Southern California air regulators reject rules to phase out gas furnaces and water heaters

DIAMOND BAR, Calif. (AP) — Air quality regulators in Southern California voted 7 to 5 to reject rules that would have curbed harmful emissions from gas-powered furnaces and water heaters, but the majority voted to send the rules back to committee to be changed and reconsidered.

The rules aimed to reduce emissions of smog-contributing nitrogen oxides, also called NOx, a group of pollutants linked to respiratory issues, asthma attacks, worse allergies, decreased lung function in children, premature death and more. Burning natural gas is also one of the primary drivers of climate change.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District estimates that the rules would have lowered NOx emissions from gas-fired furnaces, preventing about 2,490 premature deaths and 10,200 new asthma cases over a 26-year period in the region. The district regulates air quality for 16.8 million people in Southern California, including all of Orange County and large areas of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties — one of the smoggiest areas in the U.S.

The board received more than 30,000 written comments ahead of the vote, including a letter from U.S. Attorney Bilal “Bill” Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in the area, threatening to sue the board if they adopted the rules.

“California regulators are on notice: if you pass illegal bans or penalties on gas appliances, we’ll see you in court," he posted Thursday on the social platform X. “The law is clear—feds set energy policy, not unelected climate bureaucrats.”

Before the vote, board member Janet Nguyen, who serves on the Orange County Board of Supervisors, echoed opponents' concerns that the rules would financially burden people.

“I, like everybody here, support clean air," she said, adding, "These rules don't target refineries or shopping ports. They target people. The 17 million homeowners, renters, seniors and small businesses.”

Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell, who supported the rules, said, “If we don't start now, when will we affect any change?”

California is moving aggressively to reduce the state’s reliance on planet-warming fossil fuels ahead of a 2045 mandate for the state to have net-zero carbon emissions. California often sets or proposes stricter environmental standards than the rest of the country, including efforts to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035.

The rules would have set targets that aimed to phase out the sale of gas-powered furnaces and water heaters starting in 2027. It would not have applied to gas stoves. The sales target would have started at 30%, then grown to 50% in 2029 and ended at 90% in 2039. The rules would not have been mandated, but manufacturers would have had to pay fees ranging from $50 to $500 if they sold gas-powered appliances.

That's a significant rollback from the original proposal, which would have required residential buildings to meet zero-emissions standards beginning in 2029 when appliances need to be replaced. The agency amended the rules after strong opposition from Southern California Gas and other businesses.

The regulations would have impacted more than 10 million appliances in an estimated 5 million buildings, most of them residential.

Officials and supporters say the rules would have reduced air pollution and substantially improved public health. But opponents — including property owners, industry professionals and natural gas companies — feared they would raise costs for consumers and businesses, and strain the power grid by adding more electric appliances.

During a packed board meeting Friday that ran for five hours, clean air advocates held signs reading “Clean Air Now," “Vote 4 Clean Air, Vote 4 Justice" and “Let SoCal Breath!”

Before public comments, board chair Vanessa Delgado thanked the more than 200 people who signed up to speak about the rules, which took more than two years to craft.

“I don't believe that there's necessarily a good or right answer about these rules," she said. “I believe that it is very complicated and I know that every single one of these board members are doing what is right to move forward air quality goals in our region.”

Lynwood City Councilmember Juan Muñoz-Guevara said the rules would be a long-overdue step toward environmental justice for communities like his.

“I've seen firsthand how families in my community are forced to live with the health consequences of dirty air. Our children grow up with asthma, our elders struggle with respiratory illness, and too many lives are cut short," he said. "Gas appliances in our home are one of the largest sources of smog-forming pollution in the region. We cannot meet clean air goals without tackling this.”

Peggy Huang, a member of Yorba Linda's City Council, urged the board to reject the rules.

“As someone who's been advocating for affordable housing, this will increase costs for us to meet those goals,” Huang said.

Chino's mayor pro tem, Curtis Burton, echoed some of Huang's concerns. He said the rules would “create an additional financial burden on residents and businesses.”

Air quality regulators say the rules would save consumers money by reducing energy bills.

