Power and Security Systems (PASS) Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6375, the Power and Security Systems, or PASS Act. This bill will provide an important technical exemption to certain security and life safety products from energy efficiency standards set forth in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. A provision in the law increased the energy efficiency requirements for battery chargers and external power supplies--and I strongly supported that change. However, the provision also mistakenly included security and life safety products, and required that they be manufactured with a standby mode, despite being products that are inherently always on.

Without providing this correction, the security industry will need to spend millions of dollars to comply with an energy standard that will yield no energy savings and could cost jobs, which was never the initial intent of the law.

Six years ago, I stood on the House floor in support of legislation I authored that provided this exemption through July 2017. I'm pleased that Representative Welch, along with Representative Pompeo, has taken up this important issue and introduced this bill to extend the exemption I originally authored through 2023. And, the language in the bill before us today will also allow the Department of Energy to extend this exemption or reclassify these products into a separate class if they deem it appropriate.

Mr. Speaker, this is a commonsense and consensus fix to a simple problem: the language was developed by both industry and efficiency advocates, with technical assistance from the Department of Energy. So it should come as no surprise that this bill enjoys broad support from the security industry and energy efficiency advocates. I urge all of my colleagues to support it.

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