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On September 16, the International Code Council (ICC) Board will meet to consider the preemption appeal jointly filed by APGA and the American Gas Association (AGA), among others. The preemption hearing was held on August 31, during which, APGA and AGA argued that two new provisions of the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) were preempted by federal appliance efficiency laws and should not be included in the final code. The Appeals Board that heard the cases are recommending that the ICC Board deny all preemption appeals, reasoning that “the appellants did not provide ample information of a violation of any written process.” However, they further note that “appellants did raise significant questions about federal preemption” and recommend that the ICC Board consider whether “any remedial action should be taken.”

APGA and AGA jointly filed an appeal of four ICC actions related to provisions in the IECC. 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. The Appeals Board has yet to release its recommendations on APGA/AGA’s scope/intent appeals that were heard on September 3.

APGA staff plans to participate in the ICC Board meeting and will continue to keep members aware of any updates on the 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.