Short answer: California stopped updating the residential side of Title 24. AB 130, the budget trailer bill signed June 30, 2025, created a moratorium on state and local building standards affecting residential units that runs from October 1, 2025 to June 1, 2031. The 2025 code that took effect January 1, 2026 is the residential code you build to for the next six years. There is no 2028 residential cycle. Nonresidential keeps its normal three-year cadence, so if you do both, you are now tracking two different clocks.
Most of the coverage of AB 130 was about CEQA and housing approvals. The building standards piece got a paragraph. For a C-10 it is the part that changes your work.
What AB 130 actually did
The operative guidance is not the bill summary. It is California Building Standards Commission Information Bulletin 25-03, dated September 22, 2025, addressed to local building departments. It states plainly that AB 130, Chapter 22, Statutes of 2025, “became effective June 30, 2025, and enacted a moratorium on state and local building standards affecting residential units beginning October 1, 2025, and ending June 1, 2031.”
The bill amends Health and Safety Code sections 17958, 17958.5, 17958.7, and 18941.5 as they relate to local amendments to Title 24.
Note the phrase “state and local.” Both halves are frozen. Cities cannot layer on new residential amendments, and the state cannot push a new residential edition through the intervening or triennial cycle during that window. The practical result is that the next residential code that could reach you comes out of the 2031 cycle, which would take effect January 1, 2032 if it is adopted.
“Residential units” is broader than houses
Here is the detail that decides whether a given job is inside or outside the freeze, and the bulletin flags it as an open question rather than settled law.
The statute does not define “residential units.” The commission’s own interpretation, stated in the bulletin, is that the scope covers all Residential Group R occupancies listed in Section 310 of the California Building Code, specifically R-1, R-2, R-2.1, R-2.2, R-3, R-3.1, and R-4, plus detached one- and two-family dwellings and townhouses under the California Residential Code, Part 2.5 of Title 24.
Read that list again with your job board in mind. R-1 is hotels and motels. R-2 is apartments and condos. R-4 is residential care facilities. A hotel remodel and a garden apartment repipe are both inside the moratorium. A restaurant, a warehouse, and a medical office are not.
That split matters because it is the first time in a long while that the residential and nonresidential halves of Title 24 are going to drift apart. Today they are both on the 2025 edition and the difference is invisible. In 2029 it will not be.
The 2025 code still took effect, and that is the point
AB 130 blocked what comes next, not what was already adopted. The California Energy Commission confirms the 2025 update of the California Energy Code went into effect January 1, 2026, and permit applications submitted on or after that date must use the 2025 forms and compliance software.
So nothing about your January reset changed. What changed is the horizon. The 2025 California Electrical Code, the 2025 Energy Code, and the 2025 CALGreen requirements are not a way station on the road to the 2028 edition. On residential work they are the destination for six years.
That is worth a different level of investment than you would normally give a code cycle. The 2025 CALGreen EV-ready circuit on new single-family homes is not going to get revised out from under you in 2028. Neither is the feeder surge protection requirement in 215.18. If you have been treating a code change as something to muddle through until the next edition fixes it, that strategy just lost its expiration date. Build the standard detail, price it properly, and train your crew on it once.
The honest caveat: the commission itself says it is still working out the edges. Bulletin 25-03 closes by acknowledging that “due to the breadth and scope of AB 130 and its impact on the Title 24 local amendment process,” the commission’s goal is uniform guidance and it “will continue to do so in the months ahead.” How the state handles a code part that covers residential and nonresidential in one document, which is exactly what the electrical code is, is a question worth asking your building department rather than assuming.
The five ways a city can still amend
Cities and counties are prohibited from making changes applicable to residential units during the moratorium unless one of five conditions is met. The bulletin lists them:
- The changes are substantially equivalent to modifications the city or county previously filed and had in effect as of September 30, 2025. The commission reads this as carrying forward an existing ordinance, for example one amending the 2022 edition, “with no material change in regulatory effect.”
- The commission deems them necessary as emergency standards to protect health and safety, which requires an emergency or urgency finding filed with the ordinance.
- The changes relate to home hardening. “Home hardening” is also undefined, and the commission reads it as amendments to the California Wildland-Urban Interface Code, Part 7 of Title 24.
- The standards relate to home hardening and are proposed by a fire protection district under Section 13869.7. Those get filed with HCD, not the commission.
- The changes implement a local amendment adopted to align with a general plan approved on or before June 10, 2025 that permits mixed-fuel residential construction consistent with federal law while incentivizing all-electric construction as part of an adopted greenhouse gas reduction strategy.
