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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 127 / Wednesday, July 7, 2021 / Proposed Rules
justified and result in significant energy savings, DOE will announce that conclusion in the Federal Register and proceed with notice-and-comment rulemaking that proposes a determination not to adopt new or amended standards. DOE notes that it will, consistent with its statutory obligations, consider both cost effectiveness and economic justification when issuing a determination not to amend a standard. If DOE receives sufficient information suggesting it could justify a new or amended standard or the information received is inconclusive with regard to the statutory criteria, DOE will move forward with the rulemaking to issue or amend an energy conservation standard. In those instances where the available information either suggested that a new or amended energy conservation standard might be justified or in which the information was inconclusive on this point, and DOE undertakes a rulemaking to establish or amend an energy conservation standard, DOE may still ultimately determine that such a standard is not economically justified, technologically feasible or would not result in a significant savings of energy at a later stage of the rulemaking.
3 Design options. i General. Once the Department has initiated a rulemaking for a specific product/equipment but before publishing a proposed rule to establish or amend standards, DOE will typically identify the product/equipment categories and design options to be analyzed in detail, as well as those design options to be eliminated from further consideration. During the pre-NOPR
stage of the rulemaking, interested parties may be consulted to provide information on key issues, including potential design options, through a variety of rulemaking documents.
ii Identification and screening of design options. During the pre-NOPR phase of the rulemaking process, the Department will typically develop a list of design options for consideration. Initially, the candidate design options will encompass all those technologies considered to be technologically feasible. Following the development of this initial list of design options, DOE will review each design option based on the factors described in paragraph a3iii of this section and the policies stated in section 7
of this Appendix i.e., Policies on Selection of Standards. The reasons for eliminating or retaining any design option at this stage of the process will be fully documented and published as part of the NOPR and as appropriate for a given rule, in the pre-NOPR
documents. The technologically feasible design options that are not eliminated in this screening analysis will be considered further in the Engineering Analysis described in paragraph a4 of this section.
iii Factors for screening of design options.
The factors for screening design options include:
A Technological feasibility. Technologies incorporated in commercial products or equipment or in working prototypes will be considered technologically feasible.
B Practicability to manufacture, install and service. If mass production of a technology under consideration for use in commercially-available products or
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equipment and reliable installation and servicing of the technology could be achieved on the scale necessary to serve the relevant market at the time of the effective date of the standard, then that technology will be considered practicable to manufacture, install, and service.
C Adverse Impacts on Product Utility or Product Availability.
D Adverse Impacts on Health or Safety.
E Unique-Pathway Proprietary Technologies. If a design option utilizes proprietary technology that represents a unique pathway to achieving a given efficiency level, that technology will not be considered further.
4 Engineering analysis of design options and selection of candidate standard levels.
After design options are identified and screened, DOE will perform the engineering analysis and the benefit/cost analysis and select the candidate standard levels based on these analyses. The results of the analyses will be published in a Technical Support Document TSD to accompany the appropriate rulemaking documents.
i Identification of engineering analytical methods and tools. DOE will select the specific engineering analysis tools or multiple tools, if necessary, to address uncertainty to be used in the analysis of the design options identified as a result of the screening analysis.
ii Engineering and life-cycle cost analysis of design options. DOE and its contractors will perform engineering and life-cycle cost analyses of the design options.
iii Review by stakeholders. Interested parties will have the opportunity to review the results of the engineering and life-cycle cost analyses. If appropriate, a public workshop will be conducted to review these results. The analyses will be revised as appropriate on the basis of this input.
iv New information relating to the factors used for screening design options. If further information or analysis leads to a determination that a design option, or a combination of design options, has unacceptable impacts, that design option or combination of design options will not be included in a candidate standard level.
v Selection of candidate standard levels.
Based on the results of the engineering and life-cycle cost analysis of design options and the policies stated in paragraph a3iii of this section, DOE will select the candidate standard levels for further analysis.
5 Analysis of impacts and selection of proposed standard level. If DOE has determined preliminarily that a candidate standard level is likely to produce the maximum improvement in energy efficiency that is both technologically feasible and economically justified and constitutes significant energy savings, economic analyses of the impacts of the candidate standard levels will be conducted. The Department will propose new or amended standards in a subsequent NOPR based on the results of the impact analysis.
i Identification of issues for analysis. The Department, in consideration of comments received, will identify issues that will be examined in the impacts analysis.
ii Identification of analytical methods and tools. DOE will select the specific
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economic analysis tools or multiple tools, if necessary, to address uncertainty to be used in the analysis of the candidate standard levels.
iii Analysis of impacts. DOE will conduct the analysis of the impacts of candidate standard levels.
iv Factors to be considered in selecting a proposed standard. The factors to be considered in selection of a proposed standard include:
A Impacts on manufacturers. The analysis of manufacturer impacts will include:
Estimated impacts on cash flow; assessment of impacts on manufacturers of specific categories of products/equipment and small manufacturers; assessment of impacts on manufacturers of multiple product-specific Federal regulatory requirements, including efficiency standards for other products and regulations of other agencies; and impacts on manufacturing capacity, employment, and capital investment.
B Private impacts on consumers. The analysis of consumer impacts will include:
Estimated private energy savings impacts on consumers based on regional average energy prices and energy usage; assessments of the variability of impacts on subgroups of consumers based on major regional differences in usage or energy prices and significant variations in installation costs or performance; consideration of changes to product utility, changes to purchase rate and/
or costs of products, and other impacts of likely concern to all or some consumers, based to the extent practicable on direct input from consumers; estimated life-cycle cost with sensitivity analysis; and consideration of the increased first cost to consumers and the time required for energy cost savings to pay back these first costs.
C Impacts on competition, including industry concentration analysis.
D Impacts on utilities. The analysis of utility impacts will include estimated marginal impacts on electric and gas utility generation and capacity.
E National energy, economic, and employment impacts. The analysis of national energy, economic, and employment impacts will include: Estimated energy savings by fuel type; estimated net present value of benefits to all consumers; sensitivity analyses using high and low discount rates reflecting both private transactions and social discount rates and high and low energy price forecasts; and estimates of the direct and indirect impacts on employment by appliance manufacturers, relevant service industries, energy suppliers, suppliers of complementary and substitution products, and the economy in general.
F Impacts on the environment. The analysis of environmental impacts will include estimated impacts on emissions of carbon and relevant criteria pollutants.
G Impacts of non-regulatory approaches.
The analysis of energy savings and consumer impacts will incorporate an assessment of the impacts of market forces and existing voluntary programs in promoting product/
equipment efficiency, usage, and related characteristics in the absence of updated efficiency standards.
H New information relating to the factors used for screening design options.

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