|
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued a final rule, published April 16th, that regulates the energy efficiency of residential heaters, residential water heaters, pool heaters, and other gas appliances. This rule will have a significant impact on your business.
Click here for the Government Affairs Newsletter
As many of you may know by now, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued a final rule, published April 16th, that regulates the energy efficiency of residential heaters, residential water heaters, pool heaters, and other gas appliances. HPBA has filed comments and participated in the rulemaking process since 2007.
The final rule sets efficiency minimums that must be in place in new products sold as of June 2013. DOE is regulating gas hearth products, and doing so more expansively than we think is appropriate (or legal).
We see three principle issues presented by the final rule. First, the rule excludes decorative gas appliances only if their input is less than 9,000 Btu/hour. Second, the rule is unclear about whether “gas log sets” are included in the rule, although we did receive a “Question and Answer” document yesterday from DOE that states that they are not included. Third, the rule does not set out an AFUE procedure for measuring efficiency of decorative gas appliances (the preamble language says that one will be applied to or developed later for all vented gas hearth appliances).
It is clear that the rule, as it now stands, will be a serious problem for the gas hearth industry. HPBA is moving swiftly to address the final rule.
On April 23rd, HPBA staff, assisted by several company attorneys (outside and in-house) met with four law firms with credentials in challenging final federal rules and in energy efficiency. We hope to have a selection soon. Once we have selected a law firm, we will map out a strategy to change the final rule to one that is reasonable for our products.
At the same time, we are putting in place the governance to oversee a court challenge of the final rule. This will include a technical committee and a legal committee. We will also propose a means to financially support the litigation. Clearly, the structure used to address the revision of the New Source Performance Standards for solid-fuel appliances will be considered as a model.
If you have any questions in the meantime, you may contact Allan Cagnoli, HPBA Director of Government Affairs at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
.
Here are some links from DOE as well as a statement from one of the key DOE staff on efficiency stating DOE's error of including gas logs in this new final rule.
The DOE notice of the new rule and some background docs.
The final rule from the DOE website.
Click here to download a PDF of the final rule.
|