Minimizing Investments by Investing in Minimums: Energy Savings Through Appliance Standards

摘要

Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent annually across the country on public-purpose energy-efficiency programs. Appliance standards offer two important benefits as an exit strategy for these programs: universal and least-cost adoption. The federal appliance standards process addresses only selected product categories and, as a lowest-common-denominator process, often leaves substantial energy savings opportunities on the table from the regional perspective. Unfortunately, federal preemption prevents regional and local attempts to pursue more appropriate or aggressive standards for these covered products. Furthermore, few states besides California have their own appliance standards covering opportunities that are not subject to federal preemption. Yet such state standards offer significant opportunities, especially where supported by interested stakeholders. By providing standards development assistance, stakeholders may support improved appliance standards at both the state and federal levels. In this paper, we describe both why Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) elected to provide CASE (Codes & Standards Enhancement) initiative support for the state standards development processes and the general CASE approach in the hopes that these perspectives may be useful to stakeholders interested in developing and or supporting state standards elsewhere. Furthermore, we provide specific CASE examples including Exit Signs, Dry Type Low Voltage Transformers, Commercial Clothes Washers, and others both as examples and as appropriate products for other state proceedings.