Department of Energy August 2021 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

Pursuant to the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and in accordance with the Code of Federal Regulations, and following consultation with the Committee Management Secretariat, General Services Administration, notice is hereby given that the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee has been renewed for a two-year period. The Committee will provide advice to the Office of Science, on long-range plans, priorities, and strategies for advancing plasma science, fusion science and fusion technologythe knowledge base needed for an economically and environmentally attractive fusion energy source. Additionally, the renewal of the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee has been determined to be essential to the conduct of the Department of Energy business and to be in the public interest in connection with the performance of duties imposed upon the Department of Energy, by law and agreement. The Committee will operate in accordance with the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, adhering to the rules and regulations in implementation of that Act.

In this final rule, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission) is amending its regulations governing the filing requirements for qualifying conduits and certain major hydroelectric power projects. Specifically, the Commission is removing the requirement that a notice of intent to construct a qualifying conduit include a profile drawing showing the source of the hydroelectric potential in instances where a dam would be constructed in association with the facility and extending the licensing requirements that currently apply to major projects up to 5 megawatts (MW) to major projects 10 MW or less, consistent with the amended definition of a small hydroelectric power project in the Hydropower Regulatory Efficiency Act of 2013.

On November 14, 2019, the U.S. Department of Energy (``DOE'') published a notice of proposed rulemaking (``NOPR'') for the test procedure for microwave ovens. Following receipt of comments, DOE is publishing this supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking (``SNOPR'') for the limited purpose of clarifying the current procedure for testing a microwave oven that has a connected (i.e., network) function, which is generally to disable the connected function when measuring standby mode power consumption. Further, DOE proposes to explicitly specify in its test procedure that standby power be measured with the connected function enabled if the means for disabling the network function are not provided in the manufacturer's user manual. DOE is seeking comment from interested parties on the proposal.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has submitted an information collection request to the OMB for extension under the provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. The information collection requests a three-year extension of its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Commercialization Survey, OMB Control Number 1910-5166. The proposed collection will satisfy the program requirements of the Small Business Act, including requirements established in the SBIR program reauthorization legislation. DOE will collect the survey data via web-enabled software and provide it to the Small Business Administration (SBA) to maintain information about the DOE SBIR/STTR awards issued through the two programs. This data will be provided by DOE based on information collected from SBIR/STTR awardees. This data will be used by DOE, SBA, and Congress to assess the commercial impact of these two programs.