Department of Energy May 2013 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This notice announces receipt of a petition for waiver and application for interim waiver (hereafter, ``petition'') from GE Appliances (GE) regarding specified portions of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) test procedure for determining the energy consumption of residential electric refrigerators and refrigerator-freezers. In its petition, GE provides an alternate test procedure. DOE solicits comments, data, and information concerning GE's petition and the suggested alternate test procedure. Today's notice also grants GE an interim waiver from the residential electric refrigerator and refrigerator-freezer test procedure, subject to use of the alternative test procedure set forth in this notice.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is initiating a rulemaking to consider amended energy conservation standards for commercial warm air furnaces. Once completed, this rulemaking will fulfill DOE's statutory obligation by December 31, 2013 to either propose amended energy conservation standards for warm air furnaces or to make a determination that the existing standards do not need to be amended. This notice seeks to solicit information to assist DOE in determining whether national standards more stringent than those that are currently in place would result in a significant amount of additional energy savings and whether such amended national standards would be technologically feasible and economically justified. In overview, this document presents a brief description of the analysis DOE plans to perform for this rulemaking and requests comment on various issues relating to each of the analyses (e.g., market assessment, engineering analysis, energy use analysis, life-cycle cost and payback period analysis, and national impact analysis). Although this document contains numerous specific topics on which the Department is particularly interested in receiving written comment, DOE welcomes views and information from the public on any subject within the scope of this rulemaking (including relevant matters not specifically raised in this RFI).

This notice announces receipt of and publishes a petition for waiver and application for interim waiver from Hussmann, Inc. (Hussmann) (hereafter, ``petition'') from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) test procedure for determining the energy consumption of commercial refrigerators, freezers and refrigerator-freezers. Today's notice also grants an interim waiver to Hussmann from the commercial refrigerator, freezer and refrigerator-freezer test procedure. Through this notice, DOE also solicits comments with respect to the Hussmann petition.