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Big Agreement on Home Appliances Means Big Savings for Consumers

2010-08-03T18:11:50Z

Lane Burt, NRDC Alum, Washington DC

Today, energy efficiency advocates and the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) announced an agreement on energy and water efficiency standards for several appliances that will save more than 9 quads, 5 trillion gallons of water, and billions of consumer dollars over the next 30 years. That’s enough energy to meet the total energy needs of 40 percent of American homes for one year and the amount of water necessary to meet the current water needs of every customer in the City of Los Angeles for 25 years. There will also be 550 million metric tons of CO2 pollution saved over the same period. My colleague Ed Osann writes in more detail about the negotiations and the water savings from the agreement on his blog, but below is a quick overview of the energy impacts.

The agreement covers several common household appliances – refrigerator/freezers, clothes washers and dryers, room air conditioners and dishwashers. It includes new energy and water efficiency standards for these products, generally at the maximum level that is technically feasible and cost effective. In particular the new standards will be most stringent for products with high sales volume that have the biggest potential to make a dent in energy savings. In addition to the new standards, the agreement also includes a tax credit for the manufacture refrigerator/freezers, clothes washers, and dishwashers that meet even higher efficiency standards. Finally, the groups also agreed on pursuing smart appliances (as defined by EPA) within ENERGY STAR.

The biggest energy savings come from refrigerator/freezers, for which the agreement will save 4.81 quads over the next 30 years. Next come washers and dryers which will see savings of 1.61 and 1.25 quads, respectively. Finally the agreement will save 0.84 quads from each room air conditioners and dishwashers. The majority of the savings come from the agreed upon standard levels with 1.61 quads of the total savings coming from the tax credits.

It is remarkable that despite being the appliance subject to standards for the longest length of time (California set refrigerator standards 30 years ago!) refrigerators still have cost effective efficiency potential that will cut energy consumption by up to 30 percent in 2014. Energy efficiency is the low hanging fruit that grows back when we pick it.

Of course, these standards still need to be adopted by DOE or Congress, the tax credit adopted legislatively and the smart appliance credit adopted by EPA. NRDC is continuing to work alongside other efficiency advocates (ACEEE, ASAP, and many others) and AHAM to ensure that our agreement goes into full effect.

These six appliances now join street lights and residential air conditioners and furnaces in waiting for Congress to enact consensus agreements on future standards. There certainly are a lot of energy savings and billions of consumer savings just looking for a home on Capitol Hill.

Can Retrofits Help Us Get Off Oil? Yes.

2010-08-03T13:00:02Z

Lane Burt, NRDC Alum, Washington DC

Remember the summer of 2008? There was a gas price spike that made some question our lack of coherent national energy policy but caused others to double down and chant “Drill Baby Drill”?

About that time, we took a look at all the oil said to be under the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) in comparison to the amount of oil that could remain unburned in the surprising number of homes across the country that use some form of oil as a primary heating source (over 14 million!) in a fact sheet. The conclusions were what you might expect – efficiency is faster and cheaper and doesn’t needlessly risk the economy of the gulf coast states.

The Institute for Market Transformation (IMT) has updated that analysis and we have jointly re-released the fact sheet "Reducing the Need for US Drilling Through Energy Efficiency" and the re-crunched numbers still tell the same story: drilling is at best an idiotic distraction from our current economic situation. There is no rational basis for pursuing dangerous drilling while so much of the energy we use in our homes continues to literally leak out with no benefit. If you are after jobs, energy security, consumer savings, or more domestic manufacturing, then you want retrofits not a continuation of the policies that brought us record oil company profits.

A few highlights from the fact sheet,

Retrofitting just American homes that use some form of oil as a primary heat source over the same period would save oil at the rate of two Deepwater Horizon spills every month.

BP’s total cleanup costs in the Gulf are likely to exceed $20 billion, according to estimates issued this summer. If that money was used to retrofit existing homes, we could slash the energy bills of every single home in the Gulf states of Louisiana and Mississippi by at least 25 percent.
The amount of money that BP has already spent to respond to the oil spill could have been used to retrofit 650,000 homes. That’s nearly $4 billion that could have been spent on U.S. made insulation, air conditioners, furnaces, water heaters, and other products and the labor to install them.

Energy Savvy also came to the same conclusion in June, and produced a diagram that is certainly worth 1,000 words.

The comparison is relevant today, as the Senate considers the most recent version of the oil “Spill Bill” which contains the bi-partisan Home Star retrofit program that NRDC and our fellow members of the Home Star Coalition have worked so hard to move this far. It’s certainly not the comprehensive legislation we need to deal with our carbon and inefficiency problem, but baby steps are better than quitting the race and running away in tears. There is no excuse for not doing this.

How to make a climate and energy bill more practical? Add efficiency!

