Today we will examine appliance efficiency standards.  We will hear from appliance and equipment manufacturing groups as well as efficiency advocates and officials responsible for implementation of federal and state energy efficiency programs.  It is my intention that today's hearing will provide us with the information necessary to develop legislative provisions to increase efficiency standards which will be included in the energy independence legislation which the Committee will report in the next few weeks for consideration on the floor in early July.
    Federal law has required the establishment of energy efficiency standards for a group of twenty categories of home appliances since 1975; however, there have been long standing problems with the implementation of these required standards.  Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) produced a report, which I requested along with Chairman Dingell and Mr. Markey, on the Department of Energy's (DOE) abysmal record with regard to setting appliance efficiency standards.  The GAO report indicated that DOE has failed to set standards for 17 of the 20 categories of appliances originally required by law.  In fact, DOE missed all 34 of the statutory deadlines for the standards.  These delays have spanned more than 30 years, encompassing inaction by a number of Administrations.  The GAO estimates that Americans have to date spent $28 billion for energy could have avoided if the standards that should have been adopted had in fact been adopted.  Moreover, these inefficient appliances will continue operating in American homes and businesses for years to come.  It is therefore clear that the failure to meet the deadlines for issuing standards has been a major problem, and that the past failures have populated our homes and businesses with appliances significantly less efficient than they should have been.         
    Despite these longstanding delays and associated problems, there has recently been some progress.  DOE entered into a consent decree in November 2006 in which the Department promised the court it would meet a new set of short-term deadlines to make up the deficiencies and to date has met these deadlines.  DOE Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Andy Karsner, from who will hear today, has pledged to make up the back log of overdue standards.  He is to be commended for his commitment to this program, and I look forward to hearing his testimony regarding the work he is overseeing.
    Further progress has been reached by the affected industries and efficiency advocacy groups which have reached several consensus agreements on new standards for various products.  Some of these consensus agreements have been adopted into law and others are subject to the DOE regulatory process or are being proposed for legislative enactment.
    While this recent progress is promising, serious concerns surrounding the appliance efficiency program remain.  The GAO report identified a number of obstacles to improvements in the program.  Among the report's conclusions are areas which warrant further examination, including the fact that DOE lacks the program management practices to ensure the program is kept up to date; questions about whether DOE has the staff and budgetary resources to make up the back logs on pending standards; whether the Department's product testing procedures need to be updated and conducted more frequently; the extent to which a state is pre-empted from adopting its own standard for a product covered by federal law but for which no standard has been adopted by DOE; and whether DOE can and should expedite rulemaking proceedings in cases where there is a consensus between industry and efficiency advocates.
    Other questions warrant further consideration as well.  DOE has concluded that it is prevented by law from setting more than one national standard for a given category of appliance.  This appears to be an unreasonable limitation.  For example significant climate differences among zones of the nation suggest that for heating and air conditioning equipment different efficiency requirements might be "technologically feasible" and "economically justified" - the statutory standard.  As a result, the recently adopted DOE standard for furnaces at 80 percent thermal efficiency is below state standards in a number of northern states and is below the efficiency rating achieved by 99 percent of the furnaces already on the market.
    Another matter of concern is whether or not DOE should be able to set more than one performance standard for a covered product.  For example, should they be able to set both a heating efficiency standard and a fan motor efficiency standard for a furnace.  In other words, is it appropriate in some cases to have multiple standards for one product.  
    There is also a question regarding whether DOE should be able to dictate design features for a covered product that may have a role in energy efficiency, but would also have other roles, such as whether a switch must be provided to turn a product which is normally designed to go into standby mode entirely off.
    Today's witnesses will provide us with an in-depth analysis of the status of the DOE program as well as suggestions for any possible statutory improvements to the program and an overview of areas in which consensus has been reached. 

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