State Appliance Standards |
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State Appliance Standards State appliance standards have existed for decades, starting with California’s enforcement of minimum efficiency requirements for refrigerators and several other products in 1979. In 1987, recognizing that different efficiency standards for the same products in different States could create problems for manufacturers, Congress enacted the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act (NAECA), which initially covered 12 products. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPACT92), EPACT2005, and EISA2007 added additional residential and commercial products to the 12 products originally specified under NAECA. Many different State appliance standards still exist today (Table 2); however, a key point of NAECA was to enforce Federal preemption of any State appliance standard. The preemption clause allows States to continue to mandate standards for products not covered by Federal law and to enforce standards that might have existed before Federal coverage, up to the date of Federal enforcement. Because most major appliances are covered by Federal law, the majority of State standards target less energy-intensive products. Most of the standards for products listed in Table 2 will be preempted by Federal standards within the next decade. For example, the California standard for general-service lighting will be preempted in 2012 by the Federal standard for general-service lighting required in EISA2007. States can petition DOE for a waiver to continue to enforce their own standards, as opposed to a less strict Federal standard. To date, however, no waivers have been granted. The NEMS residential and commercial modules represent Federal appliance standards for all major appliances covered under NAECA and subsequent legislation. For products not explicitly covered in NEMS (residential dehumidifiers, for example), an off-line estimate of the impact of the standard is included in the projections by way of deducting the savings estimates from the projections without the standards included. Given that the NEMS buildings modules are specified at the Census Division level, State standards are not readily amenable to direct modeling in NEMS. Furthermore, the paucity of data at the State level does not allow for a direct accounting of equipment stock or energy usage, which is needed to estimate energy savings. Although NEMS does not represent State appliance standards explicitly, recent trends in energy intensity are taken into account in the projections and should represent recent State appliance efficiency standards to the extent that they affect future energy demand in the buildings sectors.
Contact: Steve Wade/John Cymbalsky/Erin Boedecker/Nicholas Chase
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