NRDC Mum On Intervening If CEA Sues to Block California TV Energy Rules

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The Natural Resources Defense Council’s point man on the California Energy Commission’s TV energy rules was noncommittal Wednesday when asked whether his group would intervene as a co-defendant on CEC’s behalf if CEA sues to block Tier One of the rules from taking effect in January, much like it joined the suit to defend New York City’s e-waste program when CEA sued to block it from taking effect. “CEA doesn’t like regulation of any kind and they have threatened a lawsuit,” NRDC Senior Scientist Noah Horowitz said at the DisplaySearch TV Ecosystems Conference. “There’s rumors they're trying to prevent other states from setting similar regulations. If there’s a lawsuit, we will evaluate it at that point."

CEC operates “through regulation, not through legislation,” Horowitz said. It ran “an open rulemaking” on TV energy use regulations, and in the end the rules got a unanimous 5-0 vote, he said. CEC recently sent “a stack of documents” to the state’s Office of Administrative Law as a “final checklist” on the rules, he said. NRDC thinks the OAL will issue a decision on the rules in early September, “and we have every reason to believe they will go through,” he said.

Typifying a CEC rulemaking he calls “incredibly contentious,” Horowitz said he “had the honor” of debating CEA President Gary Shapiro on CNBC during the CEC’s deliberations last fall. During that debate, Shapiro “personally attacked me on national TV, said these standards weren’t possible, we'd lose 5,000 jobs in California, and if it were up to me, we wouldn’t have the Internet,” Horowitz said.

Shapiro responded in an e-mail late Wednesday that in the CNBC exchange with Horowitz last Oct. 15, “I attacked his facts and long history of trying to restrict TV set energy usage.” Shapiro said: “He tried in the 1980s and thankfully he failed, or just where would HDTV be?” YouTube footage of the encounter will show that he didn’t attack Horowitz personally as Horowitz alleged, Shapiro said.

As for the CEC rules, “CEA remains concerned that California regulators ignored current data and used aged statistics to make a bad policy decision,” Shapiro said. “Today’s large flat screen sets use about two light bulbs’ worth of energy and the non-fact-based California rule will distort the market, deny California consumers access to the most fully featured sets or encourage them to buy over the Internet or in neighboring states and thus cost California jobs and tax revenue. We remain hopeful that California will see the light, focus on facts and repeal its sloppily created rule."

Energy Star 4.0 rules equal Tier Two of the CEC regulations that take effect January 2013, Horowitz said. “We heard from the industry that Energy Star Level 4 was not attainable, or it’s going to cost us a fortune,” he said. “The reality is there’s close to 500 models today that already meet that level, paving the way for the 2013 standard,” he said.

In the CEC rulemaking, “I'd be remiss if I didn’t point out that Panasonic vehemently opposed the standards,” Horowitz said. In legislative hearings and meetings last November before CEC, “they said this was not possible, this is an atrocity, we can’t have these standards,” he said. “Then two months later at the CES show, I had very mixed feelings when I saw [Panasonic’s announcement] that all 2010 Viera TVs meet Energy Star 4.0,” equivalent to CEC’s January 2013 standard, he said. “They had to know this a few weeks before the trade show.” Still, Horowitz said, “the good news is the industry is responding, and it’s not just LCDs, it’s plasma as well.” Panasonic executives didn’t respond right away to requests for comment.

"Beware 3D TV,” one of Horowitz’s PowerPoint slides said. “3D TV is coming,” he told the conference. “How fast and how many hours per day are people going to watch 3D content” are unanswered questions, he said. “It’s clear in the near term that people will wear tinted glasses. Since the content may look dim to many users, TV manufacturers might put in a 3D boost, something that increases the brightness of the TV automatically, and that could dramatically increase the power consumption. So we need to be smart about this, and hopefully their implementations won’t give away a lot of these savings we're all working so hard to deliver.”