This report is remarkable in that it uncovers what can be done right now to make buildings more efficient, and it is incredible just how much can be done without getting gummed up in Congress. Nearly every agency is touched, from the usual suspects at the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, to the Federal Housing Administration, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Fannie and Freddie, the National Park Service, and on and on. Commercial and multifamily buildings were always the sole scope of the report, but cross cutting recommendations are made that could have a tremendous impact on single family homes if implemented.
Take note of the diverse group of stakeholders from the building industry that join with us to support strong building codes, appliance standards, building labeling, and requirements and incentives for efficiency that go above and beyond the status quo. The commercial sector is certainly ready to shoulder their load in slashing emissions and moving to a clean energy economy.
In the process of reviewing the authorities and the report, the two agencies that jumped out to me as sleeping giants were the General Services Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. I had a general idea that great things could be done, but as the lawyers dug deeper and translated for the buildings folks like myself, a bigger picture clearly emerged. From the broad data collection authority that HUD has to potentially transform what we know about our building stock and our retrofit success, to the lead by example ability of the GSA to influence all 72 billion square feet of commercial space in this country[i], the possibilities are vast.
A few key recommendations from the report are worth highlighting.
This one is near and dear to my heart. As David Goldstein says, if a $200,000 home costs $75,000 to run and $300,000 to drive to and from, shouldn’t the lending industry care if those costs could be half as much? Why wouldn’t the energy and transportation costs that an inefficient, poorly located home commits the owner to impact their likelihood of defaulting on their mortgage? Figuring out how to capture these impacts in the underwriting process would encourage builders, bankers, and homebuyers, literally every significant player in a building’s lifetime, to consider efficiency.
We have been pushing this one for a while now. The tax deduction for efficient commercial buildings exists and will exist through 2013, but it’s not very usable in its current form. Congress gave DOE and IRS all the direction necessary to make the deduction work; it’s time they revisited the guidance and took it seriously. Note that there are bills in Congress right now that tell them to go back and do it again, but they don’t have to wait.
We all know “securitization” and “secondary markets” can have a huge impact on what kinds of financing that regular folks are exposed to, so why not use these markets to encourage the finance of things that are actually good for the country, like efficiency retrofits? DOE has the authority to provide loan guarantees for certain types of energy projects, why not building retrofits that could generate just as much if not more energy as a nuclear plant for a whole lot less money and environmental impact?
The responses I have gotten from some of the agencies on the report have been overwhelmingly positive to this point. I expect that the motivated folks across the government (and there are many) will use these existing authorities to push even harder on energy efficiency and I think we will begin to enjoy the results shortly.
[i] http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cbecs/cbecs2003/detailed_tables_2003/2003set5/2003pdf/a8.pdf
]]>The ramp up will be an experiment in making efficiency work at a larger scale with the winning proposals demonstrating unique and creative approaches to making retrofits happen. Cracking the retrofit nut, meaning figuring out how to take making your home more efficient from a niche activity to the norm is tough, even though these things make money in the long run. For a slew of reasons, folks don't stop the $20 bills from leaking out their windows, and the administration has decided to stop talking about the problem and, in the spirit of the original bipartisan, cooperative Earth Day, partner with states, localities, and industry to do something about it. The $2.8 billion that this Recovery Act funding will leverage will demonstrate to homeowners and policy makers what works so that we can repeat the success across the country.
]]>This follows on a similar bipartisan introduction in the Senate last month, when Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M), Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va) and Sen.Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced S.3177, The Home Star Energy Retrofit Act of 2010.
Home Star is the President's often discussed rebate program for homeowners to make their homes more energy efficient and comfortable. It's designed so that the more energy you save, the larger rebate you receive (on the order of $1,000 to $3,000), to create a tremendous amount of jobs in the ailing construction industry, and with a healthy emphasis on quality assurance and contracting standards. It is supported by over 1000 organizations, representing industry, environmentalists, and labor. NRDC has been involved since the start, and I have blogged about it here and here.
While this development on the Hill certainly doesn’t mean Home Star will become law, it does mean that the proposal is positioned as well as possible to move forward, enjoying support from members of both parties looking to create jobs and slash energy bills at the same time.
Now that there are bills introduced, look for the relevant energy committees to move toward marking up the legislation and considering the opinions of other committee members before the bills can move forward. From that point, the path for Home Star becomes a bit murky, but there certainly are many well positioned members of Congress working to move the bill (the sponsors listed above and several other champions of efficiency that are working behind the scenes). Stay tuned.
