The natural gas industry, the Republican Party, and state preemption of local building decarbonization

Abstract

Societal decarbonization likely requires changes to building standards encouraging electrification, partly through restricting connections to legacy utilities such as natural gas. Yet while some municipalities have taken action, an important parallel shift undermines it: more than half of U.S. states (covering 47% of the population) have, since 2020, passed state-level laws preempting municipalities from restricting utilities. We investigate the timing, content, and partisan support of these bills, examining similarity in text use across them using a plagiarism-detection tool. States passing preemption were not only more Republican but more ideologically conservative, typically featuring less professionalized state legislatures. We also examine qualitative evidence of the natural gas industry’s lobbying, showing that industry groups claimed influence over key bills (supported largely by Republican legislators). We consider the broader implications of these findings for supply-side decarbonization in a context of climate federalism under significant influence by fossil fuel industries and allied policymakers.