2010-06-29T14:39:41Z

Lane Burt, NRDC Alum, Washington DC

Having trouble keeping track of all the energy bills flying around in the Senate? Join the club. You have the Kerry and Lieberman American Power Act (APA), Bingaman and Murkowski’s ACELA, the Cantwell and Collins CLEAR Act, and the list goes on.

All those bills have their strengths and weaknesses. ACELA’s fatal flaw is the lack of a carbon cap, while APA and CLEAR are light on the most effective way to lower costs and emissions while creating jobs – energy efficiency in buildings. ACELA has a fairly good efficiency title, but way too much expensive hand holding for dirty energy companies.

Now the most recent entrant into the energy and climate bill mash up comes from Senator Lugar, Republican from Indiana. Much like ACELA, Lugar’s “Practical Energy & Climate Plan” is an energy only approach that punts on the most important issue – cutting carbon by creating a carbon market. There is no question that the long term health of our economy and the global environment depends on a comprehensive approach, but the bill does step out by supporting efficiency policies that have been ignored by the Senate until now. In my own little fantasy world, we could take the best of all of these bills to create something that would really work, but the real world is here in Washington DC and you know how that goes.

For a more thorough review of the entire bill, read David Doniger’s post.

Building energy codes: The building energy codes provision provides for new model codes that will be 30% more efficient than they were in 2004 by 2012 and 50% better in 2015 for homes and 2017 for commercial buildings. It also sets a national Minimum Building Efficiency Standard and directs states to adopt codes that achieve equivalent or greater energy savings than the standard. It adds code adoption and enforcement as a factor for DOE grant funding to encourage states to adopt and enforce compliant codes.

What a novel concept, that we should act like a country for once and have a national energy policy that keeps American homeowners and businesses from being saddled with huge energy bills just so lazy builders can make a few more bucks! And, strong codes make sure that we don’t have to retrofit the buildings that are going up right now to be more efficient (you know, when we finally stop pretending we don’t have a carbon problem) when it is cheaper to build them right the first time. And those same states that complain about having to improve their codes because the feds told them so? Well they shouldn’t be turning around and taking federal money while running up the national energy bill.

The remarkable thing here is that a Republican has just introduced the strongest language on building codes the Senate has ever seen! It’s always extremely gratifying when a politician that claims to care about taxpayers actually thinks about what would help them. Lower energy bills and less carbon emissions certainly do. Money saved on energy gets spent elsewhere in the economy, in sectors that create more jobs and don’t involve mining deaths and ruining the economy of Louisiana. Of course, the bill could do a bit more to make sure that the states actually adopt and enforce the code, but this is a great step towards grabbing the huge efficiency opportunity in new buildings.

Federal building efficiency: The bill requires new Federal buildings designed after 2011 to exceed national building performance standards. It also requires Federal buildings designed after 2019 must achieve to the maximum extent practicable net-zero energy use by 2030. This is very much along the lines of the Executive Order issued by Obama last year. The bill also requires federal agencies to acquire 95% of products that are certified by Energy Star or FEMP which is generally a no brainer. Why waste taxpayer money on inefficient appliances?

Building retrofit program: The bill establishes a residential and commercial retrofit program with target retrofit rates of 5 % and 2%, respectively. It authorizes $2 billion to go towards direct loans, loan guarantees, letters of credit, and other financial product for the deployment of energy efficiency measures.

The bill’s approach is right in that financing could unlock a whole lot of investment in energy efficiency and leverage additional spending, but it is missing a key piece of the retrofit puzzle. Whole home incentives for consumers, like the Gold Star path in Home Star, are also needed to drive demand. What combination of the two will work is open for debate, but hopefully the Senate will hurry up and pass Home Star so we can start finding out.

Rural and industrial efficiency programs: The bill authorizes $755 million for loans to rural consumers for energy efficiency retrofits (Sec. 231) and $500 million annually through 2014 for a revolving loan program for industrial efficiency (Sec. 241).

Appliance efficiency: The bill revises the standard setting rules to add computer monitors, expands the authority of DOE to look at industrial products, and requires the Secretary to set standards for all covered products (as in they will analyze them for standards, not just that they could). All good things that will expand an extremely cost effective program at DOE that has been hitting home runs recently and racking up the energy savings – see lamps and water heaters.

What’s next? So overall the bill is quite strong on efficiency, but it still misses the mark on the single most important policy mechanism for increasing the efficiency of the US economy by not including a cap on carbon. As many have said, the strong sections of this bill should be rolled into a package that will cut our reliance on oil and other fossil fuels while allowing all of use to cast off the weight of the inefficiencies that are dragging our economy down.

