat pumps or other non-combustion heating systems in every new home built in 2025 or thereafter.
For existing homes, residents whose fossil fuel-burning heating units give out after 2030 will have to replace them with a zero-emission system.
Those are just two of the many policies in a 445-page plan adopted today by the state Climate Action Council, a 22-member commission made up of state agency leaders, environmental experts, energy industry leaders and others.
Some of the policies approved today in the Climate Action Council’s “final scoping plan’’ require further action before they can be enforced. The new regulations on heating systems, for example, will require changes to the state building code. Other changes may require new legislation.
But the council’s “final scoping plan” is now the official policy for how state government will meet goals for greenhouse gas reduction required under a state law passed in 2019. State regulations must follow its prescriptions, said Robert Howarth, a Cornell University professor and a member of the Climate Action Council.
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