Photo courtesy of Marina Burity / CC BY-SA 2.0.

Attorney General Maura Healey has struck down a Brookline ban on natural gas hookups in new buildings that could have set a precedent for other municipalities looking to require more environmentally friendly building techniques, but which real estate groups warned could kneecap commercial development.

All town bylaws in Massachusetts must be reviewed by the Attorney General’s office before they can go into effect.

Brookline’s Town Meeting had passed the ban in November of last year with the aim of reducing the town’s carbon emissions. Gas heating and gas-powered appliances accounted for between 60 and 70 percent of the town’s carbon emissions, according to a town analysis of 2008 data cited by the petitioners.

However, natural gas is also used to power large HVAC units in commercial buildings; NAIOP-MA, the state’s chief commercial real estate trade group, contends electrically-powered alternatives are not yet capable of replacing them. The architects of the state’s largest green building project, Boston University’s Data Sciences Center, chose to rely on a complex series of geothermal wells for its heating and cooling needs.

While Brookline’s band exempted life sciences labs – which typically rely on natural-gas powered bunsen burners as critical components of experiments – Cambridge officials had considered a ban that with no such exception, and at least a dozen other towns and cities in the state were mulling similar restrictions.

In a letter to Brookline officials, Healey said Brookline’s ban ran afoul of state law by trying to create local regulations that went beyond the state building code, the state gas code and state Department of Public Utilities regulations.

In an email to supporters, NAIOP-MA CEO Tamara Small called Healey’s decision “a huge win” for the real estate industry. The group was among many that had submitted comments to Healey’s office on the Brookline ban.

Brookline state Rep. Tommy Vitolo, a major proponent of the Brookline ban, said he would seek the necessary changes in state law to allow similar municipal bans to go forward in the future.