DOE Paves The Way For Super Efficient Windows With New Program

2010-05-27T14:47:29Z

Lane Burt, NRDC Alum, Washington DC

I don’t usually like talking about windows because when homeowners choose how to spend their hard earned money on efficiency, new windows are one of the worst choices. But today is different, because today in DC, the Department of Energy is kicking off their long awaited Volume Purchase Program (VPP) for super efficient windows that will change the definition of “efficient window” for good.

The VPP program is a clever policy where the Department of Energy is going to line up enough buyers of super efficient windows to convince manufacturers to produce these super efficient windows at a price that can compete with today’s standard technologies. By giving the manufacturer certainty that they will sell enough products to recover their research and production costs, DOE will help avoid the traditional chicken and egg problem of more efficient products. People would buy it if it was cheaper, but it won’t be cheaper until people buy it…

Think of window technology like this – first we cut holes in the wall to see out and get a breeze, then we put glass in the hole (single paned) to keep the bugs out, and now most people buy windows with two pieces of glass and some insulating gas in between (double paned). We can also put coatings on the glass to make it insulate better and keep heat from the sun out when we don’t want it.

So what’s next? The windows solicited by the VPP program, likely with three pieces of glass, insulating gas and coatings, but maybe not. It doesn’t matter how they get there, only that they get there. These windows will be R5 and for context Energy Star windows are only about R3, where a wall is R10 to 20 or more.

There are lots of other cool things going on in window technology too, like coatings that tint the glass when too much sunlight is coming in and coatings that direct the light up at the ceiling and hopefully we will see these become more widespread as well.

Everyone says that energy efficiency is the low hanging fruit, and the VPP is the kind of creative policy that will make that fruit grow back after we pick it. It’s great to see the program get rolling and DOE, Pacific Northwest National Lab, and the manufacturers of these super efficient products should be commended.

Report from the China-US Building Energy Labeling Summit

2010-05-19T20:11:23Z

Lane Burt, NRDC Alum, Washington DC

I recently returned from Beijing, where NRDC and the Energy Foundation sponsored the “China US Building Energy Efficiency Evaluation and Labeling Summit” to talk about lessons learned in energy labeling of buildings in the US and China. The Summit featured the Chinese Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) and the Chinese Academy of Building Research (CABR). I spoke at the Summit and my colleague and all around expert on Chinese building efficiency, Kevin Mo, was featured prominently (check out Kevin’s great blogs on building efficiency in China).

(Turns out it was a good time to be gone, as I was spared the shenanigans surrounding the passage of Home Star in the House of Representatives that left us all cheering and scratching our heads at the same time. It’s great to be one step closer to such a strong policy becoming law, but what does home efficiency have to do with sex offenders? Nothing except the opportunity for self righteous political grandstanding. Slashing energy bills, cutting emissions, and creating jobs will have to wait while a few elected officials waste all of our time. Oh well, now on to the Senate!)

Back to the topic of this blog, this was my first time in China and I was taken aback by the shear enormity of the Chinese cities. In two weeks there, I came to the conclusion that all the contradictory things I heard about China before the trip were somehow completely true. It is beautiful and polluted, chaotic and organized, simple and confusing. It is impossible to visit China and leave without a greater understanding of the enormity of the challenges and opportunities presented by this amazing country.

Presentations on the American side covered US efforts on labeling in the past and current efforts, including the legislation from last year, the National Building Rating Program at DOE, and the Recovery Through Retrofit framework. Technical issues surrounding the use of asset labels (like the HERS Index) and utility bill data were covered by Andrew Burr from the Institute for Market Transformation. The newly developed and released Comnet guidelines for energy modeling (which will eventually standardize assumptions for use in an energy label for commercial buildings) were presented by Charles Eley. As a former energy modeler of LEED buildings, this topic is close to my heart.

A picture from the event is below. Guess which one is me?

The Chinese label was also presented. They utilize a five star system, where 1 star means code compliant and 5 star means very efficient. In China, code compliance is considered 50% better than a building built in 1980, so a 5 star building must be 85% better than a 1980 building. The label and a more detailed certificate are pictured below.

I wont go into technical detail on labeling, but the Chinese have taken an approach that is consistent with the many US labels, where the building is modeled using standardized assumptions about how it is used and then assigned a rating (like the HERS Index). This is good for one year and should be joined by another rating that utilizes the actual consumption for the building after it has been operation for a year. This is a very similar approach to the one we took in legislation last year and the approach of DOE in the National Building Rating Program.

Energy labeling of buildings is the glue that holds together the efficieny agenda of this century. How will consumers stop letting dollar bills escape out their leaky windows if they don’t know they should be paying less? How will we reward homeowners who pursue whole home retrofits if we can’t tell how much they improved the home? How can we provide access to financing if the lenders can’t tell the difference between efficient and inefficent? How can homeowners make sure their new home complies with the building energy code if the state is not enforcing it? These are all variations of the statement that “you can’t change what you can’t measure” and it’s great to see both the US and China laying the framework for siezing the efficiency opprotunities in buildings with robust building energy labels.

