Dive Brief:
- Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz this week reassured efficiency advocates that gains made by the Obama Administration will stand up over time, saying it would take a full rulemaking process to roll back new standards and previous efforts have lost in court.
- The Hill reports on Moniz's comments, which came at an annual summit of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. “I think the innovation agenda really has very substantial bipartisan support,” he said.
- Aside from high profile cases like the Clean Power Plan, there has been relatively little pushback as President Obama has sought to reduce energy use and make appliances and buildings more efficient. Advocates say the changes will help reduce carbon emissions by 3 billion metric tons cumulatively by 2030.
Dive Insight:
While the Obama administration has backed wide greenhouse gas initiatives, with the federal government winding up before the courts on multiple occasions, the situation for appliance and building standards is a bit different.
"They have kind of flown under the radar,” Marianne DiMascio, who works with the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, previously told Utility Dive. "I think it goes unnoticed sometimes because it is often uncontroversial. There has been longstanding bipartisan support for the efforts."
There have been five pieces of appliance standards legislation passed over 40 years, she said. And the administration recently announced its Better Buildings Program, aimed at improving building efficiency including giving a few building owners complete access to energy usage data.
Congress has set minimum energy conservation standards for consumer products and commercial and industrial equipment since 1975, beginning with the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. The Hill reports that the DOE came out with 13 rules aimed at saving energy from a vast array of appliances and equipment, and is planning an additional 13 this year.
While the Clean Power Plan and other climate rules face fierce challenges in court, DOE Secretary Moniz said the efficiency standards the administration is enacting are likely here to stay.
“If one wanted to change those, one would have to go through a full rulemaking process,” Moniz said, according to The Hill. “That was attempted once before at a change of administration, and it was lost in the courts.”
