Bush Sets Energy Efficiency Standards for Appliances

The Bush administration proposed new efficiency standards Friday for home central air conditioners and heat pumps that officials said would conserve energy and ensure savings in electricity bills.

The standards, to take effect in 2006, would require the new devices to use 20% less energy than most current models. As such, the rules are less stringent than those proposed in the final days of the Clinton administration, which called for a 30% reduction.

“The Clinton rule placed too high a cost burden on consumers,” Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham told reporters. Manufacturers had complained the higher Clinton standards would make the low-end models that most consumers favor too expensive, and Abraham agreed.

He called the 20% gain in energy efficiency “a realistic standard that achieves significant energy efficiency and protects low-income consumers from unnecessarily high prices.”

However, David Nemtzow, president of the conservationist Alliance to Save Energy, criticized the Bush administration proposal, calling it “bad for consumers across the country and the whole electric utility grid.”

Nemtzow said the administration has repeatedly referred to an “energy crisis” in this country that “is enough to roll back clean air standards and drill in Alaska but not enough” to maintain the more stringent Clinton-era standards for air conditioners and heat pumps.

Dan Reicher, former assistant secretary of Energy in the Clinton administration who developed the tighter standards, also was critical.

“At a moment when the [Bush] administration is declaring an energy crisis, this decision will make our energy challenges more difficult,” he said. Reicher added that California, Texas and New York favor the tougher standards to help cut energy demands during peak periods.

Upon taking office, Bush had ordered a review of all proposed regulations and standards issued in the final months of the Clinton administration. But Friday’s action followed the administration’s approval a day earlier of the same tougher efficiency standards for new washing machines and water heaters as Clinton had proposed in January.

The new standard for washing machines will be phased in, requiring the appliances to use 22% less energy by 2004 and 35% less by 2007. The efficiency standard for water heaters will be fully implemented by 2004, with gas-fueled heaters having to use 8% less energy and electric devices required to be 4% more efficient.

New washing machines built according to the standards would cut water use nationwide by 10.5 trillion gallons by 2030 and save $15.3 billion in electricity costs--enough to light all American homes for more than four years, the Energy Department said.

The stiffer rules would raise the average price of a new washing machine to $670, up from $421 now, by the year 2007 and would add $100 to the average $380 price of a new electric water heater.

Offsetting the higher costs of the washing machines, savings in electric and water bills would average $48 a year, effectively covering the difference in five years for an appliance that typically lasts 14 years, officials said.

On air conditioners, the tougher Clinton proposal announced last January during his last week in office would have boosted the average price of a new unit by $335, as compared with a $213 increase under the Bush standard, officials said.

Abraham said the new rules would guarantee smaller price increases for air conditioners and heat pumps and, correspondingly, shorter “payback periods”--the time it takes for savings in electric bills to cover the increase in the appliance cost.

The new standards would take effect later this year after publication in the Federal Register and a period of public comment, officials said.

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Times staff writer Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this report.