Exception 5 is the one that matters if you work in a city with an electrification reach code. A reach code that was on the books and in effect before the deadline can generally continue. A new one, or a materially expanded one, generally cannot. If a homeowner or a builder tells you their city is “about to require” all-electric on new residential construction, that claim now has to clear one of these five gates. Ask which one.
The model home rule that can put an older code on your tract
This is the provision most likely to catch you flat on production work, and almost nobody outside plan check is talking about it.
AB 130 also amended Health and Safety Code section 18938.5. The bulletin quotes it: “the state and local building standards in effect at the time an application for a building permit is submitted, for a residential dwelling based on a model home design approved under those standards, shall apply to all future residential dwellings based on that approved model home design in the same jurisdiction, unless the model home design substantially changes at a later date or 10 years have passed since the building permit for the model home design was approved by the jurisdiction, whichever comes first.”
In plain terms: when a builder gets a model home design approved, the code edition in force on that date follows every later house built to that design in that jurisdiction, for up to ten years.
For you that means the phase-four houses in a subdivision can be legitimately governed by an older edition than the house you wired last week two miles away. You cannot assume the current edition applies just because the permit was pulled this year. On tract and production work, add one question to your pre-bid checklist: which code edition was the model home design approved under, and when. The answer changes your scope, your material list, and whether the electric-ready provisions below even apply.
The commission was careful to say this provision is outside its purview and it cannot interpret it, and recommended jurisdictions consult legal counsel. So do not expect a clean answer from your plan checker either. Get the permit date and the model home approval date in writing.
The electric-ready requirement people are misapplying
Since the 2025 Energy Code is now a six-year fixture, get its electrical provisions right the first time.
Section 150.0(n) of the 2025 Energy Code requires newly constructed single-family buildings to be heat pump water heater ready when a gas or propane water heater is installed. The Energy Commission’s own guidance spells out the two pathways.
You reserve a designated space for the future heat pump water heater, at least 2.5 feet by 2.5 feet and 7 feet tall. Then, depending on where that space sits:
If the designated space is within 3 feet of the water heater. Install a dedicated 125V, 20-amp receptacle connected to the panel by a 120/240V, 3-conductor branch circuit rated 30 amps minimum. Both ends of the unused conductor get marked “Spare” and isolated. Reserve a single-pole breaker space in the panel and label it for future 240V use. Provide a condensate drain no more than 2 inches above the base of the water heater.
If the designated space is more than 3 feet away. Run a dedicated 240V branch circuit rated 30 amps minimum to within 3 feet of the designated space and terminate it with a blank cover labeled “240V Ready.” Reserve a double-pole breaker space labeled for future 240V use. Route the hot and cold water piping through the designated location and leave it exposed and readily accessible. Same condensate drain rule.
Now the part that gets misapplied. The Energy Commission states these requirements “are mandatory but do not apply to: Additions. Alterations. New buildings with all electric appliances installed.”
A water heater replacement in an existing house is an alteration. The electric-ready circuit does not attach to it. If a homeowner has been told the code now requires a 240V circuit to swap a gas water heater, that is wrong, and quoting it that way is a bid you deserve to lose. What governs a replacement is Section 150.2, the additions and alterations rules for existing single-family buildings, which controls what equipment can go back in, not what circuit has to be waiting for the next one.
The real electrical work on existing homes comes from the customer choosing a heat pump water heater, not from a mandate. That job is a genuine 240V circuit, panel capacity, and sometimes a service upgrade, and it belongs in the same conversation as battery and solar incentive work.
What to tell the people who call you
Nobody calls you about AB 130. They call because a builder said the code changed, a plan checker red-tagged something, or a neighbor told them the state is banning gas.
The plain version for a homeowner: the state paused updates to the residential building code until 2031, so the rules that took effect this January are the rules for a while. Replacing your existing gas water heater with another gas water heater does not trigger new electrical requirements. Switching to a heat pump water heater does, because it needs a 240V circuit and panel space.
The plain version for a builder or GC: which code edition your model home design was approved under, and when, determines what I have to install. Send me the permit date.
That second question is worth asking on the phone, not on site. On a production job, the difference between the 2022 and 2025 editions is circuits you either roughed in or did not. Finding that out at the truck is a change order and a schedule slip. Finding it out at intake is a scoped bid. It is the same discipline that decides whether a panel upgrade call turns into a profitable job or a surprise.
The catch is that the calls where those questions matter most tend to come in while you are in an attic with your phone in the truck. A builder’s scheduler does not leave a voicemail with the model home approval date on it. They call the next electrician on the list.
