Energy Conservation Program: Proposed Withdrawal of Determination of Portable Electric Spas as a Covered Consumer Product

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY <CFR>10 CFR Part 430</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EERE-2025-BT-DET-0004]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1904-AF74</RIN> <SUBJECT>Energy Conservation Program: Proposed Withdrawal of Determination of Portable Electric Spas 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 rulemaking; proposed withdrawal of determination. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> DOE is proposing to withdraw its prior determination that portable electric spas (“PESs”) qualify as covered products under Part A of Title III of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, as amended (“EPCA”). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments, data, and information are requested and will be accepted on or before May 19, 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-0004. Follow the instructions for submitting comments. Alternatively, interested persons may submit comments, identified by docket number EERE-2025-BT-DET-0004, by any of the following methods: (1) <E T="03">Email: PES2025DET0004@ee.doe.gov.</E> Include the docket number EERE-2025-BT-DET-0004 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, see section III 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-0004.</E> The docket web page contains instructions on how to access all documents, including public comments, in the docket. See section III 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> Dr. Carl Shapiro, 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: (240) 315-4339. Email: <E T="03">ApplianceStandardsQuestions@ee.doe.gov.</E> Ms. Kristin Koernig, 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">Kristin.koernig@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. General Discussion</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. 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. Review Under the Information Quality Bulletin for Peer Review</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">M. Review Under Additional Executive Orders and Presidential Memoranda</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Public Participation</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Submission of Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Issues on Which DOE Seeks Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Approval of the Office of the Secretary</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. General Discussion</HD> Under EPCA, DOE may add consumer products to the list of covered products for which energy conservation standards can be established. 42 U.S.C. 6292(b)(1) The coverage determination procedures require DOE to conclude that classifying products of such type as covered products is necessary or appropriate to carry out the purposes of this chapter, among other requirements. <E T="03">Id.</E> at 42 U.S.C. 6292(b)(1)(A). Only after coverage is determined, DOE may then adopt standards and test procedures regulating such products, pursuant to the requirements set out in the statute. See generally 42 U.S.C. 6293, 6295. On February 16, 2022, DOE published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> a notice of proposed determination (“NOPD”) that proposed to determine coverage for PESs. 87 FR 8745 (February 16, 2022) (“February 2022 NOPD”). After considering public comments, data, and information from interested parties submitted in response to the February 2022 NOPD, DOE finalized the coverage determination for PESs. 87 FR 54123 (Sept. 2, 2022) (“September 2022 Determination”). As part of the determination, DOE adopted a definition of “portable electric spa.”  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  DOE defined “portable electric spa” as a factory-built electric spa or hot tub, supplied with equipment for heating and circulating water at the time of sale or sold separately for subsequent attachment. <E T="03">See</E> 10 CFR 430.2. </FTNT> DOE has reevaluated whether including portable electric spas as a covered product is necessary and appropriate to carry out the purposes of EPCA. Based on that evaluation, DOE has tentatively determined that, at this time, it is not necessary or appropriate to classify portable electric spas as a covered product to carry out the purposes of EPCA. EPCA provides the Secretary discretion in classifying a type of consumer product as a covered product as the Secretary <E T="03">may</E> classify if certain requirements are met. (See 42 U.S.C. 6292(b) (emphasis added)). While DOE found in the September 2022 Determination that classifying PESs as a covered product was needed to set energy conservation standards for PESs and carry out EPCA's purposes to conserve energy supplies and provide for improved energy efficiency of other consumer products, DOE has reevaluated that determination. See 87 FR 54123, 54126. Using the discretion provided by EPCA for classifying additional covered products, DOE has tentatively determined that there are other avenues to conserve energy supplies than classifying PESs as a covered product and establishing standards. Therefore, DOE has tentatively found that classifying PESs as a covered product is not necessary or appropriate to carry out the purposes of EPCA. DOE requests comment on its proposal to withdraw coverage for portable electric spas. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Procedural Issues and Regulatory Review</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Review Under Executive Orders 12866 and 13563</HD> Executive Order (“E.O.”) 12866, “Regulatory Planning and Review,” as supplemented and reaffirmed by E.O. 13563, “Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review, 76 FR 3821 (Jan. 21, 2011), requires agencies, to the extent permitted by law, to (1) propose or adopt a regulation only upon a reasoned determination that its benefits justify its costs (recognizing that some benefits and costs are difficult to quantify); (2) tailor regulations to impose the least burden on society, consistent with obtaining regulatory objectives, taking into account, among other things, and to the extent practicable, the costs of cumulative regulations; (3) select, in choosing among alternative regulatory approaches, those approaches that maximize net benefits (including potential economic, environmental, public health and safety, and other advantages; distributive impacts; and equity); (4) to the extent feasible, specify performance objectives, rather than specifying the behavior or manner of compliance that regulated entities must adopt; and (5) identify and assess available alternatives to direct regulation, including providing economic incentives to encourage the desired behavior, such as user fees or marketable permits, or providing information upon which choices can be made by the public. DOE emphasizes as well that E.O. 13563 requires agencies to use the best available techniques to quantify anticipated present and future benefits and costs as accurately as possible. In its guidance, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (“OIRA”) in the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) has emphasized that such techniques may include identifying ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 33k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━