Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: We're live. Alright. Welcome everybody to House Energy and Digital Infrastructure. It's Wednesday, April 15, and we are really beginning our testimony on H 600, an act relating to appliance efficiency. And what we usually do is we'll go around the room and introduce ourselves, and then we'll turn it over to you for the record. So I'm representative Kathleen James from the Bennington Ford District.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Scott Campbell from Saint John Frank.

[Richard Bailey (Member)]: Richard Bailey, 1102. Chris Morrow, Windham, Windsor Bennington. Christopher Howland, Rutland four.

[Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Dara Torre, Washington two.

[Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Bram Kleppner, Chittenden 13, Burlington.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Laura Sibilia, Tennessee. Great, and joining us? Jada Gleason, Rutland, Bram Kleppner.

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: Bennington, Julie Walter, B. Bergen.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Great. All right, for the record, Chris, thanks for being here.

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: Oh, thank you very much for having me, and it's a pleasure to be back after eight years, I think, the last time that I appeared before this committee, or the earlier incarnation.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: The earlier iteration. Yeah.

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: Yeah. I'm here today as a private citizen, but I have a substantial background in the area of energy efficiency standards. I won't go through everything here, but this is excerpts from my resume. As I mentioned before, I've appeared before this committee on earlier energy standards legislation, but I've also been a consultant to the legislature on a total energy study, which is now quite a while ago. I've been working pretty exclusively on energy standards at the federal and state level for about the last decade now for a couple of different organizations. I live in Richmond and have for twenty two years. So it is really nice to be back.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Great. Thank you for being here.

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: So I'm I've been tasked today with doing a little bit of energy standards one zero one. Yeah. And so I'm gonna go through a lot of information quickly, and I'd encourage you to please interrupt and and ask questions if there's anything you don't understand. I also try to structure this so that we get through this in twenty, twenty five minutes and have some time for Q and A at the end.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Perfect. Okay. So we will why don't we not why don't we let Chris

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: Okay.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Do his presentation. We're a very question y committee. So if we start asking you questions along the way, we're gonna be here till tomorrow.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Just ignore us.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah. So let's let's get through your material, and why don't people just make notes if they have questions so we can believe me, is a better way.

[Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Okay, okay. So,

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: first of all, what are you talking about today? There's a lot of information out there. Sometimes there's some confusion, but I want to make the distinction between mandatory technical regulations that have the force of law and voluntary technical specifications, which do not, and these are both very active in our economy and in Vermont. On the mandatory side you have the federal standards, the state standards, and then procurement standards, which you may not have heard of, but this is where an agency says for buying this equipment that we use, we're going to set our own internal standards and not buy anything that doesn't meet them. On the voluntary side, there's ENERGY STAR, which most people are familiar with to some extent, and then there's programs like Efficiency Vermont, which are now in about, I'd say, about half of all US states to some degree, actually probably more than that, about $8,000,000,000 a year of state level incentives now go to those programs. Then there are the industry or technical association standards by ASHRAE, AHRI, CTA, other industry associations to develop their own standards. Those are all voluntary, but sometimes they get taken into mandatory standards, and so you can often really have a great economic force even though they are voluntary. But today what we are going to talk about are federal and state standards, and so we are going to talk about rules that have the force of law. The US Federal Energy Efficiency Standards are administered by the US Department of Energy, and they fall into four major groups of different kinds of products. You have consumer products and that's household appliances, you might think of dishwashers, clothes washers, things like that, residential heating, ventilation and cooling equipment, so water heaters, air conditioners, furnaces, and consumer electronics, battery chargers, just for example. There are 28 different categories of those. On the commercial industrial side, there are the commercial analogs, some of these residential appliances that I just mentioned, like commercial water heaters, for example, commercial HVAC equipment, and then because a lot of commercial or industrial equipment is site built, if you will, assembled out of components within a commercial facility, there are standards that also apply to some of the components, and particularly pumps and motors. Motors are particularly important, because if you think about it, there are motors in just about everything, and so you get a little bit of efficiency in an electric motor, and you end up affecting the efficiency of all kinds of equipment. So that's why they're structured that way. But there's 27 different categories of those, so we're now up to 55. Lighting has its own category, and this may be one that you've heard of before because this tends to get a lot of attention. And that breaks down into lamps, which are the bulb's light sources, and luminaires, which are the light fixtures. We're going through a historic shift now in technology from everything that came before, everything from an incandescent light bulb to fluorescent to whatever, everything is going to LEDs now, and that's changing how these standards work. We won't get into that too much today unless you ask some questions about it, though it's really quite complicated, but it's a good example of how the standards have to be able to adapt to changes in technology. 15 categories there, so we're up to 70 different categories of standards. The final one is plumbing, and that's a little bit different because these are water efficiency standards, not explicitly energy efficiency standards. The thing that's important to remember, though, is that water efficiency standards actually are energy efficiency standards, because pretty much every bit of useful water that we have has to be pumped, has to go through some kind of pretreatment, and then it has to be disposed of. We look at these, water is important, but it also has an energy impact as well. There's just five of those, faucets, showers, toilets, urinals, and then you may not be familiar with commercial pre rinse spray valves, but they're in pretty much every restaurant, and it's for prepping dishes before they're washed. Okay, so what are the specific characteristics of that current system, of that program on the federal level? I think the most important thing is that before anything can become a standard through the normal process, by the normal process I mean the one that's most common, not if there's anything wrong with the alternatives, which exist, the alternatives being what you're all engaged in, because at the federal level, you can have and you do have standards that were developed and implemented through legislation. But what I'm talking about with the normal process as administrative rulemaking by the Department of Energy. And those are multi year, typically three to five, and involve input from teams of consultants. There are federal consultants who are actually employed by the Department of Energy, and then consultants like myself who testify or present research on behalf of interested parties. I've done that on behalf of nonprofit groups, on behalf of the California investor owned electric utilities, which is a current fine of mine, and industry typically will either hire consultants or bring their own technical teams in, and then there are you name it, and it depends on the technology, it depends on the time, because sometimes there's just more attention paid to these rule makings than others, but I've been to a hearing room at DOE in Washington with three other people, and I've been there with 50 other people. It kind of runs the gamut, depending on what it is, but it's important to stress that these are public processes and they're transparent processes. Everybody's involved is recorded. All of the information that's presented is made available publicly. You can go to the DOE website and access it all, and how DOE arrives at its final determinations of what goes into the standards is explained, so any time that they say, We're using this number. Where did the number come from? Who brought it to the table? Why did they think that number was better than a different number? They try and be as transparent as possible about that. Real briefly for the rest of these, the standards come with test procedures, and that's part of the federal rule is that if a standard applies, manufacturers cannot make claims about the energy use of their products unless they were derived using the official DOE test procedure. That enables the performance of the products to be compared, so it improves the data and information that's available to consumers. Compliant products have to be listed in an official DOE database, and the rest of these things are less important, but I'll bundle them together and say it's all designed to minimize disruption to the economy, so it's making sure that everybody knows what rules are coming down the pike with enough lead time that industry, retailers, consumers can all adjust to the changes, and these are rules that have been worked out over decades now between industry and the federal government with lots of input. Final thing to say, and these are the last two items here, that the one thing that under law the rules cannot do is become less efficient over time. That's the anti backsliding provision, and that reflects the way technology moves. I'm sure there'll be questions about that, but let's put that aside for a second. And then any federal standard preempts state standard on the same technology, and that was a critical point that industry demanded because what industry wants is certainty, and a patchwork quilt of state standards is not in the industry's best interest, and so their stake in this program is knowing that if a standard becomes a federal standard, then it preempts all state standards. All right, so why is the industry interested in this at all? We've talked about the performance information, and really what we're talking about in a macroeconomic sense is that if you make equipment more efficient, that means its operating costs drop, which means that you can afford to spend more on the capital equipment, so it's a shift from O and M to capital basically there, and it has other benefits for the environment as well, but that's the main economic effect. Now, to