Impacts of U.S. appliance and equipment standards have been described previously. Since 2000, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has updated standards for clothes washers, water heaters, and residential central air conditioners and heat pumps. A revised estimate of the aggregate impacts of all the residential appliance standards in the United States shows that existing standards will reduce residential primary energy consumption and associated carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 8–9% in 2020 compared to the levels expected without any standards. Studies of possible new standards are underway for residential furnaces and boilers, as well as a number of products in the commercial (tertiary) sector, such as distribution transformers and unitary air conditioners.

The analysis of standards has evolved in response to critiques and in an attempt to develop more precise estimates of costs and benefits of these regulations. The newer analysis elements include: (1) valuing energy savings by using marginal (rather than average) energy prices specific to an end-use; (2) simulating the impacts of energy efficiency increases over a sample population of consumers to quantify the proportion of households having net benefits or net costs over the life of the appliance; and (3) calculating marginal markups in distribution channels to derive the incremental change in retail prices associated with increased manufacturing costs for improving energy efficiency.

Author: James E. McMahon

Information from: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL)

The aim of this document is to provide more up-to-date information on the status of overseas MEPS levels for electric storage water heaters and to provide a more rigorous modelling approach to the comparison of overseas MEPS levels with the equivalent standing heat loss level in AS1056. The report is intended for use by government when considering the MEPS levels in force overseas as models for implementation in the Australian context.

Electric resistance storage water heaters covered by AS1056 are the focus of this review, including size ranges 25 to 630 L rated hot water delivery capacity. This report does not consider heat exchange water heaters.

A draft of this report was provided in July 2000. The water heater MEPS rules in the USA were released in January 2001 and these have been incorporated in this final report, along with the revised options for consideration.

Notes: This report expands and updates a previous submission to the National Appliance and Equipment Energy Efficiency Committee (NAEEEC) which was prepared by Harrington, L. in December 1998.

Author: Lloyd Harrington, Energy Efficienct Strategies; Paul Ryan, EnergyConsult

Information from: National Appliance and Equipment Energy Efficiency Committee (NAEEEC)