Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2013

Floor Speech

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues on the House Energy and Commerce Committee for their leadership and shared goal of promoting legislation that incentivizes stakeholders to manufacture and implement energy efficient technologies throughout our economy. Congress should always be looking for creative ways to incentivize our great American innovators like A.O. Smith to manufacture energy efficient technologies that consumers clearly want. So I commend you on your dedication to this effort and look forward to supporting H.R. 2126.

Sometimes we don't have to look too hard for ways to unleash American innovation and promote energy efficiency. Sometimes, we just have to use common sense and get the Federal Government out of the way.

One concrete way Congress can force the government to get out of the way of our job creators would be to require the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency to recognize independent test results for air conditioning, furnace, boiler, heat pump and water heater products that are already subject to the rigors of an independent voluntary industry compliance program (or ``VICP'').

Through the VICP, manufacturers of these highly efficient products contract with an independent, third-party laboratory to ensure their products comply with federal efficiency and conservation standards. Manufacturers spend millions to participate and run the VICP, and the program has been a resounding success for years.

But the federal government won't accept VICP data for compliance purposes. Instead, the DOE and EPA (which manages the Energy Star program) force manufacturers that participate in the VICP to subject their products to two additional rounds of tests to satisfy agency standards. But to make matters worse, the DOE and EPA tests aren't any different than the VICP tests. Each test takes place at the same laboratories responsible for the VICP tests, with the same technicians on the same products.

The end result: manufacturers of highly efficient air conditioning, furnace, boiler, heat pump and water heater products pay for three rounds of tests to effectuate the same result: making federal regulators happy.

That, my colleagues, smacks of inefficient government bureaucracy that serves no purpose other than redirecting operational capital to satisfy the whims of the Obama Administration. We can and should do a better job of incentivizing manufacturers to innovate and invest in job creation--not to waste precious operational capital on complying with nonsensical bureaucratic mandates.

I intend to eliminate this regulatory roadblock through legislation very similar to an amendment introduced last September by Senators Sessions and Pryor during debate for S. 1392. That amendment, in the words of Senator Sessions, would have ``require[d] the Energy Department, when conducting routine testing to verify product ratings, to rely on data submitted through voluntary, independent certification programs'' that satisfy a robust test of independence and transparency.

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