Energy Conservation Standards for Manufactured Housing

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY <CFR>10 CFR Part 460</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EERE-2009-BT-BC-0021]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1904-AF73</RIN> <SUBJECT>Energy Conservation Standards for Manufactured Housing</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Department of Energy. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is publishing this rule to amend the compliance date for its manufactured housing energy conservation standards. Previously, manufacturers had to comply with these standards on and after July 1, 2025, for Tier 2 homes and 60 days after the issuance of enforcement procedures for Tier 1 homes. DOE is delaying the Tier 2 compliance date to allow DOE more time to consider the proposed enforcement procedures and comments submitted, and to evaluate appropriate next steps that provide clarity for manufacturers and other stakeholders. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The effective date of this rule is July 2, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The docket for this rulemaking, which includes <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notices, public meeting attendee lists and transcripts, if applicable, comments, and other supporting documents and 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-2009-BT-BC-0021.</E> The docket web page contains instructions on how to access all documents, including public comments, in the docket, as well as a summary of the rulemaking. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Ms. Ani Esenyan, 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">ani.esenyan@hq.doe.gov.</E> Mr. Jeremy Williams, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, 1000 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20585-0121. Telephone: (202) 441-1288. Email: <E T="03">jeremy.williams@ee.doe.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Need To Amend Compliance Date</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Overview of the Final Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Summary of Public Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Discussion of Public Comments Received</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. 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 Executive Orders 14154 and 14192</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Review Under Additional Executive Orders and Procedural Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Approval of the Office of the Secretary</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (“EISA,” Pub. L. 110-140) directs the U.S. Department of Energy (“DOE” or, in context, “the Department”) to establish energy conservation standards for manufactured housing (“MH”). (42 U.S.C. 17071) Manufactured homes are constructed according to a code administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD Code”). 24 CFR part 3280. See also generally 42 U.S.C. 5401-5426. Structures, such as site-built and modular homes, that are constructed to state, local, or regional building codes are excluded from the coverage of the HUD Code. The rulemaking history of the MH energy conservation standards is discussed in the final rule DOE adopted on May 31, 2022 (“May 2022 Final Rule”). 87 FR 32728. In that rule, DOE adopted energy conservation standards for manufactured housing in a new part of the Code of Federal Regulations (“CFR”) under 10 CFR part 460, subparts A, B, and C. Subpart A of 10 CFR part 460 presents generally the scope of the rule and provides definitions of key terms. Subpart B establishes requirements for manufactured homes that relate to climate zones, the building thermal envelope, air sealing, and installation of insulation, based on certain provisions of the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code (“2021 IECC”). Subpart C establishes requirements based on the 2021 IECC related to duct sealing; heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (“HVAC”); service hot water systems; mechanical ventilation fan efficacy; and heating and cooling equipment sizing. Under the energy conservation standards, the stringency of the requirements under subpart B is based on a tiered approach depending on the number of sections of the manufactured home. Accordingly, two sets of standards are established in subpart B ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> Tier 1 and Tier 2). Both Tier 1 and Tier 2 incorporate building thermal envelope measures based on certain thermal envelope components subject to the 2021 IECC that DOE determined applicable and appropriate for manufactured homes. Tier 1 applies these building thermal envelope provisions to single-section manufactured homes but only includes components at stringencies that would increase the incremental purchase price by less than $750 in order to address affordability concerns that were raised by HUD and other stakeholders during the consultation and rulemaking process. Tier 2 applies these same building thermal envelope provisions to multi-section manufactured homes but at higher stringencies specified for site-built homes in the 2021 IECC based on consideration of the design and factory construction techniques of manufactured homes. Manufacturers can comply with the building thermal envelope requirements through a <E T="03">prescriptive</E> pathway ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> using materials with specified ratings) or a <E T="03">performance</E> pathway based on overall thermal transmittance (U <E T="52">o</E> ). See 10 CFR 460.102(c). Further, the energy conservation standards for both tiers also include duct and air sealing, insulation installation, HVAC and service hot water system specifications, mechanical ventilation fan efficacy, and heating and cooling equipment sizing provisions, based on the 2021 IECC. DOE concluded that this approach is cost-effective based on the expected total life-cycle cost (“LCC”) savings for the lifetime of the home associated with implementation of the energy conservation standards. <E T="03">See e.g.,</E> 87 FR 32742. In the May 2022 Final Rule, DOE adopted a compliance date such that the standards would apply to manufactured homes that are manufactured on or after one year following the publication date of the final rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , which was May 31, 2023. In doing so, DOE noted its belief that many manufacturers already have experience complying with efficiency requirements similar to what DOE required in the May 2022 Final Rule based on manufacturers' previous experience with U <E T="52">o</E> requirements, as historically relied upon under the broader HUD standards for manufactured housing, and ENERGY STAR Version 2 efficiency requirements for homes produced on or after June 1, 2020. 87 FR 32759. DOE did not specify its approach for enforcement of the standards in the May 2022 Final Rule and stated that manufacturers would be able to comply with the standards as they were issued. DOE posited that many of the requirements in the standards would require minimal compliance efforts ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> documenting the use of materials subject to separate Federal or industry standards, such as the R-value of insulation or U-factor values for fenestration). 87 FR 32758, 32790. Nevertheless, DOE noted in the May 2022 Final Rule that it may address compliance and enforcement issues and procedures in a future agency action (see 87 FR 32757-32758). On March 24, 2023, DOE published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) proposing to amend the compliance date for the manufactured housing energy conservation standards (88 FR 17745, “March 2023 NOPR”). In that NOPR, DOE described the need to amend the compliance date for the manufactured housing standards, noting that it had not yet issued procedures for investigating and enforcing against noncompliance with the standards, and that a delay was necessary to ensure that DOE could receive and incorporate meaningful stakeholder feedback into its enforcement procedures prior to part 460's compliance date. Accordingly, DOE proposed to require compliance with the Tier 1 standards beginning 60 days after publication of its final enforcement procedures, and compliance with the Tier 2 standards beginning 180 days after publication of its final enforcement procedures. 88 FR 17746. In a final rule published on May 30, 2023, DOE amended the compliance date for 10 CFR part 460 consistent with its proposed compliance date in the Mar 23, 2023, NOPR for Tier 1 ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> 60 days after issuance of DOE's enforcement procedures for part 460). (88 FR 34411, “May 2023 Final Rule”) However, for Tier 2, DOE amended the compliance date to July 1, 2025. After consideration of comments received in response to the March 2023 NOPR, in the May 2023 Final Rule DOE determined that amending the compliance date to July 1, 2025, for Tier 2 homes would provide greater certainty for manufacturers versus an indeterminate date. DOE published a NOPR on December 26, 2023, proposing enforcement procedures for manufactured homes (88 FR 88844, “December 2023 Enforcement NOPR”). DOE is continuing to consider the proposed enforcement procedures and comments submitted and has not yet ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 35k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━