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On September 16, the International Code Council (ICC) Board met to consider recent appeals, during which APGA and the American Gas Association (AGA) reiterated their arguments 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 on August 31 had recommended that the ICC Board deny all preemption appeals, reasoning that “the appellants did not provide ample information of a violation of any written process,” but further noted that “appellants did raise significant questions about federal preemption” and recommended that the ICC Board consider whether “any remedial action should be taken.” The ICC Board has the last say on the appeals and can take any number of actions, including denying the appeals while still potentially taking separate action on the specific provisions.

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, but the ICC Board is scheduled to meet on October 5 to consider the appeals. The Appeals Board’s recommendations will be released at least 10 days prior to that meeting.

APGA staff 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.