The measure faced fierce opposition from developers and natural gas utilities. National Grid, the region's natural gas provider, warned that heating buildings with electricity would be more expensive for residents, and could lead to blackouts due to excess demand in the winter.  Nationally, gas utilities have organized campaigns to thwart cities' efforts to pass gas-ban legislation, and have issued public lobbying campaigns against electrification. Natural gas companies supply 66 million homes (pdf) in the US.

But bans on natural gas are a major focus for climate policy advocates as local governments try to cut emissions. More than 50 communities in California including Oakland and San Jose have taken steps to limit natural gas use in new buildings, though not all have gone so far as to pass legislation banning it. At the same time, 20 states including Texas, Florida, and Louisiana have passed laws preventing local authorities from passing natural gas bans before they even try.

But now that New York has become the biggest city to take this step towards electrifying buildings, it may inspire similar legislation in other cities still able to take action. New York's is the first of this legislation that does not ban natural gas outright, but rather prohibits any energy source that would bring a building's overall emissions above a certain limit. Essentially, it forces electrification by default. This tactic could be a model for cities that don't want to regulate based on specific fuel types, says Amy Turner, a senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.

The new legislation is also likely to spur development in the electric heating sector more broadly. CEO Donnel Baird of BlocPower, a building energy startup based in New York that retrofits buildings with electric heat pumps to improve energy efficiency, supported the move arguing it would deliver modern, all-electric clean energy infrastructure, as well as thousands of jobs.