by Jim Tankersley
President Obama will officially ask the Energy Department today to speed up its efforts to set congressionally mandated efficiency standards - some of them long-overdue - for household appliances.
It's a move sure to be welcomed by environmentalists and by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who preaches efficiency as a key weapon in the administration's fight to curb global warming.
Obama's presidential memorandum will ask the department to issue several standards by August, as mandated by law, covering products that include ovens, lamps, microwaves, dishwashers and air conditioners. He'll also ask the department to give high priority to speeding up standards that promise especially large energy savings for consumers.
A variety of court orders and congressional laws have left the energy department with a backlog of efficiency standards it needs to set, and a schedule of others it must complete in coming years. Obama's memo includes directions to complete that schedule on time, and early if possible.
The administration's bigger efficiency push goes beyond appliances.
Obama has made efficiency measures a $30 billion chunk of the economic stimulus package currently pending before the Senate. In an exclusive interview this week, Chu repeatedly touted energy efficiency as a tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and curb global warming, which he called "a real economic disaster in the making for our children."
In the interview Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, said the energy department would lead America in an effort toward "really understanding how to build buildings more efficiently."
"We don't really know how to do this" in commercial buildings, Chu said. "Some places are hot. Others are too cold. As we try to build more efficient buildings, the uncertainty in the performance grows, in design norms versus actual performance. There are a lot of smart people who could be co-opted into saying, let's get them to understand how to integrate all the systems of a building together"
Comments
There is another side of this equation that appears is being ignored. You can build a more energy efficient microwave.
But will the consumer buy it?
Just like: will the consumer be willing to spend $50,000.00 or more for an electric car AND whatever it's going to cost to update the electrical grid to support it?
Just another way to spend $30 Billion in STIMULUS that is not stimulating to say the least.
Posted by: Sue | February 5, 2009 1:16 PM