Energy suit settled; consumers will save

New energy standards for appliances such as refrigerators, water heaters and air conditioners will help consumers save on utility bills and reduce air pollution under a national settlement announced Monday.

The U.S. Department of Energy agreed to phase in tougher efficiency requirements for 22 products over the next five years, starting in 2007.

The agreement resolves a lawsuit brought against the Department of Energy last year by 15 states, including North Carolina, plus the city of New York and three public interest groups.

"This settlement is good for consumers," state Attorney General Roy Cooper said in an interview. "It will lead to lower energy costs in the near future. It's also good for the environment and for public health. ... It's too bad we had to sue to get the Department of Energy to follow the law."

Supporters expect the energy savings from new standards to be substantial over time, although different appliances may meet different goals. Water heaters, for example, could boost energy efficiency by 2 percent, while air-conditioning systems may be able to improve efficiency by 20 percent -- a significant savings for people trying to cool houses during hot North Carolina summers.

In 1987, Congress set initial minimum efficiency standards for appliances such as clothes dryers, air conditioners and heat pumps.

The average energy savings from those existing standards is about $2,000 per household, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy has estimated.

Congress directed the Department of Energy to periodically strengthen the standards under specific deadlines to ensure that appliances continue to be as efficient as technologically feasible. But some efficiency requirements have not been updated since Congress set them 19 years ago.

Missed deadlines

The energy department has missed deadlines to issue updated standards for 22 products and is as much as 14 years late in developing standards for some.

"We saw that they simply refused to do what the law required them to do," Cooper said. "With our increased dependency on foreign oil, and high energy bills for consumers, we felt that, as state attorneys general, we should force them to do this."

In September 2005, a coalition of states filed a lawsuit to force the federal government to update the appliance efficiency standards.

A Department of Energy statement said Energy Secretary Sam Bodman appreciated the states' willingness to work together on a schedule for new standards.

"Clearing up the backlog of appliance standards has been a priority for Secretary Bodman since his first days on the job," Craig Stevens, a spokesman for the department, said in a statement. "Over the next five years, the department will write and submit rules on efficiency standards for more than two dozen appliances, from heaters to freezers and dishwashers to ovens."

As of 2000, the existing federal appliance standards have already cut U.S. electricity use by about 2.5 percent. The savings are expected to triple by 2020, as older, inefficient appliances are replaced. New standards would substantially increase the power savings.

Katherine Kennedy, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the public interest groups in the lawsuit, said it wasn't clear why the department of energy had missed deadlines to update the standards.

"Our theory is, DOE is a big agency with many tasks, and this one never got the attention it deserved until the lawsuit was brought," Kennedy said. "Now we think the DOE is very focused on this program, and we think the department is going to be very aggressive in setting standards."

At least two trade organizations, representing gas appliance and air-conditioning manufacturers, supported the lawsuit because they wanted more predictable timelines to introduce energy-saving appliances.

"Luckily, we haven't had the resistance from manufacturers that we've seen from Detroit to new fuel standards," Kennedy said, referring to auto manufacturer objections to better gas mileage.