FILE - Smog lingers over the city overlooking the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles as seen from Signal Hill, Calif., on Monday, March 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Etienne Laurent, File)

FILE - A person with a dog walks along a trail as a layer of smog blankets downtown Los Angeles, Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — An Iranian Kurdish separatist group in Iraq said it has launched attacks on Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in recent days in retaliation for Tehran’s violent crackdown on protests.

Members of the National Army of Kurdistan, the armed wing of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, or PAK, have “played a role in the protests through both financial support and armed operations to defend protesters when needed,” Jwansher Rafati, a PAK representative, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Iranian media has previously accused the group and other Kurdish factions of attacking security forces.

Iranian activists say more than 2,797 people were killed in the government’s crackdown on a recent wave of nationwide protests.

A handful of Iranian Kurdish dissident or separatist groups — some with armed wings — have long found a safe haven in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, where their presence has been a point of friction between the central government in Baghdad and Tehran.

Iran has occasionally launched strikes on the groups’ sites in Iraq but has not done so since the outbreak of the recent protests.

The PAK is the first of the groups to claim armed operations since the protests and crackdown began.

“When we found out that the IRGC was shooting protesters directly, our fighters in Ilam, Kermanshah, and Firuzkuh responded with armed operations and inflicted significant damage on the regime’s forces,” Rafati said in an interview in Irbil, the capital of northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region.

The PAK has also claimed a number of attacks online and posted video of what it said were operations against IRGC targets, sometimes accompanied by grainy videos showing gunshots or explosions and buildings ablaze. The AP was not able to confirm the extent of the damages or the impact of the attacks.

Rafati said the attacks were launched by members of the group’s National Army of Kurdistan military wing based inside Iran. The group had not sent any forces from Iraq, but it anticipates that Iran may strike PAK bases in Iraq in retaliation for its operations, he added.

He said the PAK has been providing support to dozens of Iranians who fled to the Kurdish area in Iraq since the crackdown on protests began.

The PAK claims may put Iraqi authorities in a sensitive situation with Tehran — which wields significant influence over its neighbor — concerning the group's ongoing presence in northern Iraq.

Iraq in 2023 reached an agreement with Iran to disarm Kurdish Iranian dissident groups and move them from their bases near the border areas into camps designated by Baghdad. The bases were shut down and movement within Iraq was restricted, but the groups have remained active.

During the Israel-Iran war last year, the PAK and other Kurdish dissident groups began organizing politically in case the authorities in Tehran should lose their hold on power but did not launch armed operations.

A PAK spokesperson told the AP at the time that premature armed mobilization could endanger the Kurdish groups and the fragile security of Kurdish areas, both in Iraq and across the border in Iran.

A decade ago, PAK forces received training from the U.S. military when they were taking part in the fight against the Islamic State militant group after it swept across Iraq and Syria, seizing large swathes of territory.

Ironically, the PAK at the time found itself allied with Iran-backed Shiite Iraqi militias that were also fighting against IS.

At that time, the PAK received funding from Iraq's Kurdish regional government, but says now that most of its funding comes from its supporters in Iran and the diaspora.

During the recent protests, Iranian state media has repeatedly referred to the demonstrators as “terrorists” and alleged they received support from America and Israel, without offering evidence to support the claim.

Iranian state television aired what appeared to be surveillance video of a group of men wearing the baggy pants common among the Kurds, firing pistols, in Iran’s western Kurdish region. It has also published images of seized weapons in the area.

The semiofficial Tasnim news agency, which is close to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, said Kurdish groups including the PAK “have played an active role in inciting these movements by issuing coordinated statements and messages.” It said that “groups based in northern Iraq have passed the stage of psychological warfare and media operations and have entered the field phase.”

The semiofficial Fars news agency, which is also close to the Revolutionary Guard, reported on Jan. 10 that another group — the Kurdistan Free Life Party, or PJAK — had killed eight Guard members in Kermanshah and that a PJAK sniper killed a police officer in Ilam province. PJAK has not claimed any armed operations during the protests.

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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report. Sewell reported from Beirut.

This image made from video shows the representative of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, Jwansher Rafati, speaking during an interview with The Associated Press, in Irbil, Iraq, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Farid Abdulwahed)