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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: steve harris who wrote (306668)	10/17/2006 7:44:51 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576882

Energy Shortage President Bush touched a lot of the right bases in a speech in St. Louis that focused on the urgent need for increased efficiency and alternative fuels to address the country’s energy problems, including its dependence on imported oil. It would be helpful, though, if he could get his Department of Energy on the same page. One of the department’s most important tasks is to periodically review and improve efficiency standards for appliances and other equipment. The department has always been sluggish in issuing these standards. But under Mr. Bush it has been more passive than ever, failing to issue a single strengthened efficiency standard since he took office. It also tried to roll back strong Clinton-era standards for central air-conditioners. Only a lawsuit filed by New York’s Eliot Spitzer, nine other state attorneys general and the Natural Resources Defense Council prevented it from doing so. Mr. Spitzer and others also sued the department for violating Congressionally mandated deadlines for revising standards for 22 products. In the wake of that lawsuit, and under new management — Secretary Samuel Bodman took the helm at the end of 2004 — the department has at least begun proposing new standards, most recently for home furnaces and for distribution transformers, the gray cans that hang on electric wires and change the voltage on the grid to household levels. The bad news is that the proposed standards are not nearly strong enough. The standard for distribution transformers, issued for public comment in August, was so low as to antagonize the industry itself — a rare event. Top executives from 10 major utilities, led by Exelon and New Mexico-based PNM, argued that more efficient transformers would not only save energy and cut pollution from power plants but would save the companies money. For home furnaces and boilers — big users of oil and natural gas — the department proposes only trivial efficiency increases that would leave consumers with heating bills almost as high as their current ones. The department’s reasoning seems to be that the more efficient (but more costly) equipment needed for colder climates could impose an unnecessary financial burden on consumers in warmer climates. At the same time, however, the department said that it did not have the authority to establish regional standards, and instead invited individual states to set their own standards — an uncertain process at best. From where we sit, it appears that a department that has long retreated from its statutory obligations has done so again.