The International Code Council (ICC) has held two hearings on appeals arising from the recent cycle of the code development process. During these hearings, APGA and the American Gas Association (AGA) argued their
jointly filed appeal of four ICC actions related to provisions in the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) before an ICC Appeals Board. The federal preemption hearing was held on August 31 at 10:00 AM ET, and the scope/intent hearing was held on September 3 at 10:00 AM ET. Of note, in a memo to the Appeals Board and in their verbal presentation, ICC staff recommended that the scope/intent appeals should be sustained. Recommendations from the Appeals Board are anticipated to be released the following week, with the ICC Board having the final decision.
APGA, through the appeal, contended that these provisions should have been prevented from moving forward by ICC staff during the code development process because they either raised potential federal preemption concerns or were outside of IECC's defined scope/intent and, consequently, should not be included in the next edition of the IECC. APGA members would be directly and materially affected by state or local adoption of the requirements of these proposals, as the proposals would disadvantage the competitiveness of natural gas direct use applications.
For those interested in reviewing any comments or presentations related to the appeals, please
visit the ICC appeals website, and APGA staff will continue to keep members aware of any updates on this appeals process. For questions on this article or APGA’s engagement with ICC, please contact Renée Lani of APGA staff by phone at 202-464-0836 or by email at
rlani@apga.org.