On September 29, APGA joined a letter to the Department of Energy (DOE) with Spire, the American Gas Association, the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association, and the National Apartment Association, reiterating an earlier request for DOE to withdraw its proposed appliance efficiency rules for residential furnaces and commercial water heaters.
APGA originally asked DOE to withdraw these proposed rules in a 2018 joint petition for rulemaking, which also requested that the agency issue an interpretive rule confirming that energy conservation standards effectively limiting the market for gas furnaces or water heaters to products using condensing combustion technology would result in the unavailability of “performance characteristics,” as defined by the relevant law. In response, DOE granted the petition in part, issuing a notice of proposed interpretive rule (NOPIR) that recognizes the need to regulate certain condensing/non-condensing gas-fired appliances with separate product classes, a finding supported by APGA. However, the agency refused to withdraw the earlier proposed rules, citing that it could simply issue new proposed rules in due course. Since the issuance of the NOPIR, several non-profit organizations and states have submitted “60-day letters,” which indicate their intent to sue the agency because it has missed statutory deadlines for updating numerous appliance efficiency rulemakings, including those for residential furnaces and commercial water heaters.
APGA, through the joint letter, notes that the filing of these 60-day letters now make withdrawal of the proposed rules even more crucial. Such action from DOE would make clear that the agency must develop new proposed rules with separate product classes for these appliances to account for the significant differences between condensing/non-condensing appliances, as expressed in the NOPIR. Without this important distinction incorporated into the appliance efficiency regulations, when replacement-time comes around, customers who use these type of non-condensing appliances may be forced into purchasing a condensing appliance and the accompanying new exhaust systems to handle condensate in the flue gas.
A copy of the joint letter is available
here. APGA staff will continue to keep members aware of any updates on these rulemakings. For questions on this article or APGA’s engagement with DOE on appliance efficiency rulemakings, please contact Renée Lani of APGA staff by phone at 202-464-0836 or by email at
rlani@apga.org.