Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

New appliance efficiency standards to be set

The guidelines, to be set over several years, will reduce the need to build dozens of power plants.

By Washington Post
Published November 15, 2006

WASHINGTON - New energy-efficiency standards for 22 appliances will be set over the next 4½ years under an agreement settling a lawsuit brought against the Energy Department by the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, consumer groups and 15 states.

The new standards - covering such items as dishwashers, heating and air-conditioning systems, certain kinds of lighting and industrial boilers - could ultimately save the amount of energy currently used by 12-million households and avoid the need to build dozens of power plants, the NRDC said.

It will take years, however, for such savings to be realized. The Energy Department must first decide how high to raise the bar for energy efficiency, and then it will take years for such appliances to replace existing ones.

Katherine Kennedy, an NRDC lawyer, applauded the consent decree announced Monday.

The NRDC had sued the Bush administration because of its failure to review and raise energy-efficiency standards for appliances, as first called for in the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975. No new efficiency standards have been set since 2001, and the administration tried to weaken standards for central air conditioners, a move rejected by a federal court in 2004 after a lawsuit by the NRDC and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

The current administration tried to weaken standards for air-conditioning units. When President Bill Clinton's standard was set as a target several years ago, 11 percent of air-conditioning units met or exceeded it. That standard went into full effect in January as the new minimum, and the top air conditioners are nearly twice as efficient.

[Last modified November 14, 2006, 23:57:55]