]]>Don’t discount the significance of this win just because water heaters don’t seem that important. The new standard will net consumers $10 billion over the next 30 years! Hot showers for everyone!
The big improvement is a switch to a higher efficiency level for water heaters with more than 55 gallons of storage capacity that would essentially require advanced technologies to be used. Condensing gas technology and heat pump water heater technology in the largest units are cost effective now and will eventually become cost effective across the board. DOE found that a large heat pump water heater in particular could save over $600 dollars over the lifetime of the water heater. I wrote about how these units work last year.
According to DOE the standard will save 2.8 quads of energy, enough to power 15 million American homes for a year and avoid the need for three new 250 megawatt power plants. The standard will attain CO2 emissions savings of 164 million metric tons and keep a half a ton of mercury out of the air from power plant emissions.
DOE has now laid the ground work for water heaters to move from the simple tanks and burners that have been around for decades to the much more advanced units that will make all of our showers cheaper and more sustainable in the future. With this new standard and the increased use of solar hot water where it makes the most sense, we are going to slash the third largest use of energy in our homes while giving up nothing but wasted energy.
]]>That said, this new report is troubling and oddly entertaining. Entertaining because of some of the crazy products the investigators made up to try to certify (like a gas powered alarm clock or an air purifier that appears to be a space heater with a feather duster literally taped to it) but troubling because these products were actually accepted for initial approval by the program. Crazy!
I think it is clear why the manufacturer self certification system that Energy Star generally employs needs to be revised. DOE and EPA have both acknowledged as much, as increased verification and compliance testing was part of the suite or improvements they proposed to the program last year. In fact, the stakeholder calls on verification and testing will be held next week and NRDC will participate. The agencies have also taken immediate steps in response to the report.
Noah Horowitz and I drafted comments on DOE and EPA’s plan for improving Energy Star, and we stressed that verification be done right. You can find our full comments here, but the topline recommendations on verification are below.
“1. Energy Star should develop and implement written testing and enforcement procedures for qualified products. These documents should include: sample nomination and procurement processes, lab requirements, sample sizes, parameters to test, data distribution, and follow-up to be taken from the data.
2. Create a clear delisting protocol to ensure that everyone knows the rules in advance and that all companies are treated fairly.
3. All test data should be publicly available. There is nothing confidential about the power use of an Energy Star labeled product.
4. Energy Star should proactively share the data with other agencies including the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the enforcement division within DOE.”
“5. Energy Star must independently select and purchase the units for testing. Manufacturers must not be allowed to submit the units for testing, as these will be pre-selected to qualify and will not be representative of the product the consumer purchases. Off the shelf is necessary in all cases.
6. All verification testing shall be done at independently owned laboratories except when uniquely justified. The PEARL testing experience has shown that in several cases manufacturers used their own “certified” laboratories to do the initial product testing for initial qualification while the off the shelf product testing done by independent laboratories yielded dramatically different results. While this will slightly increase the manufacturer’s testing costs, the benefits from independent testing are overwhelming.”
With this latest report, the agencies have every incentive to make sure that the Energy Star brand is rock solid and dependable so that consumers can feel confident in the quality and energy efficiency of every Energy Star labeled product.
]]>Most people haven’t given the issue any thought, but the inefficiency of manufactured housing is something that really sets me off. Like pound my head into a desk, scream into a pillow frustrated.
Why? Well, basically these homes can be terribly inefficient (and in some cases just terrible, remember the toxic FEMA trailers?). They commit the owner (who generally is low or fixed income and can least afford it) to higher energy bills and – this is the really frustrating part for this engineer – they have the potential to be more energy efficient than traditional homes! Manufactured homes could be (and should be) the frontier for efficient design!
If that doesn’t quite get you going then consider this – a manufactured home can come off the assembly line today and immediately be eligible for weatherization through the Weatherization Assistance Program. That means that the government could immediately be paying to retrofit this home to become more efficient when just months before it could have been done at the factory for pennies on the dollar. I can’t think of a single reason why it is acceptable for new manufactured homes to be weatherization candidates because the code is not up to par.
And it's not even close. Manufactured homes use almost twice as much energy per square foot as single family homes according to DOE. The average bill is around $1,600 per year, which over 30 years could equal the entire purchase price of the home! But it certainly doesn’t have to be this way.
