Proposed efficiency rule on new commercial air-conditioning units will cut their energy usage in half.
The Obama administration
took several small steps in the right direction on energy policy Thursday when it announced the Department of Energy's proposed new standard for commercial air-conditioning units, the Department of Agriculture's plan to add 540 new renewable energy and efficiency projects in rural areas and a plan to train 50,000 solar installers. The DOE estimates that the air-conditioning rule alone would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 60 million metric tons by 2030, and that the whole energy package could cut them by 300 million metric tons.
Plus save consumers $10 billion.
Here are some excerpts from the White House fact sheet on the proposed rule and projects:
To continue to build a skilled solar workforce, DOE’s Solar Instructor Training Network is launching a veterans’ job training pilot project at up to three military bases this fall. The pilot project will connect a talented Veteran population with DOE’s extensive network of more than 400 community college-based solar training institutions. The network will assist at least 50,000 highly-qualified new solar installers to enter the industry by 2020. [...]
If finalized as proposed, this [air conditioning] standard will save 11.7 quads of energy over the lifetime of units shipped over 30 years. That is equivalent to more than half of all the residential energy used in one year, making this potentially the largest energy savings estimated for any efficiency standard issued by DOE to date. [...] This year, DOE has issued seven final energy conservation standards, and when combined with the final rules already issued under this Administration, they will get us more than two-thirds of the way to achieving the President's goal of reducing carbon pollution by at least 3 billion metric tons cumulatively by 2030.
At the current rate of CO
2 emissions, that 3 billion tons would amount to a 4 percent cut of the cumulative total over those 15 years.
The plans and proposals today are a far cry from what the administration would like to see in federal support for renewable energy infrastructure. If only Congress would cough-cough display some far-sightedness.
Please read below the fold for more on this subject.
The proposed commercial air-conditioning rule emerged from the DOE's High Performance Rooftop Unit Challenge to manufacturers to design and build units that cut energy use in half. By mid-2013, Daikin McQuay and Carrier had met that challenge. The DOE estimates that if businesses across the country replaced their 10-to-20-ton units with ones meeting the new standard, they would save $1 billion annually in energy costs.
When I worked at the DOE's Solar Energy Research Institute 35 years ago—a time that energy discussions didn't include global warming concerns—we studied with wonderment how big a difference new appliance efficiency rules, better building codes and other measures could make in reducing energy consumption. Over the decades since Ronald Reagan gutted SERI's budget, the wonder turned to sighs as the White House until recently pretty much ignored efficiency advantages. A few cities and private corporations were wiser.
Deployed full bore, those advantages are not peanuts.
As Joe Romm points out, the International Energy Agency's new report—“Capturing the Multiple Benefits of Energy Efficiency”—states that “the uptake of economically viable energy efficiency investments has the potential to boost cumulative economic output through 2035 by USD 18 trillion.” That's more than U.S. gross domestic product for a year.
Right-wingers like to bellyache about the spending required by energy-related programs the administration announced Thursday and over the past few years. But it's not spending, it's investment. And the return on that investment is not merely adequate, it's spectacular.
But the advantages are not found only in finances. Romm continues:
The report’s core finding on buildings is something every developer, every architect, and every building owner needs to understand:
Energy efficiency retrofits in buildings (e.g. insulation retrofits and weatherisation programmes) create conditions that support improved occupant health and well-being, particularly among vulnerable groups such as children, the elderly and those with pre-existing illnesses. The potential benefits include improved physical health such as reduced symptoms of respiratory and cardiovascular conditions, rheumatism, arthritis and allergies, as well as fewer injuries. Several studies that quantified total outcomes found benefit-cost ratios as high as 4:1 when health and well-being impacts were included, with health benefits representing up to 75% of overall benefits. Improved mental health (reduced chronic stress and depression) has, in some cases, been seen to represent as much as half of total health benefits.
And then, of course, there is the accompanying reduction in greenhouse gases.
As noted, we weren't thinking about that back in 1979 at SERI. But if the efficiency proposals we came up with in-house had been adopted instead of winding up on shelves or trash-bins under post-Jimmy Carter administrations, the climate summit in New York City next week would likely be a very different creature. And there might not even be the need for the People's Climate March this coming Sunday.