be honest, I've certainly met plenty of folks in industry who were not thrilled about being regulated in this way, but there's a continuum and more one than you might expect because what the standards do, and they follow the rules that have been set, is give regulatory certainty. The standard goes in place and industry knows that's the minimum that they have to meet for at least six years, and then they'll go into a process that they get to take part in and contribute to, and they are going to have some ability to perceive what the outcome is going to be. What I've seen is that it's often an adjustment period when a new standard comes out. Recently there was one on industrial air compressors that hadn't come under a standard before, and the industry was quite resistant at first, but what we saw is that over time industry embraces it because it sets the playing field, And now all of the people who have invested in their industry, in their products, know how their products compete against their competitors, and they know where the government is, at least in terms of this area. Think really the big benefit is the communication that happens. I know the GovOps teams at all of the major players on the three largest water heater manufacturers in The US by first names. We talk about what their challenges are all the time. They know where the utilities are coming from, they know where the environmental groups are coming from. It creates a forum for the exchange of ideas and discussions, and what we've seen over the decades now is that when all of the parties agree, it really can accelerate energy efficiency. All of those 75 categories of equipment have gotten significantly more efficient over time. So just to summarize then at the federal level here, we're talking about a very established regime of regulation. It got started in 1975 and has been continually I'm talking about the underlying statute has been tweaked and expanded in some areas. Also, more guide rails put in to provide more certainty for industry and others, but this is something that's been around for a long time and it's been revisited by Congress a number of times. And in terms of effectiveness, this is one of those things, and I think government always has the challenge of explaining something that didn't happen, but in this case what didn't happen is for about twenty years electricity consumption in The United States didn't increase, and that was during a period when population increased and GDP increased. Now there's a lot going on. We've had the restructuring of American manufacturing, for example, but the economists who've tried to pull this apart say maybe about half of the effect is due to the standards, And it's because everything if you think about it, everything in every building has gotten gradually more efficient over time. And all of that money that basically was going up in smoke is being built into long term capital equipment, and it has been saved for the users and for the economy as a whole. So now we're going to talk about state standards, Now you have the background on what happens at the federal level. Why do state standards at all? I guess it's kind of the obvious question. And it's a lot more limited scope. It can only be applied to products that aren't preempted by federal standards, as I mentioned before, and they're mostly enacted to legislation, though there are some exceptions and I'm going talk about that in a second. Most states do not develop test procedures. They don't have the capacity to do that, but they'll use either existing industry test procedures or if there happens to be a DOE test procedure, of course there usually isn't because it's not a DOE standard, right? It's a state standard. But they have to have one put in place. Sometimes the compliant products are put in a database. New England states have a database when they share common standards. And then a big difference is that at the federal level, if a non compliant product can't be imported or manufactured, but it often can be sold, and the reason is that if you have a warehouse full of inventory and the standard comes into effect, you don't want that to have to go to waste. So federal standards usually allow sell through, and sometimes that process can take years, depending on what At technology the state level, just because of the way the state authority works, there tend to be prohibitions on sale. State standards prohibit the sale of non compliant products, but often will allow products to be manufactured or shipped through if there are other markets where they are. Again, why do state standards? And the main reason historically has been because state standards become federal standards, and states become the laboratories of energy efficiency standards. Historically, the state that has played that role particularly is California, but it's not just California, but a very common pattern is that California will invest the money to develop a state standard for their 12% of the population, and I think it's up to 16% of The US economy now. They'll put it in place. If it looks good, other states will start to adopt it, and then industry goes to Washington and says, Hey, we're having a patchwork problem. Can you engage and adopt? This is a federal standard. The joke that I tell is I work at the federal standard, the state standard, and the California standard regularly because California does have a special status with that. That's changing a bit because New York has now started to develop its own capacity to do the same thing that California did through NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Reserve Development Authority, and some other states are looking at it, but are not close. Basically, all the other states that I've listed here on the slide don't have that ability to administer, but they have at one time or another adopted energy efficiency or water efficiency standards. Now let's focus down on Vermont. I'm giving you a view of what's currently on the books. So the blue standards on the left are standards that got put in place. I'm not exactly sure what year, but this is the first bunch of standards that were adopted as state standards at Vermont. Those all subsequently became federal standards and are preempted. They're still in the books, but they're not in fact in Vermont. The ones in yellow were ones that were adopted in 2017, the last time I came before 2017 or 2018, the last time I came before this committee, and these were ones that were adopted at the federal level, but there was a situation where during the first Trump administration a number of standards had been finished and published in the Federal Register, but there's a process where there's two weeks of error correction review, and that actually fell over the inauguration. What happened was, is that following the inauguration, they disappeared. It took three years in the court case until they were finally put in place, but in the interim, a number of states adopted them state standards to say, hey, these are federal standards and we want to support them, and Vermont did the same. So these are the active standards that are on the books in Vermont, and some of these were put in place in 2017 and at other times. The numbers in parentheses show the number of other states that have also adopted these, so these are ones that, let's say, are in that process of being adopted by states with the intent and the hope that eventually they will become federal standards. I highlighted the T12 fluorescent luminaires in green because that has not been adopted by other states. That was one that Representative Curt McCormick, who was the champion of this last round of STEM discussions, put into the bill himself. I can go into all the details about that. For various reasons, it is now obsolete, but it was very innovative at the time and it is a good example of how Vermont has been willing, despite our size, to step up and be part of this discussion and to innovate when necessary. The final point here in yellow is that the current rules in Vermont adopt all current federal standards as Vermont state standards in a situation, and you will hear more about this I think from other testifiers later on, where the federal standards are voided for some reason. This was never a concern until relatively recently, but I think the only way to say it is the federal standards are under attack by the Department of Energy right now, and there have been attempts, one

