Thanks to everyone who participated in yesterday’s  very productive virtual BECS Committee meeting.  The draft minutes of the meeting will be available soon. Presentations made at the meeting include the following:

A major action at the meeting was that the BECS Committee voted unanimously to recommended AGA regulatory affairs staff  consider submitting a petition to DOE for minimum efficiencies for residential non-weatherized gas furnaces implementing separate product classes for positive and non-positive vent pressure furnaces (colloquially referred to as “condensing” and “non-condensing” furnaces).  The petition would be submitted in accordance with 42 U.S.C. 6295(n), which provides stakeholders the opportunity to petition DOE to develop new and revised minimum efficiency standards for EPCA “covered products.”  The petition would capitalize upon the DOE July 11, 2019 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) “determination” (attached) that venting system differences provide distinct consumer features and utility for vented gas-fired products.  AGA BECS staff had analyzed this approach extensively with outside counsel review from APGA in 2014, but the approach was not pursued at that time.  With the “determination” and a successful recent petition for separate product class treatment within a covered product category, the BECS Committee noted that it is now especially timely to pursue a 6295(n) petition.  As part of that petition, AGA and allied organizations joining the effort would have to propose specific minimum efficiency levels for positive and non-positive vent pressure furnaces.  Those levels would be jointly decided by the petitioners but do not represent difficult technical challenges.  BECS staff is prepared to assist AGA regulatory affairs staff in drafting the petition, which could be done rather quickly.  The petition would be for DOE to issue a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking (SNOPR) and withdrawal of DOE’s 2016 flawed SNOPR that attempted to define separate product classes based upon maximum input.  That  DOE SNOPR, which attempted to carve out “small furnaces” under 55,000 Btu’s per hour, also conflicts with the current, statutory-defined “small furnace” product class.

 

[This is a weekly feature of the “Friday Update” covering state code calendar activities as presented by the online utility “Fiscal Note,” which is sponsored by APGA and AGA Code and Standards.]

 

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