As another round of winter heating bills approaches, the Bush administration is proposing new home furnace standards that critics say won't produce much savings for consumers.
The new standard, which would go into effect in 2015, set minimum efficiency levels for widely used natural gas furnaces at 80 percent, a slight increase over the requirement issued nearly 20 years ago.
Energy-efficiency advocates say that virtually all of the furnaces now on the market already meet that standard, so industry will have little incentive to make improvements.
Oil furnaces, used primarily in the Northeast, would see some improvement with the standard going from a minimum efficiency of 75 percent to 82 percent, a level that about a third of new furnaces achieve. All but a handful of new oil furnaces get 80 percent efficiency or better, according to the industry.
The percentages reflect the amount of heat output related to the energy actually produced by the fuel that is burned.
Energy-efficiency advocates urged the department to boost the requirement for gas furnaces to 90 percent efficiency.
That's a level met or exceeded by about a third of the new gas furnaces sold and would save a typical consumer about 11 percent in heating costs compared to the least efficient units being sold, said Steven Nadel of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
According to government figures, the average winter heating bill for a home using natural gas was $944 last winter. Homeowners using fuel oil paid an average of $1,429.
The Energy Department, in its proposed regulation, argued that an efficiency requirement of 90 percent is not warranted nationwide because it then would be mandated for units sold in warm climates where the additional cost might not be recouped.
Instead, the department said it should be left to states, or adjacent groups of states, to issue more stringent standards if they wish to do so.
Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Boston-based Appliance Standard Awareness Project, said he and other energy-efficiency advocates were not opposed to setting several broad regional standards for furnaces.
"The right furnace standards for Minnesota is not likely to be the right one for Mississippi," said deLaski. But he said those regional standards should be federal, updating the standards that were approved in 1987.
"They're essentially punting the issue back to the states," said deLaski.
Alexander Karsner, DOE's assistant secretary for efficiency and renewables, said the law prevents the department from setting regional standards. He called the proposal to leave it to states "a flexible approach."
Three states — Massachusetts, Vermont and Rhode Island — already have approved standers tougher than the federal proposal, but those still need a waiver from the Energy Department to go into effect.
Congress had directed the department to issue new efficiency standards for home furnaces by 1994. The announcement Friday was prompted by a lawsuit filed by environmentalists and energy-efficiency advocates, protesting the long delay.
The proposed standard, which is subject to public comment before it will be made final, would go into effect in 2015.
"This long-overdue proposal misses the opportunity to bring home heating into the 21st Century," said Katherine Kennedy, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group that had favored a single, national standard.
The department, in its filing in the Federal Register, said the new standards would result in a net saving in residential heating costs of $650 million to $2.48 billion from 2015 to 2038.
Substantial energy savings would also occur, the department said, mainly for users of natural gas.
But those calculations compared the new standards to the 1987 standard that manufacturers are already widely exceeding. For example, it assumed a 2 percentage point efficiency increase in gas burners from the 78 percent in the current standard when in fact 99 percent of such furnaces now being sold already meet the standard of 80 percent being proposed.
Natural gas is the most widely used fuel for home heating, although fuel oil is the biggest source in much of the Northeast.
Bigger improvements in natural gas furnace efficiency "is the big opportunity' for energy savings and the new standards do little about that, said deLaski. There are 3.2 million new gas furnaces sold annually, compared to 125,000 oil furnaces, he said.
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On the Net:
American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy:
ACEEE - American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy
Appliance Standards Awareness Project:
ASAP Home
Energy Department:
Department of Energy - Energy Efficiency
10-06-2006, 03:50 PM
