Title 24 Reports in Fresno County
Fresno County holds two climate zones: the valley floor, and the high Sierra to the east. The line between them falls mid-foothill.
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Valley floor and mountain
The valley zone covers the great majority of the county's population and construction — the City of Fresno, Clovis, Sanger, Selma, Fowler, Kerman, Reedley, Coalinga and Firebaugh. It runs the length of the southern San Joaquin Valley and is shared with Madera, Visalia, Hanford, Tulare and Bakersfield.
East of that, climbing toward the Sierra, the county enters the mountain zone: Auberry, Big Creek, Shaver Lake, Huntington Lake and the communities around them.
The line is not where you would guess
It does not fall at anything visible from the road. Tollhouse and Dunlap are already well into the foothills and are still in the valley zone. So a property with a Fresno-area address and genuine Sierra elevation cannot be assumed either way — it is the ZIP the Energy Commission assigns, not the drive time from town or the look of the terrain, that sets the requirements.
For the valley majority, none of this arises. For foothill and mountain work it is the first thing to establish, because the two zones are at opposite ends of the state's range.
City and unincorporated permitting
A project inside a city's limits is permitted by that city. A project on unincorporated land is permitted by the county instead, and the two can run different submittal processes even where the energy requirements are identical. The California Energy Code itself is statewide — what changes locally is the climate zone the site falls in and how the jurisdiction wants the compliance documents presented.
Because the county contains more than one zone, the requirements are confirmed from the project ZIP code rather than from the county name.
Climate zones in Fresno County
Fresno County contains California climate zones 13 and 16. The zone drives the insulation, glazing and equipment performance a report has to demonstrate, and it is confirmed from the project ZIP code against the Energy Commission's published table.