In the late 1980s, Congress began an effort to mandate better energy efficiency, setting minimum standards for household and commercial appliances, and deadlines for the Energy Department to decide whether to strengthen them. But for more than a dozen products, the department has missed its legal deadlines — in some cases by as much as 13 years.
Members of Congress, efficiency advocates and some businesses say the department’s failure to act on a range of products — such as ovens, dishwashers, commercial air conditioners and natural gas furnaces — is costing millions of dollars in higher energy costs, polluting the environment and increasing reliance on foreign energy. Manufacturers, who in some cases oppose higher efficiency standards, saying they would cost too much, also are frustrated by the delays.
Energy Department officials said the Bush administration supports the concept of minimum efficiency standards to reduce consumption of electricity, natural gas and fuel oil, but that a complex evaluation process has caused lengthy delays. When setting standards, the department is supposed to establish the highest level of efficiency that it determines to be economically justified and technologically feasible.
“It’s a tremendously important program and I’m absolutely determined that we have to make it better,” said David K. Garman, the department’s assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy. “We just have to have a better performance than we have had in the past.
“It’s almost as if the process has been designed to be very, very slow, and this has become a source of frustration for the energy-efficiency advocates” Garman said. “Frankly, it’s a source of frustration to me.”
Advocates of stricter standards, who argue that they could save people money over time by leading to lower energy bills, say the Energy Department has failed to do its job. “It’s one excuse after another, and it adds up to an agency which has failed to fulfill its mission,” said Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Boston-based Appliance Standards Awareness Project, a coalition that includes consumer and environmental groups and a utility that advocates higher standards. “It’s a combination of incompetence, lack of political will and bowing to industry pressure.”
The coalition said in a report released recently that if the Energy Department promptly adopted advocates’ recommendations for higher standards in three categories — residential furnaces and boilers, commercial central air conditioning and transformers such as those found on power poles — consumers and businesses would save $22 billion by 2030. The savings would be the result of lower energy bills less the added cost of more-expensive appliances, the study said.
In addition to reducing bills, the coalition says, the standards it recommends would save enough electricity to meet the needs of 5.6 million typical U.S. households annually beginning in 2030. The group says the annual natural gas savings from the furnace standards would be enough to heat 3.8 million typical American homes beginning in 2030. Energy Department officials dispute those findings and take issue with how the group calculated them.
Trade groups representing a number of manufacturers said they want the Energy Department to impose standards in many categories because of concern that in the absence of federal regulations, states are imposing their own. Manufacturers said they do not want to have to produce different versions of an appliance to satisfy divergent state regulations.
Concern about state regulation was one factor that spurred Congress in 1987 to approve appliance efficiency legislation that set some of the original standards and deadlines for updating them. In subsequent legislation, Congress added more products.
Some standards have been set, and Energy Department officials point to one for refrigerators as especially successful in saving electricity.
But the department has failed to meet requirements in many other areas. In a number of cases, Congress set initial standards, but the department has missed deadlines to update them or decide whether updates were warranted. In other cases, Congress left it to the department to set initial standards.
By deLaski’s count, standards for 21 items are legally overdue. Energy Department officials acknowledge that 17 are overdue.
The missed deadlines date back to 1992. While some standards have been issued since then, only one has been adopted during the Bush administration: for residential air conditioners. That regulation was adopted only after the administration lost a court case brought by advocates and states that complained it improperly rescinded a standard set in the final days of the Clinton administration and put in place a weaker one. The administration was ultimately ordered to adopt the Clinton administration standard.
Energy Department officials gave several reasons for missing deadlines, including a more time-consuming process for approving standards created during the Clinton administration. The officials also said the standard-setting process was delayed during the Clinton administration when Congress imposed a one-year moratorium while a new approval procedure was created.
The process of setting standards requires extensive testing, research and comment periods, Energy Department officials said. They calculate the impact on consumers and manufacturers, how much energy would be saved by higher standards, and whether the added cost of more-efficient appliances would be recovered in reduced energy costs.
Garman said Congress “asked us to do more than we could possibly do in the time allotted.” He said the department has dealt with that by focusing efforts first on appliances that would yield the biggest energy savings. The Energy Department embraced the same top three priorities identified by advocates and said standards could be set in 2007, or sooner if consensus emerges about what the standards should be. More time would then have to elapse before the new rules would take effect, to allow manufacturers to prepare for them.
But some lawmakers said the department should have been able to meet all of its obligations faster, but it has not made efficiency standards a priority.
“The Bush administration says one thing while doing another,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who was a sponsor of the 1987 standards legislation. “While they proclaim to be concerned about saving energy, they continue to delay implementing reforms that could save consumers and businesses billions of dollars a year in energy prices.”
Daniel J. Evans, a former Republican senator from Washington who was also a sponsor of the 1987 measure, said he was disappointed that the department has missed many of the deadlines. “It’s one of two things: Either you don’t want to execute or its impossible to execute,” Evans said. “You just don’t ignore a law that’s there and requires you to do something.”
While some homeowners already buy more-efficient appliances to save on energy costs, advocates of minimum standards note that some others who buy new appliances have little incentive to spend more for greater efficiency. For instance, developers of new houses or apartments may buy the cheapest models because they do not end up paying the energy bills.
With furnaces powered by natural gas, consumers can choose between models that convert about 80 percent of the gas they use into heat and models that convert more than 90 percent of the gas they consume into heat. The government’s current standard calls for a minimum of 78-percent efficiency.
Under federal law, the department was to have determined by January 1994 whether to impose a more-stringent standard.
The Gas Appliance Manufacturers Association, based in Arlington, says that any increase beyond 80-percent efficiency would not be justified for the average household. Depending on where you live and the size of your house, the association said, the more-efficient models may not pay for themselves in reduced energy costs.
“The typical consumer would never recover the cost of the increase in efficiency,” said Mark A. Kendall, vice president of technical affairs for the association.
More-efficient furnaces are more sophisticated and cost far more to manufacture, and they require a different type of venting to the exterior of homes, Kendall said. That can be especially costly in existing homes when owners replace failing furnaces, and it can lead to safety concerns, he said.
Moreover, Kendall said, in some colder parts of the country, the majority of gas furnaces sold are the highest-efficiency models. Nationally, however, more lower-efficiency furnaces are sold. DeLaski said a higher standard of efficiency is feasible for the northern half of the country because it uses more heat. In those areas, he said, consumers would recover the additional cost of the equipment.
Under the Energy Department’s interpretation of the law — which is at odds with efficiency advocates’ interpretation — one standard must be issued for the entire country.
The push for higher efficiency standards for products such as gas furnaces has produced unlikely alliances of environmentalists and big corporations. For example, Dow Chemical Co., based in Midland, Mich., wants higher efficiency standards because of the soaring cost of natural gas, which it uses as a fuel and to manufacture chemicals. The company says gas-appliance efficiency should be improved as part of a broader strategy to bring down prices.
“We need to lend a greater voice to this thing so that the department will feel a need to move more quickly,” said Peter A. Molinaro, vice president of federal and state affairs for Dow. “We can’t wait much longer for increased energy efficiency in this country.”
Loading...