ALTADENA — California Gov. Gavin Newsom waived a 2025 building code that encouraged electric heat pumps in new construction, allowing fire survivors in burn zones including Altadena and Pacific Palisades to rebuild to older, less efficient standards. The city of Los Angeles also waived a requirement that new homes be all-electric, and early figures show 1,300 residents have applied for gas reconnections through SoCalGas.

California also waived a requirement that all new homes in fire burn areas include solar panels, though they must still be solar-ready. State policy had pushed toward electrification in recent years. By 2024, about 39% of new homes in California were built without gas lines, up from only 8% of all homes that were all-electric in 2020. Burning gas and propane for cooking, water heating, and space heating in California homes and businesses creates 10% of the state's greenhouse gas emissions and releases pollutants indoors.

Despite the waivers, some groups of neighbors in Altadena and Pacific Palisades are building all-electric homes for health reasons, cost savings, or concern about climate change. Leo Cheng, a former NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer who has decided to become a passive house consultant, is part of a group of about 10 Eaton fire survivors working together to build passive homes in Altadena. A passive house is an airtight and highly insulated building designed to minimize the need for air conditioning and heating.

Cheng previously lived in a home with a gas stove, furnace, and water heater, and received evacuation orders as a western Altadena resident late on January 7, 2025, fleeing his house in the middle of the night without time to turn off the gas. Cheng said, "I'm a firm believer that climate change played a big role in how intense and how widespread these fires were. Using fossil fuel in this day and age is not a good idea."

The Foothill Catalog Foundation, founded last year by architects Cynthia Sigler and Alex Athenson, offers pre-approved, all-electric home designs in architectural styles inspired by Altadena's early 20th century legacy. The foundation is working with 11 families on homes under construction and has 50 more families signed on. Athenson said the catalog models were designed all-electric for health and safety reasons and to save clients money and time by eliminating the need for two utility hookups. All-electric homes in Los Angeles cost $3,000 to $10,000 less to build than mixed-fuel homes, according to the Building Decarbonization Coalition.

A $22 million incentive program launched on April 6 to support residents rebuilding all-electric homes in California disaster areas served by investor-owned utilities such as Southern California Edison. Customers can qualify for $7,000 to $10,000 in subsidies, with additional amounts for low-income fire survivors and bonuses for batteries and passive homes. In the first 10 days after the launch, 116 people from Altadena applied.

SoCalGas offers wildfire rebates for more energy-efficient gas appliances, and more than 1,100 households have enrolled in that program.