U.S.: Energy-Saving Standards and Rules in Limbo

By H. Josef Hebert, The Associated Press, March 2, 2007.

"The government has missed all 34 deadlines set by Congress for requiring energy-efficiency standards on everything from home appliances to power transformers, government auditors said Thursday. Two-thirds of the deadlines have yet to be met, although many are more than a decade old. Because of the failures, consumers and corporations stand to pay tens of billions of dollars more for energy than they would have if the deadlines had been met, the Government Accountability Office said. It's 'a blistering indictment of a culture of incompetence and delay,' said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who had a hand in crafting many of the efficiency requirements Congress has enacted over the years. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mass., who made the report public at a news conference, said the delays covered many years and that he did not mean to single out the Bush administration. Some of the deadlines date to the 1990s. Still, many of the appliance and other equipment standards have been in limbo since 2001 after a rush of regulations in the closing weeks of the Clinton administration, energy-efficiency advocates said... Lowell Ungar, a policy analyst for the Alliance to Save Energy, a private advocacy group, said Congress needs to clarify the DOE's authority to set standards so the rules don't get caught in a legal morass, and provide more money to run the programs. He said the department also needs to improve its management of the programs."