Manufacturing a home has all kinds of advantages over building it on site. All work is done by the same folks in a controlled area where the quality can be inspected at any point. All the insulation can get to where it needs to go and all the walls can be sealed tight. No cutting holes to make pipes or ducts fit around unplanned obstacles. And no question about code compliance. Plus manufacturers can use volume purchasing and procurement to get materials, appliances, and equipment at lower prices than site builders.
So a manufactured home could be more efficient than site-built homes, but how much? Tough question but DOE is going to work on answering it by developing a new code that is much more efficient and makes money over the lifetime of the home.
It shouldn’t end there, however. We all want to get to zero energy homes and at a large scale, but what makes us think that super efficient zero energy homes will be built on site with hammers and nails? Shouldn’t we explore the potential of manufactured homes to get us towards zero energy? Shouldn’t we at least stop saddling those who can least afford with ridiculous energy bills that keep them in dire financial straights? Clearly I rant, but hopefully DOE is thinking the same way and moves forward aggressively on manufactured home efficiency.
]]>All of that was said today and more, during a hearing in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The Congressional Research Service, the Department of Energy, and a collection of business, utility, and state advocates all testified today along those lines.
Home Star is a $6 billion proposal that would create incentives for homeowners who choose to make their homes more efficient. Silver Star would offer rebates for individual measures like insulating your attic or installing an efficient new furnace (capped at $3,000 but always requiring at least a 50 percent match from homeowners), while Gold Star creates a performance path where the homeowner and their contractor figure out what measures to undertake, and the size of the incentive is determined by the percent improvement of the home’s efficiency. Gold Star incentives start at $3,000 for a 20 percent improvement and go up $1,000 for each additional 5 percent from there
From the hearing, it sounds like we all emphatically agree – it’s a great idea. We are big supporters of the program and a member of the Home Star Coalition. But the details matter.
And there are details upon details. Arguments about AFUEs, SHGCs, SEERs, and EERs and other esoteric concepts that most people don’t want to know about. But these nasty acronyms are crucial to making sure this program actually saves energy and creates jobs and doesn’t just sell a bunch of stuff with no long term benefit. In other words, we shouldn’t just spin our wheels.
Some of the issues came up during the hearing today are crucially important.
Do we need an incentive for do-it-yourself insulation?
A tough call, since this wouldn’t create jobs in installation, and the insulation, if not installed properly, may not save energy. But, as someone who likes to DIY whenever possible, I understand the appeal. I think we should be able to figure out some way to make sure the DIYers get the installation right and get the energy savings.
Should we lower all the efficiency requirements that equipment must meet to receive incentives in Silver Star to Energy Star?
NO – and I can’t say that emphatically enough. Just based on last year's sales of Energy Star products, free ridership (folks who would have bought these units anyway) would suck $3 billion from the program budget and no additional energy would be saved. That’s almost 90 percent of the proposed Silver Star budget! These products will be purchased, incentive or no incentive. Bad idea.
The levels currently in the bill were negotiated with industry and advocacy groups at the table, and they thread the needle on maximum job creation and energy savings. We should leave them where they are. Cathy Zoi, DOE's Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, said as much in the hearing.
Should we relax the certification requirements for contractors?
I don’t think so. We need good contractors doing the work right to actually save on energy bills. And beyond that, there are safety implications of improper installations. Contractors who aren’t certified but really understand how to improve a home will have no problem getting certified. The extra business they will get as a result of this program will more than outweigh certification costs.
Should states with existing programs play by the same rules?
Everyone wants to see Home Star build on the great work that is happening in the states, largely as a result of the Recovery Act, but we also need to make sure we have consistent standards and quality assurance everywhere. Basically, you should be able to do the work, play by the rules, and get the money whether you are in Ketchikan, Alaska or Miami, Florida.
These are all tricky issues, and we will see how the political process plays out. Home Star is tantalizingly close to being the performance-based program that will create jobs in the ailing construction industry and make American homes much more energy efficient that everyone wants to see. Home Star, in its current form, hits the bulls-eye on job creation and energy savings. It would successfully jumpstart the home retrofit industry and be the bridge to the efficiency programs that accompany comprehensive climate and energy legislation.
Of course, a whole lot more work has to be done by Congress to make sure that the program mechanics are right and the work can start as soon as possible, and that is significant. Congress, President Obama, and the broad based Home Star Coalition have worked incredibly hard to get it this far and we will all keep pushing it forward towards the finish line.
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Negotiations on these products go back and forth and get into the most obscure technical details. Where do we set the bar? What products won’t make the cut? What is the time frame? How do we deal with this or that niche product? These questions are just the beginning.
