Standards in the News

Senator Shaheen, Representative Welch, and 50 cosigners send letter to Energy Secretary Granholm and Acting OMB Director Young


In the lead-up to COP26, the SEAD Initiative and partners have launched the Product Efficiency Call to Action, with the goal of doubling the efficiency of four priority products that account for 40% of global energy consumption by 2030.

New analysis from the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the 4E Technology Collaboration Program demonstrates that policies which introduce minimum efficiency performance standards and energy-consumption labelling on appliances and equipment have led to reduced power consumption, lower carbon emissions, and increased cost savings for consumers.

Chris Granda of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project writes about upcoming lighting changes in the February 2018 issue of Strategies, the magazine for members of the Association of Energy Services Professionals (www.AESP.org): Starting January 1, 2020, it will be against the law to sell most halogen and incandescent light bulbs in the U.S. An existing federal minimum energy efficiency standard of 45 lumens per watt (LPW) comes into effect on this date and no currently available halogen or incandescent lamps are able to meet it.
In the June issue of Appliance Design, Joanna Mauer of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project delves into a new metric for fan efficiency. The metric addresses a longstanding problem in characterizing fan efficiency, which is that a fan’s peak efficiency often has little relationship to a fan’s actual operating efficiency. 

In a letter to House and Senate subcommittees and to DOE Secretary Perry from "the entire group of Senate-confirmed Republican and Democratic Assistant Secretaries of Energy who led the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) between 1989 and 2017", standards are billed as the "little engine that could."

Environmental and consumer groups initiated legal action against the US Department of Energy, filing a lawsuit for illegally delaying ceiling fan standards and a notice of intent to sue for delays on five additional product standards. 

Noah Horowitz blog post, NRDC

The US Department of Energy updated and expanded its definition of what constitutes an everyday light bulb, paving the way for the Trump administration to implement the second phase of a bipartisan law signed by President George W. Bush to cut the energy waste of bulbs.