Department of Energy May 1, 2015 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Western Area Power Administration (Western) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service), joint lead agencies, announce the availability of the Upper Great Plains Wind Energy Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (Final PEIS) (DOE/EIS-0408). The Final PEIS evaluates issues and environmental impacts associated with wind energy development within Western's Upper Great Plains Customer Service Region (UGP Region) and upon the Service's landscape-level grassland and wetland easements. The area covered by the PEIS encompasses all or parts of the states of Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota that fall within the UGP Region boundaries. In response to an increase in wind energy development, Western and the Service have interests in streamlining their procedures for conducting environmental reviews of wind energy applications by implementing standardized evaluation procedures and identifying measures to address potential environmental impacts associated with wind energy projects in the UGP Region. The U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural Utility Services (RUS), have participated as cooperating agencies. The Final PEIS and related project information is available on the project Web site at https:// plainswindeis.anl.gov.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has completed a provisional analysis of the potential economic impacts and energy savings that could result from promulgating an energy conservation standard for commercial and industrial fans and blowers. This analysis incorporates information and comments received after the completion of an analysis presented in a notice of data availability (NODA) published in December 2014. At this time, DOE is not proposing an energy conservation standard for commercial and industrial fans and blowers. This analysis may be used in support of the Appliance Standards Federal Rulemaking Advisory Committee (ASRAC) commercial and industrial fans working group negotiations to develop a recommendation for regulating commercial and industrial fans. DOE encourages stakeholders to provide any additional data or information that may improve the analysis and to present comments submitted to this NODA and to the NODA published in December 2014 to the working group.