NEMA Commends House Passage of Energy-Efficiency Package

Dec. 5, 2012
The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) today welcomed the House passage of several energy-efficiency amendments to HR 6582, “American Energy Manufacturing Technical Corrections Act.”

The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) today welcomed the House passage of several energy efficiency amendments to HR 6582, “American Energy Manufacturing Technical Corrections Act.”

“NEMA is committed to increasing our energy independence and this legislation takes key steps in that direction,” said Evan R. Gaddis, NEMA president and CEO. “We encourage the Senate to pass this commonsense bill and look forward to our continued work with Congress to address our nation’s energy needs.” 

Authored by Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL) and modified in part with language originally included in Rep. Charles Bass’ (R-NH) Smart Energy Act (HR 4017), the American Energy Manufacturing Technical Corrections Act includes five key areas of improvement that line up with what the Senate passed in September under the leadership of Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Rob Portman (R-OH):

  • Requires the U.S. Department of Energy, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense and the General Services Administration, to develop and issue an annual best-practices report on advanced metering of energy use in federal facilities.
  • Directs Energy Department to establish collaborative research and development partnerships with other programs to support the use of innovative manufacturing processes and applied research for development, demonstration, and commercialization of new technologies and processes to improve industrial efficiency.
  • Compels certain federal facilities to use a web-based tracking system to publish energy and water consumption data on an individual facility basis; this is in addition to existing requirements for tracking compliance with energy and water audit and savings of the measures, and benchmarking of energy use.
  • Requires the Energy Department to conduct a study, in conjunction with the industrial sector, of the barriers to deployment of industrial efficiency technologies such as electric motors, demand response, combined heat and power, and waste heat recovery, and to provide policy recommendations for overcoming these barriers.
  • Clarifies the factors the Secretary of Energy must consider as part of the economic justification for any new minimum efficiency standard under the residential appliance and commercial equipment energy conservation program.  Also makes certain technical corrections to lighting efficiency and electric motor provisions in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

Now that the House and Senate have each passed a version of this bill, further action is required before the end of the year to reconcile the differences. “We are hopeful that the two chambers can come together quickly on this modest, yet important, package of energy efficiency policies and NEMA is working hard for a successful outcome,” said Gaddis.

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