The Trump administration’s proposed changes to how appliance energy efficiency standards are updated has drawn arguments around the need for conservation and regulatory predictability from a range of stakeholders.
The U.S. Department of Energy in July proposed changes to the agency’s standards setting and testing processes, with an eye towards “permanently end[ing] home appliance and equipment mandates,” it said. The agency’s comment period ended Aug. 21.
The proposal included adding a threshold definition of “significant energy savings” and reverting the “process rule,” which governs the standards-setting process, to a binding rather than guidance document.
A group of 15 industry groups, including manufacturers and appliance trade groups, in Aug. 21 comments said they generally support DOE’s proposed changes, and that making the process rule binding will create a more “solid, transparent, and predictable process.”
However, the group, which includes the National Electrical Manufacturers Association and the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, recommended that a proposed carve-out for deregulatory or non-stringency actions “not apply retroactively to standards already finalized.”
“Manufacturers have built product lines, tooling, and certification schedules around the compliance timelines tied to standards currently in force, and those investments deserve a transparent, predictable process if it is proposed that they be changed,” they said.
DOE also wants to require 10% energy savings in order to finalize a new standard. Manufacturers said they support a savings threshold and asked the agency “to ensure that the thresholds, however calibrated, remain objective and reasonable rather than set so high as to foreclose future standards.”
Appliance efficiency advocates also filed joint comments arguing the fixed thresholds DOE proposed “would forfeit the incremental savings” that lawmakers intended to create with the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which was passed in 1975 in response to the oil crisis and later stood up the DOE appliance program.
“Congress recognized that even small amounts of energy savings could be significant, because over time, small savings add up,” said the groups, which include the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, Consumer
Federation of America and the National Consumer Law Center.
As for the process rule, the groups said it should remain an advisory text.
“The Department’s proposal to have the process rule binding for all but de-regulatory actions would make it more difficult to adopt new regulations,” they said.
“Tying the agency’s hands for regulatory actions but not de-regulatory actions flouts EPCA’s intent,” the group said. “Instead, the Department should retain its current approach, under which the Department retains
discretion to deviate from the process rule as necessary.”
DOE under Trump has pursued a broad deregulatory agenda targeting rules passed under President Joe Biden and some that have been on the books for decades.
Also in July, DOE issued a request for comments on potential changes to energy efficiency requirements for distribution transformers that were approved two years ago, generating fresh concerns among utilities and other electric sector stakeholders about grid expansion bottlenecks.