In many cases, the sides are just too far apart – but sometimes we can actually make a deal. And against the backdrop of a revitalized DOE, we have crossed the finish line on a host of products that are included in S. 3059, the National Energy Efficiency Enhancement Act of 2010, which was the topic of a hearing in the Senate Energy committee today.
This bill sets new consensus efficiency standards for many products, many of which I have blogged on before,
Huge, huge savings. 70 million metric tons of CO2 per year and over 1.2 quads annually in 2030.
This isn’t the only great bill being considered today that we have worked hard on. S. 1696, The Green Gaming Act of 2009, directs DOE to conduct a study on video game console energy use and consider standards for these products.
Roughly 40% of homes in the US have at least one video game console. These consoles vary widely in energy use - the Nintendo Wii only uses around 20 watts when on, whereas the PlayStation 3 and XBOX 360 consume up to 7 times as much energy, depending on the model you purchased.
The energy intensive consoles consume as much or more power to operate as many hi-end computers, except video game consoles do not automatically go to sleep and enter a low power mode when left on. If you leave the XBOX 360 or PS3 on all the time, which a fair amount of users do, then you are looking at the annual energy use equal to roughly two new refrigerators!
Lastly, S.3054, includes new standards for hot food holding cabinets, hot tubs, and water dispensers. Hot food, hot tubs, and cold water, as Sen. Menendez said during the hearing, all obtained much more efficiently.
These bills are examples of what can be done in nearly every industry for energy efficiency. These manufacturers decided it was in their best interest to work with us to figure out how to make their products more efficient, with certainty on dates and levels, rather than starting a lobbying war against energy efficiency and all its benefits. Now that the ink is dry, we will all benefit.
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First, as my colleague Noah Long explained, DOE has begun to actually enforce mandatory minimum appliance standards! Crazy, right? First they announced about $3 million in fines on shower head manufacturers for failure to submit certification reports. These are the first ever fines levied under the federal standards program, and further evidence of the new attitude about enforcement at DOE. They then followed up by fining an air conditioner manufacturer $1.2 million for failing to certify. I am guessing these and other manufacturers will pay a bit more attention to compliance and certification from now on.
Second, DOE issued its annual report to Congress recently, and the big news is that DOE has officially put development of national TV energy efficiency standards on its schedule. We had been expecting this development, since DOE announced last fall that it would begin a TV proceeding "soon" in its notice repealing the outdated federal test method.
Standards for TV sets are long overdue. Congress gave DOE authority to consider TV standards in 1989, but this is the first time they've been considered federally. Of course, it's doubtful the feds would even be looking at TV standards absent the California Energy Commission (CEC) standards enacted last year and heroic efforts to develop and support those standards by the Commissioners and CEC staff through support led by NRDC's Noah Horowitz, Pacific Gas & Electric and the rest of the CA investor owned utilities.
The federal schedule calls for completion of the federal rulemaking in June 2013. Assuming that Consumer Electronics Association is not successful at derailing the federal process -- you can bet they will try -- that means federal standards would take effect in May 2016, at the earliest. In the 3.5 years between the state standards implementation date and the earliest potential federal implementation date, about 20 million TV sets will be sold that will last 7 to 10 years. Even if the feds do all we would want, there is still much value in staying the course in the states.
I think this DOE means business, don’t you?
]]>The Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee will hold a hearing today to discuss how Recovery Act funds are being spent, with an emphasis on the weatherization assistance program (WAP). The hearing is in response to a report from the Department of Energy Inspector General that found only 8 percent of the WAP funds had been spent as of last December. Some very negative media reports followed the report.
A little background – WAP is run by state energy offices that weatherize (seal, caulk and insulate) low-income owned homes. This is a good investment by the feds, because low income homeowners spend a larger percentage of their total income on energy and many of those homes’ energy bills are paid through a federal program called LIHEAP (the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program). The full cost of the improvements is covered under WAP, up to $6,500 per home, and the program was provided with $5 billion in the Recovery Act.
(Now, this is completely different from the President’s proposed Home Star program, which would provide a rebate to homeowners who invest in an energy efficiency retrofit that will include similar weatherization measures. Home Star incentives would cover a portion of the cost based on how much energy the retrofit saves.)
The media criticism has been a bit off the mark. After all, the Recovery Act funding hasn’t been squandered – it just hasn’t been spent yet. While it makes sense to be disappointed in how long it has taken these programs to get up and running, there is certainly no reason to overreact and attack the program now what most of the growing pains are behind us..
