Energy Conservation Program: Proposed Withdrawal of Determination of Miscellaneous Gas Products as a Covered Consumer Product

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY <CFR>10 CFR Part 430</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EERE-2025-BT-DET-0002]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1904-AF70</RIN> <SUBJECT>Energy Conservation Program: Proposed Withdrawal of Determination of Miscellaneous Gas Products as a Covered Consumer Product</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Department of Energy. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rule; proposed withdrawal of determination. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> As part of its implementation of the Executive Order, “Unleashing American Energy” (Jan. 20, 2025), the U.S. Department of Energy (“DOE”) is reviewing existing agency actions to ensure, among other things, that all regulatory requirements related to energy are grounded in clearly applicable law and that the American people's freedom to choose from a variety of goods and appliances is not restricted. As a result of this review, DOE is proposing to withdraw its prior determination that miscellaneous gas products (“MGPs”), which are comprised of decorative hearths and outdoor heaters, qualify as covered products under Part A of Title III of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, as amended (“EPCA”). After further consideration of the relevant statutory authority and available information, DOE is proposing to withdraw its determination that MGPs are covered products under EPCA for which DOE is authorized to establish test procedures and energy conservation standards. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments, data, and information are requested and will be accepted on or before April 14, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Interested persons are encouraged to submit comments using the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> under docket number EERE-2025-BT-DET-0002. Follow the instructions for submitting comments. Alternatively, interested persons may submit comments, identified by docket number EERE-2025-BT-DET-0002, by any of the following methods: (1) <E T="03">Email: MscGasProds2025DET 0002@ee.doe.gov.</E> Include the docket number EERE-2025-BT-DET-0002 in the subject line of the message. (2) <E T="03">Postal Mail:</E> Appliance and Equipment Standards Program, U.S. Department of Energy, Building Technologies Office, Mailstop EE-5B, 1000 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20585-0121. Telephone: (202) 287-1445. If possible, please submit all items on a compact disc (“CD”), in which case it is not necessary to include printed copies. (3) <E T="03">Hand Delivery/Courier:</E> Appliance and Equipment Standards Program, U.S. Department of Energy, Building Technologies Office, 1000 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20585-0121. Telephone: (202) 287-1445. If possible, please submit all items on a CD, in which case it is not necessary to include printed copies. No telefacsimiles (“faxes”) will be accepted. For detailed instructions on submitting comments and additional information on this process, <E T="03">see</E> section V of this document. <E T="03">Docket:</E> The docket for this activity, which includes <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notices, public meeting attendee lists and transcripts (if a public meeting is held), comments, and other supporting documents/materials, is available for review at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> All documents in the docket are listed in the <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> index. However, not all documents listed in the index may be publicly available, such as information that is exempt from public disclosure. The docket web page can be found at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov/docket/EERE-2025-BT-DET-0002.</E> The docket web page contains instructions on how to access all documents, including public comments, in the docket. <E T="03">See</E> section IV of this document for information on how to submit comments through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Ms. Julia Hegarty, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Building Technologies Office, EE-5B, 1000 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20585-0121. Telephone: (202) 287-1445. Email: <E T="03">ApplianceStandards Questions@ee.doe.gov.</E> Mr. Matthew Schneider, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of the General Counsel, GC-33, 1000 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20585-0121. Telephone: (202) 586-4798. Email: <E T="03">Matthew.Schneider@hq.doe.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Introduction</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Statutory Authority</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. General Discussion</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Procedural Issues and Regulatory Review</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Review Under Executive Orders 12866 and 13563</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Review Under the Regulatory Flexibility Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Review Under the Paperwork Reduction Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Review Under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Review Under Executive Order 13132</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Review Under Executive Order 12988</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Review Under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">H. Review Under the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act, 1999</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">I. Review Under Executive Order 12630</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">J. Review Under the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act, 2001</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">K. Review Under Executive Order 13211</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">L. Information Quality</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">M. Review Under Additional Executive Orders and Presidential Memoranda</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Public Participation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Approval of the Office of the Secretary</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Introduction</HD> The following section briefly discusses the statutory authority underlying this notice of proposed withdrawal of determination, as well as some of the relevant historical background related to the inclusion of MGPs as covered equipment under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (“EPCA”), as amended. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Statutory Authority</HD> EPCA  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> authorizes DOE to regulate the energy efficiency of a number of consumer products and certain industrial equipment. Title III, Part B  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> of EPCA established the Energy Conservation Program for Consumer Products Other Than Automobiles, which sets forth a variety of provisions designed to improve energy efficiency for certain consumer products, referred to generally as “covered products”. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> In addition to specifying a list of consumer products that are covered products, EPCA authorizes the Secretary of Energy to classify additional types of consumer products as covered products. EPCA defines a “consumer product” in relevant part as any article (other than an automobile) of a type—(A) which in operation consumes, or is designed to consume, energy; and (B) which, to any significant extent, is distributed in commerce for personal use or consumption by individuals; without regard to whether such article of such type is in fact distributed in commerce for personal use or consumption by an individual. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> (42 U.S.C. 6291(a)(1)). For a given consumer product to be classified as a covered product, the Secretary must determine that: classifying the product as a covered product is necessary or appropriate to carry out the purposes of this chapter; and the average annual per-household energy use by products of such type is likely to exceed 100 kilowatt-hours (“kWh”) (or its British thermal unit (“Btu”) equivalent) per year. (42 U.S.C. 6292(b)(1)). <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  All references to EPCA in this document refer to the statute as amended through the Energy Act of 2020, Public Law 116-260 (Dec. 27, 2020). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  For editorial reasons, upon codification in the U.S. Code, Part B was redesignated Part A and is hereinafter referred to as such. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  The enumerated list of covered products is at 42 U.S.C. 6292(a)(1)-(19). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  As such, in considering the potential scope of coverage, DOE does not consider whether an individual product is distributed in commerce for residential or commercial use, but whether it is <E T="03">of a type</E> of product distributed in commerce for residential use. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  DOE has defined “household” to mean an entity consisting of either an individual, a family, or a group of unrelated individuals, who reside in a particular housing unit. For the purpose of this definition: Group quarters means living quarters that are occupied by an institutional group of 10 or more unrelated persons, such as a nursing home, military barracks, halfway house, college dormitory, fraternity or sorority house, convent, shelter, jail or correctional institution. Housing unit means a house, an apartment, a group of rooms, or a single room occupied as separate living quarters, but does not include group quarters. Separate living quarters means living quarters: (i) to which the occupants have access either directly from outside of the building, or through a common hall that is accessible to other living quarters and that does not go through someone else's living quarters, and (ii) occupied by one or more persons who live and eat separately from occupant(s) of other living quarters, if any, in the same building. 10 CFR 430.2. </FTNT> When deciding whether a consumer product should be classified as a covered product, DOE must first determine whether t ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 43k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━