A major manufacturers' trade association is pushing federal legislation to preempt state efficiency standards. This action would void state authority to establish efficiency standards for key products. The immediate effects of the proposal would be the revocation of nearly all of the new standards established by California last fall; the elimination of existing electric distribution transformer standards in Minnesota, New York, and Massachusetts; and, the abandonment of state standards' legislation pending in several states such as Maryland. Energy efficiency supporters and manufacturers had worked out a consensus package of efficiency standards and timetables for effective dates and preemption over two years of negotiations. Those standards were included in the Conference Committee energy bill last year and in a bill approved this year by the House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee. The manufacturers' proposal shatters this consensus by moving up preemption to the date a federal standard is enacted rather than the date it becomes effective, by giving the U.S. Department of Energy unilateral authority to preempt certain state standards, and by legislating weak, non-consensus standards for several additional products. In the four prior laws establishing federal efficiency standards, Congress has never preempted existing state energy efficiency standards.

Ran 4/7/03