New Report – "Using Executive Authority to Achieve Greener Buildings"

2010-04-29T14:06:33Z

Lane Burt, NRDC Alum, Washington DC

Today, the US Green Building Council, NRDC, and a collection of commercial and multifamily real estate groups rolled out our “Executive Authorities” report that thoroughly documents all the existing legal authorities that federal agencies have to put the petal to the metal on energy efficiency in commercial and multifamily buildings. I have been working with our friends at the USGBC and the agencies on this report over the last four months and am very happy to see these recommendations brought to the public.

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.

Reforming appraisal and underwriting practices at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac;

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.

Refining guidance applicable to the energy efficient commercial buildings tax deduction and the national historic preservation tax credit;

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.

Streamlining Title 17 loan guarantees to make them suitable for buildings.

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

Earth Day – Coming to a Home Near You

2010-04-21T19:15:24Z

Lane Burt, NRDC Alum, Washington DC

Vice President Joe Biden kicked off five days of Earth Day events today with the announcement that 25 communities have been selected for up to $452 million in Recovery Act funding to “ramp-up” energy efficiency building retrofits as part of the Department of Energy’s “Ramp-Up” Initiative goals. The White House pointed out that retrofit models developed will save individuals and businesses roughly $100 million annually in utility bills, generating 30,000 jobs over three years.

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.

Home Star Takes Another Step Forward

2010-04-14T13:30:36Z

Lane Burt, NRDC Alum, Washington DC

Home Star will reach another mile stone today when Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-Mich.) and Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.) introduce legislation creating the program in the House of Representatives. It’s important to note that with Republican support the bill is officially bipartisan.

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.

DOE On Target With New Water Heater Standard

2010-04-01T15:08:57Z

Lane Burt, NRDC Alum, Washington DC

Remember when I asked you to take action and tell the Department of Energy to set a better standard for residential water heaters? Well, just shy of 10,000 of you responded and it made a difference. DOE heard all of us and improved their proposal for the water heater standard. These standards will not only boost the total national energy savings, but help create a bigger market for advanced water heater technology that will eventually make all of our showers much cheaper (but just as hot).

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.

Energy Star Under Fire: Are the Fixes Coming Fast Enough?

2010-03-26T17:08:41Z

Lane Burt, NRDC Alum, Washington DC

Energy Star has been a popular target lately, most recently as a result of an undercover Congressional audit reported in the New York Times. I’ve blogged on Energy Star’s issues several times and generally think that both EPA and DOE are sorting things out and addressing the concerns as fast as they can. The program has been a victim of its own success, having grown to cover over 60 products with many more industries lobbying for the program to expand to their products.

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.

How Energy Efficient is a Doublewide? (Not very)

2010-03-24T22:03:12Z

Lane Burt, NRDC Alum, Washington DC

Have you ever stopped to think about the energy efficiency of a doublewide? DOE is about to do just that, having initiated a rulemaking to develop mandatory standards for manufactured homes (basically a building code) under order from Congress to finish by 2011. I just drafted and submitted NRDC’s comments to the docket.

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.

Home Star Gets A Hearing: Is It Really A Win-Win-Win?

2010-03-11T19:40:53Z

Lane Burt, NRDC Alum, Washington DC

Ah, Home Star – the legislative proposal that has eaten all my time over the last six months. What more is there to say? Creates jobs!…Slashes energy use!…Saves money!

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.

Sometimes We All Agree – A Host of New Consensus Efficiency Standards on the Table in the Senate Today

2010-03-10T15:46:16Z

Lane Burt, NRDC Alum, Washington DC

My fellow efficiency advocates and I have spent countless hours over the last year negotiating with manufacturers of every appliance and piece of equipment imaginable, trying to reach agreements on what the next energy standards will look like. These standards set the minimum level of efficiency that every product covered must meet to be sold and are generally set by the Department of Energy. Sometimes, advocates and industry can reach an agreement before DOE gets involved, using creative solutions that may outside the scope of a DOE rulemaking, and on products that DOE does not yet cover.

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.

This DOE Means Business: Enforcing Standards and Regulating Wasteful TVs

2010-03-08T17:33:48Z

Lane Burt, NRDC Alum, Washington DC

The Department of Energy has made a couple of unprecedented moves on efficiency in the last few months that have gone unnoticed by all but the most die-hard efficiency advocates.

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?

Don't Overreact to Growing Pains in the Weatherization Assistance Program

2010-03-04T13:00:38Z

Lane Burt, NRDC Alum, Washington DC

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.