California TV-Energy Rules Sent to Office of Administrative Law for Approval

The California Energy Commission scrambled late Monday to post on its website the “final statement of reasons” for the TV energy efficiency regulations it adopted in November, after recently sending the regulations to the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) for approval. CE executives said the commission could be in violation of the state Administrative Procedure Act by not making public the final statement of reasons as it sent the regulations for OAL approval.

After our affiliate Green Electronics Daily raised the issue with the commission Monday, a spokesman said the agency “has been working diligently to post the Final Statement of Reasons and they are now posted online.” “It has always been the intent” of the commission to “make these documents available for public view,” said spokesman Adam Gottlieb. He did not address the issue of the agency being in possible violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. In the 110-page document, at www.energy.ca.gov/appliances/2009_tvregs/, the commission responds to issues raised by TV makers, retailers and industry groups.

A key document that should be part of the commission’s submission to the OAL is the final statement of reasons, and because it was not “publicly available” until Monday, the commission may have been “out of compliance with the requirements of the state Administrative Procedure Act,” said one CE executive we canvassed. It’s for the OAL to determine whether the commission was in violation of the law because of failure to make the document available in a timely manner, the executive said. The OAL has 30 days to review the standards.

The commission “filed the TV standards with OAL on July 21,” Susanne Garfield-Jones, CEC assistant executive media director, said Tuesday. “We are in compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act as there is no specific date that the final statement of reasons must be made publicly available.” The APA only requires the document be made available “within a reasonable time,” she said, noting the commission posted the final statement of reasons Monday.

The commission wants the effective date of the regulations moved to January 2011 from last July because of the delay in filing the regulations with the secretary of state, it said. None of the comments it received “justify changing or foregoing adoption of these regulations at this time,” it said. The regulations will result in “immediate energy cost savings for consumers and will not increase the cost to the consumer,” it said. On the request by Best Buy, CE Retailers Coalition and others to stall adoption of regulations until national standards are developed, the commission said it “declines to forego adopting regulations where national standards have not yet been adopted, and are at least years away from being effective.” The U.S. Department of Energy is now weighing standards for TVs.

CEA, the CE Retailers Coalition, CEDIA and others had said the regulations would have “long terms economic impacts” and will result in decreased TV sales and selection, increased Internet sales, decline in sales tax revenues and reduction in repair and installation requests, the commission said. In response, the agency said the regulation does not ban any kind or size of TVs and any TV features. The technologies needed to meet the standards are “off-the-shelf technologies that are currently incorporated into televisions being sold in California,” it said. Energy inefficient TVs now in the market will be replaced by efficient ones with “comparable” size, features and prices once the regulations take effect, it said. TVs that are inefficient are “not significantly more or less expensive” than models that are efficient, it said.

A CEA report that found that the proposed regulations will increase costs, resulting in reduced sales and significant job and revenue losses does not contain “data and evidence” to support its conclusions, the commission said. And a study submitted by the Union of Concerned Scientists “comprehensively analyzes and refutes the conclusions in the CEA report,” the agency said. CERC had asserted that the regulations will preclude integration in TVs of certain features, forcing consumers to buy separate devices with those features, leading to increase in “overall environmental impacts,” the agency said.

Denying that the regulations will lead to increased e-waste, the commission said the test method adopted by the commission is “designed so that televisions are not penalized for auxiliary functions, which can be disabled” for showing compliance. A built-in DVD player will not cause an otherwise compliant TV to fail the standards, it said. “No signals from any option such as Internet connectivity, iPod functions or 3D imaging are measured because these features may be turned off or disabled during the test procedure."

Responding to industry comments that voluntary measures are as “at least as effective and less burdensome” than regulations, the commission said the Energy Star program would only “obtain 35% of the calculated $8.1 billion” in savings for the consumers that the California standards would achieve. And despite repeated requests, Best Buy didn’t “substantiate its claim” that Energy Star TVs cost 34 percent more than “inefficient” sets, the agency said. Commission staff investigated Best Buy’s stores and website and was “unable to locate a single non-Energy Star television in a Best Buy store, and were told that Best Buy did not sell non-Energy Star televisions,” it said. On the retailer’s website, the only TVs that were not Energy Star were “obscure outdoor and automobile” TVs, which were more expensive than Energy Star TVs, it said.

On industry objections to labeling requirements, the commission said it adopted labeling standards for TVs “in the absence of” FTC labeling requirements. “These requirements are more accurate than proposed FTC requirements because they require display of actual consumption,” it said. Proposed FTC regulations estimate energy costs based on electricity and appliance use rates that are “lower than that shown by the data in the record for California."

Asked for comment, Douglas Johnson, CEA vice president of technology policy, said that “CEA and its members are studying the materials sent to the Office of Administrative Law by the Commission and will carefully review the Commission’s reasoning and conclusions.” The Plasma Display Coalition said it was “deeply disappointed” that the commission “gave no consideration to comments and recommendations by the industry” in the document it released Monday. Other states that looked at similar energy standards dropped their plans after “giving careful consideration and analysis” to CE industry comments, said coalition President Jim Palumbo