The Warren-Alquist State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Act requires the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission (Energy Commission) to adopt building design and construction standards and energy and water conservation standards for new residential and nonresidential buildings to reduce the wasteful, uneconomic, inefficient, or unnecessary consumption of energy, including energy associated with the use of water. The act requires those standards to be cost effective when taken in their entirety and when amortized over the economic life of the structure compared with historic practice.

This bill would establish the Zero-Emissions Heating Market Transformation Fund in the State Treasury and would require moneys in the fund, upon appropriation by the Legislature, to be expended for the design and implementation of market development activities for highly efficient and zero-onsite-emissions building technologies, for incentives for new buildings to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases by more than is required by law, and for incentives for existing buildings to adopt zero-emissions building technologies. The bill would require the Public Utilities Commission to authorize incentive programs that will transform the state’s market for low-emissions space and water heating technologies.