Political opportunists have seized on the program’s difficulties to blame their favorite bogeymen - David-Bacon living wage requirements, in-state hiring freezes, phantom environmental regulations, etc, but the real issue is much simpler:
You can’t attach a garden hose to a fire hydrant.
Of course it is going to be difficult to carry out $5 billion worth of weatherization work nationwide! There have to be skilled people available to do the work, government infrastructure to pay them, and enough people throughout the supply chain to keep the process moving. None of this will happen overnight when a program goes from $450 million to $5 billion! In fact we didn’t expect it to: an April 2009 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that only 1% of Recovery Act spending in FY 2009 would be on energy.
The least astute observers have even used this opportunity to criticize energy efficiency generally, but there is no basis for ignoring our fastest, cleanest, and cheapest energy resource (efficiency) because of the difficulties of one program. I am sure those same folks would prefer to give that money to rich oil and gas companies rather than use it to slash energy bills and stimulate the ailing construction industry anyway.
Certainly we wish more could have been done by now, but it is not the time to cut and run. Remember, 92 percent of the remaining funds will soon be used to retrofit homes, save energy, and create jobs. Hopefully the public, the media, and lawmakers will remember that jobs and energy savings are the goals, and they can’t be achieved if we quit when we just got the ball rolling.
Last year, I sat at a Home Depot in Alexandria, Virginia as the President first announced his desire to give homeowners a financial push to make their homes more energy efficient. It is encouraging to hear the President continue to preach home energy efficiency today and I hope Congress will continue to work hard to make this a reality.
And there is certainly work to be done, since Congress has the final say on this program and it is certainly not a done deal. Legislators are hard at work figuring out the mechanics of this program, and everything is subject to change. New programs like this, no matter how beneficial, must be thoroughly scrutinized before becoming law to make sure that the money gets to where it needs to go in a timely fashion. Certainly, this is not an easy job.
Today, Obama explained that the Home Star proposal would provide rebates that would go to consumers making improvements when they are purchasing efficient products and efficiency services. The program has two types of rebates: Silver Star and Gold Star. The Silver Star rebates would provide $1,000 to $1,500 to consumers for each straightforward upgrade, like adding insulation, duct sealing, or purchasing new efficient water heaters, HVAC units, roofing and doors. Consumers may get up to $3,000 in Silver Star rebates.
The Gold Star Rebates are where consumers get the best bang for the buck. Gold Star would offer a $3,000 rebate for a retrofit based on a home energy audit that will save at least 20 percent on energy consumption. The Gold Star rebate would increase for every additional 5 percent of energy saved. No rebates, Silver or Gold, could exceed 50 percent of the total project cost.
A bit of simple math is all it takes to get motivated about this program. The average energy bill in this country is around $2,400 a year. A retrofit resulting in 20 percent savings is $480 per year, or about $40 a month. A 50 percent savings would be $1,200 a year, or about $100 per month. Of course the actual monthly savings will fluctuate, but you get the idea.
Not only are American homes so wildly inefficient that billions and billions of dollars in wasted energy are holding back our economic recovery, but fixing our leaky homes has the potential to create countless high quality jobs that cannot be sent overseas. There are well over 100 million homes in this country and nearly all of them can slash their energy use by half with off the shelf technology. With home efficiency, we will not be limited by the amount of work that needs to be done, but rather the amount of people out there to do the work.
]]>There is one word that comes to mind when I think of the state of our union: inefficient. We waste energy and money in our homes and workplaces as if we had an infinite supply of both.
Just consider the situation in the average home –
Not a pretty picture, but it doesn’t have to be that way. As the President has pointed out repeatedly, this is actually an incredible opportunity to improve our economic and environmental health. Why not fix all those leaky ducts and windows while replacing those old water heaters and furnaces? We can put Americans to work saving Americans money while slashing carbon emissions. We need significant performance-based incentives for homeowners to retrofit their homes to be more energy efficient, ala HomeStar. Folks who get hung up over the cost of a program like this are missing the point – we could be stimulating the economy with the money we waste on energy. And generally speaking, the unemployed don’t pay income taxes, so let’s get them back to work. The status quo of high unemployment and wasteful energy use will cost us all much more than any efficiency program.
This is only one component of the push for clean energy and lower carbon emissions, but it is a crucial one. We need to put a price on carbon to support the fledgling home efficiency industry as it grows to be millions of jobs strong, while we simultaneously shift away from wasteful old technologies.
