The Case for Clean Commercial Buildings
This month, Seattle City Council will pass updated commercial building codes that make sure new businesses and multifamily homes in the city are built to be safe, clean, and free of fossil fuels. We strongly support these updates.
Seattle already faces the impacts of climate pollution every day. One-third of this pollution comes from buildings, most of it produced by the use of fracked gas. Modernizing the commercial building codes is a simple and effective way to quickly reduce our fracked gas consumption, slowing the damage to our climate. In fact, every plan Seattle has for meeting its climate goals requires the prevention of new fossil fuel use in most buildings.
Choosing clean electricity for our buildings has health benefits, too. Gas appliances harm both indoor and outdoor air quality, and gas extraction and transport are extremely harmful. People working in or living near fracking sites face outsize risks of premature birth, sexual violence, and workplace injury or death.
The terrifying gas explosion in Greenwood in 2016 reminded us that the danger also exists close to our home. Miraculously, no one was killed, but the economic and psychological effects still linger, and the damage next time could be much greater. Seattle’s seismic risk compounds our peril, as twenty-five percent of fires after earthquakes are related to natural gas.
It is significant to note that the impacts of fracked gas extraction and use are felt most intensely by BIPOC communities. The Canadian fracking sites where much of our gas originates have devastated First Nations communities and lands. In Seattle, we know that redlining and other historical and ongoing injustices have forced people of color to live in close proximity to pollution, with outcomes that can be measured in literal years of lost life expectancy. It is our responsibility to do as much as we possibly can to halt and then reverse this harm.
Electric buildings are an indispensable part of our green future as well as an important tool to improve public health, safety, and racial equity. We strongly support Seattle’s 2021 commercial building code updates as well as future efforts to protect our homes and other buildings from dangerous, polluting fossil fuels.
