Advocacy Groups Back EPA Plan to Levy Energy Star User Fee

With EPA revealing little about the actual structure of, or its motivation for, the proposed user fee for the Energy Star program, it’s uncertain what its impact would be on manufacturer participation in the program or on environmental performance registry EPEAT, said representatives of EPEAT and advocacy groups. “I am not sure how developed that idea is,” said Sarah O'Brien, outreach director of the Green Electronics Council which manages EPEAT. Despite the lack of clarity surrounding the user fee proposal, advocacy groups like the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) said they would back other funding sources if the federal government doesn’t fully pay for Energy Star.

The EPA’s one-paragraph user fee proposal, contained in a 1,625-page report to congressional appropriators, gave no justification for the levy. The agency merely said “Energy Star products have qualified for special rebates, tax exemptions or credits, and procurement preferences.” The agency is proposing to start collecting fees in 2013 after a rulemaking to “determine products to be covered by fees and the level of fees and to ensure that a fee system would not discourage manufacturers from participating in the program or result in a loss of environmental benefits."

EPEAT’s O'Brien said she doesn’t know if the proposal is just a “trial balloon” or to “some extent a reaction to some of the budget issues.” CE makers now pay EPEAT an annual membership fee to register their products but they don’t pay a per-product fee, she said. With manufacturers now having to pay for third-party certification for Energy Star, “cost is an issue,” she said. EPEAT certification, now available for computers, is poised to expand soon to TVs and imaging products.

With Congress looking to cut funding for the EPA and with Energy Star level-funded at best, the program needs “some other funding sources if they are to keep things going,” said Steven Nadel, ACEEE’s executive director. “Lots of manufacturers benefit from promoting products with the Energy Star brand,” he said. So it’s only “natural” to supplement Energy Star funding by collecting a “little bit” from the manufacturers,” Nadel said. “It’s a reasonable step to take.” While the large manufacturers may not be “overjoyed” with the fees, they “should be fine,” he said. “And hopefully, it will be small enough for the small manufacturers” so it’s not “too onerous,” he said.

Despite his efforts to “reach out to the EPA,” he couldn’t “get a real sense of what drove them” to propose the fees, said David Lis, appliance program manager at the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships. Lis said he isn’t sure whether “this is something they are doing proactively or whether they are reacting to the possibility of losing funding. If it was a matter of not having the resources of the budget to administer the program we would certainly see a fee-based program as a viable option.” NEEP would prefer the EPA to be funded at levels that enable it provide Energy Star free to manufacturers, he said.

An Energy Star user fee would reinforce manufacturer commitment to energy efficiency, said Ben Taube, executive director of the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance. The fee would also help keep some “bad products” from getting Energy Star certification, he said.

The CE industry has opposed the fee, saying it’s already burdened with a huge new expense with the third-party certification requirement. Industry officials said that, given the absence of details, they couldn’t tell what impact the fee would have on manufacturer participation in Energy Star. “I think it will definitely force people to re-examine their level of participation,” said one TV maker executive.