There is actually one answer to our climate and energy and jobs questions and hopefully the President will continue to hit the nail on the head tonight.
]]>This is a great idea, and certainly not new (but the catchy name is a substantial improvement). NRDC advocated for a retrofit program in the Northeast during the oil price spike two summers ago (because we could save more oil from these retrofits than we could drill from the outer continental shelf and faster), joined with other forward thinking groups to push it in the original Recovery Bill, and worked very hard on the retrofit incentives that can be found in all pending energy and climate legislation. We are also working on tax credits to encourage a suite of energy improvements to homes.
The only question now, given the groundswell of support, is how soon can we start? The incentives in the climate bills will not begin with until the carbon cap takes effect, so proposals to start them earlier, as mentioned in the NYT, should be a priority.
In reality, we can't afford to wait any longer. The efficiency of most homes is simply appalling, and we literally let the money we spend to heat our homes escape through the cracks. Our construction industry is also one of the hardest hit by the recession. Out of work builders could harness their understanding of building science to join the growing residential efficiency industry. This industry can grow, create jobs that can't be sent overseas, cut carbon emissions, and put money in people's pockets. There is no downside.
There is one issue to watch in all this talk -we must get what we pay for. We can't afford to pay for energy savings that do not occur, so the verification component to these proposals is incredibly important. And in this area, they are not all created equal. The final product must make sure that tax dollars are spent in a way that lowers homeowners' energy bills, and not just to keep contractors busy.
In the meantime, there are still simple steps homeowners can take to make their own houses and apartments more efficient themselves. Check out -- Cold Weather Planning: Seven Steps To a Warmer Home.
]]>Standards on outdoor lights are such a no-brainer because these lights stay on through the entire night. Daylight Saving Time brings an early end to the day and an early start to burning electricity for streetlights. More efficient technologies pay off quickly in this high use application and the savings rack up.
Thanks to this standard, you will save money everywhere you drive or park your car. The lights along streets, highways, and in parking lots will be covered. Basically all the bright lights on poles (or walls) are going to stop wasting so much energy. These lights are currently not subject to any efficiency requirements and therefore the performance is all over the map. With new super efficient technologies, like light emitting diodes (LEDs) and ceramic metal halide (CMH) lamps, the potential savings are gigantic.
You may recall that I blogged early this year about a last second amendment to the House Climate bill (the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009) that severely and arbitrarily limited the excellent standard on street lights, and this agreement is the next step in the fight for more efficient outdoor lighting. The agreement isn't as good as the original language, but it does have a lot going for it and will still save a tremendous amount of energy and money
ACEEE crunched the numbers, and the standard will save 25 to 42 Terawatt hours (billion kWh) per year by 2030. This is the same amount produced by 6 to 10 dirty coal-fired power plants, or enough to power between 2.5 and 4.5 million homes for a year. This shakes out to carbon savings of up to nearly 8 million metric tons a year (the same as about 5 and a half million cars off the road), and is worth $2.8 billion to $5.1 billion annually saved on energy costs in 2030.
The standard is structured so that,
We need to stop wasting money and pumping carbon into the atmosphere with inefficient lights. And don't forget, we all pay to run these lights eventually, whether through the utility, city, or county. It's time stop throwing that money away.
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There isn't any real reason to lecture the agencies at this point, since they are addressing the major issues and are moving forward. When you have a program like Energy Star that has been saving energy and putting money in consumers' pockets for decades, it is better late than never. And the bottom line is still the same - you are much better off buying an Energy Star product than anything else. The agencies are now going to make sure you will save even more.
As part of the agreement, EPA will be taking the lead on all Energy Star specifications, which is a significant change. There are over 60 products that can earn Energy Star, meaning over 60 different decisions have to be made about what level of energy performance to require. Now with the new agreement, it also means that there are at least 60 different markets to monitor so that the requirements can be changed if the market share of Energy Star grows to over 35%. That is a lot of work.
EPA also recently released their market share report for 2008, and it shows that some products are already well over the 35% threshold and perhaps in need of a revision. This data is great for an advocate, as it tells you how the market is transitioning to more efficient products. Market share over 35% does likely mean Energy Star has become too easy, but it also might mean that energy could be saved with a new federal minimum standard. If Energy Star has 90% market share, then the maximum level of efficiency that is "technically feasible and economically justified" (where federal standards must be set by DOE) is at least this high. If the market share is low, then incentives or education might be needed to encourage folks to invest in more efficient equipment. Lots of food for thought here.
A few numbers that jumped out at me,
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