Bert Caldwell: DOE delays have been a real waste of energy

The U.S. Department of Energy has been three decades, and counting, establishing energy efficiency standards for home appliances. Of the 34 deadlines set by Congress for completing portions of the task, none has been met.

For journalists, for whom deadlines are law, this sounds like heresy, or nirvana.

But for U.S. consumers buying water heaters, kitchen ranges or the like, the department’s inertia will cost at least $28 billion by 2030, and that’s for just the four categories where the potential energy savings are greatest. Standards have been set for just one of those product lines; home refrigerators and freezers.

And for those concerned about the environment, the lack of standards translates into lost energy savings equivalent to the annual consumption of 20 million households. An additional 53 million tons of carbon dioxide will be cast into the atmosphere as well.

New standards for electric distribution transformers – there are 50 million in service – would negate the need for 11 400-megawatt generation plants over the next 30 years. It took the department nine years to publish its proposed requirements.

Those were among the findings of a U.S. Government Accounting Office panel assembled to assess the Energy Department progress towards fulfilling congressional mandates, some of which date to 1975. The results released last week really were not much of a surprise. The GAO made some of the same points in a 1993 report. The department’s inaction has been as persistent as it has been costly.

Were it not for a lawsuit filed by 15 states and New York City, and the Energy Policy Act of 2005, we might still be awaiting department action on kerosene lamp technology. To be fair, though, it’s not as if the Congress or the Bush Administration has made the setting of standards a priority.

In its response to the GAO report, the Energy Department acknowledges its problems, and points to significant advances over the last year. Final rules for several additional energy products, including transformers and furnaces, are due by the end of the year.

“The combined increase if rulemaking activities and the performance record since the (January 2006) report was submitted should emphatically answer any question your may have regarding the Departments commitment and abilities,” wrote department assistant secretary Alexander Karsner.

Well, not every question. Such as: How are you going to get all this work done? The department estimates the pace of work will increase six-fold, but getting there will take more in-house hiring and additional contracts than the department says it will dedicate to the tasks. And the GAO also raises questions regarding the department’s willingness to hold anyone accountable for meeting its new deadlines. One panel member characterized internal management procedures as a “black box” that defeat outside analysis of just what exactly the department’s problem is.

Nevertheless, department officials say they expect to complete their work in 2011.

Let’s see, that’s 36 years after Congress told the department to get started. In the meantime, a whole generation of residential appliances and commercial motors will have been manufactured, used, and likely scrapped out. Those distribution transformers, for example, have a service life of 30 years. How much energy might have been saved had efficiency standards been in place a decade ago?

The GAO report notes two other consequences of department sloth.

Although federal law pre-empts states from setting their own standards for appliances specified in the 1975 law, some states want waivers that could lead to a patchwork of standards. And uncertainty is costly for manufacturers who want to know what technology might sell best in the marketplace.

The proposed standards, to be clear, are different from the 15-year-old Energy Star ratings available for many residential products. In 2005 alone, Energy Star appliances and homes saved consumers an estimated $12 billion on energy bills.

You would think that would be incentive enough for the department to finish the rest of its work as soon as possible.