California named 151 neighborhoods where a pilot can end natural gas service if 67% of property owners agree

How Senate Bill 1221 lets California take a neighborhood off natural gas

California is taking specific neighborhoods off natural gas by a vote of the property owners on the street, under Senate Bill 1221, a law the Governor signed on September 25, 2024. The law lets a gas utility retire the pipes serving a priority neighborhood decarbonization zone, an area the California Public Utilities Commission names as a candidate for a pilot project, once enough owners agree to switch their homes to electric heating, water heating and cooking. The commission is the state body that regulates gas and electric utilities. On December 18, 2025, the commission designated 151 census tracts, small areas the government uses to count population, as the first priority zones, covering parts of 14 counties from Alameda to Stanislaus. The money to switch a home to electric equipment comes from what the utility would otherwise spend replacing that same stretch of old gas pipe, not from a payment made to any household.

How a neighborhood gets taken off natural gas

A pilot project can proceed only if 67% of the property owners with gas service inside its boundary consent, down from the 100% a utility needed before this law. Up to 30 pilot projects can run statewide, and no utility may use pilots that cover more than 1% of its customers in that service territory. A pilot with 100% consent from the start does not count against the 30 project limit. The commission cannot approve a new pilot on or after January 1, 2030, and the whole program ends January 1, 2031, though a pilot still running that day may finish.

What an owner who says no still faces

Section 663c of the law states the sharpest consequence for an owner who refuses. An owner who withholds consent gets no right to keep natural gas service once the commission approves a pilot project that includes that property inside its boundary. In plain terms, once 67% of the owners on a street agree and the commission signs off, a holdout has no guaranteed way to stay on gas. No pilot has reached that point. The commission has not approved a single pilot application, and utilities cannot submit their first proposals until April 1, 2027.

Why some neighborhoods qualify first, and who is pushing back

The commission targets tracts where at least 10% of gas lines are already scheduled for repair or replacement and where there is community support, capped at 25 tracts per county unless a tract also carries a high pollution burden score. Written comments to the commission split hard by location. Of 208 individual comments logged by January 18, 2026, 65 supported the pilot program, mostly from zip codes in San Diego County, and 135 opposed it, mostly from zip codes in Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange and San Bernardino counties.

I've learned that not only do we have contaminated air when we are outside in Richmond, but there's contamination and toxins within our homes.

Zenaida Gomez, a Richmond resident organizing with ACCE Action. Source 4.

They all have old gas lines that need to be replaced, so it represents an opportunity to electrify.

David Sharples, county director at ACCE Action. Source 4.

How many pilots the state could actually see

The 151 named zones are only places a pilot may be proposed, not places one exists. Against that number, the law allows no more than 30 pilot projects statewide, and the commission states none has been approved.

The commission plans to update the zone list by December 31, 2026, adding weight to pollution burden scores after critics said the first list favored coastal, organized neighborhoods over inland and Central Valley communities that carry a heavier pollution burden.