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: of

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: them successful, to actually remove standards once they're in effect. You can imagine from industry's perspective, this is terrible because it adds a whole other layer of uncertainty to regulation, but it also will have an effect on energy consumption eventually also. And that probably took longer than I expected, but

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: thank you for your So the last point is really the point is is what you're saying did that go back to that last slide again, Sure. Is that in state statute now, your understanding? Federal standards are Vermont state standards if federal standards are voided. Do we have that in place?

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: We do, but because it was passed in 2017, it's standards as of 2017. So what it doesn't cover is anything that's happened in the last eight years.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Okay, so then sorry, this is the bill that would update that date to 2025.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Had we had we stripped h 600 down to the of what we're actually doing here, you would literally see one change, which is moving 2017 to 2020

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: So

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: we're just it would be an update. Can you go back to the, is it that was it. Right? Yeah. That was super helpful. Can you go back? It was a slide that had anyway, can you start scrolling back, and then I'll know when I see it? Nope. Okay. Keep going. Sorry. Yes. Characteristics of. One more forward.

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: Sorry. Okay.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: There we go. Oh. Nope. Yes. Alright. So I I this is where I wanted to make sure I'm understanding. So so this is a so the what we're talking about in h 600 is has is pegged only to the federal standards, which, as you explained on your first slide, are the baseline regulations that all appliances have to adhere to, period. Yes. Okay. And so this is not because this has come up in our preliminary conversations too. This this bill does not relate to the higher bar voluntary things like energy star or additional gold stars you might want to put on your product. We're talking about the the basic bottom line federal regulation that manufacturers must adhere to if they want to make Okay. Or sell this that was one thing I wanted to make sure that we were all clear on. And so, it's a it's a multi year rule making process that happens at the federal level. It's accompanied by testing procedures. And I didn't know that non compliant products could still be sold. So can you talk a little bit more about that and about what we might do in H600? And that was an area where I wasn't Yeah, following

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: that's an interesting question. Because of wanting to avoid disruption to the economy and to minimize impact on the manufacturers, the federal standards with one exception, and I'll put that aside for a second, when they come into effect, they allow products that have already been manufactured and imported that are basically in the retail distribution process in The US to go through that process and to be sold legally. That's usually without any kind of limit, so with light bulbs you would guess they pretty much go through that process within a year or larger industrial equipment, it might take a while. It's

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: almost like an inventory Yeah. Thing. Right? Like, if it's already in the pipeline or you've already made it or it's sitting in your warehouse somewhere, you can sell it. You just can't make Yeah. A new appliance that doesn't comply. Right.

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: Yep.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay. And then subject to review every six years, I know we've talked about that a little bit, or a review has just been fairly recently completed, right?

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: Well, mean, it's different for the different categories.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Oh, okay. Well, guess that makes sense. It's not, okay.

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: Actually, it's worth saying that, and this is not politically driven, this has been true for every administration as long as I've known, they get behind. Right. So, six years is the minimum, but it typically takes longer.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay, and then on the anti backsliding, this is a very helpful slide for me. So it's not that the standards can't be weakened.

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: That's correct.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: You can't say, oh, well, you no longer have to have this widget. It's that they literally by law, they can't become less efficient. They can only be repealed, like removed. Well, that's And that's what we're talking about here, right?

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: Yeah, and the question, the underlying legal question is whether removal would constitute backsliding under ETCA, under the enabling legislation, and I think that's probably going to be tested in the next couple of years. It hasn't really gotten quite to that point yet.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: So, if there were an effort at the federal level, it can't be to weaken. There could be an effort at the federal level to repeal or remove certain standards that could wind up in court or being challenged and get all tied up in a big kerfuffle in the courts. If in the meantime, we would have our standards would be would remain. We would have ours we would have those standards in place here in Vermont while the brouhaha goes on elsewhere.

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: Well Am I understanding The this only thing I'd add is it would be Vermont, California, and I can't remember which other states have taken that step, so it's not Vermont alone.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay. Okay. Can we look at some other slides? Sure. Could you just slowly go forward?

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: You want me to go towards the beginning or?

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: I don't think I have quest well, you know what? Let's just super quickly. Sorry. Okay. I don't

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: have questions about this. But this I think we're at the beginning here. Okay. So Yeah. Let's see.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Talked about that. Hey. That was a great slide for me. Okay. Right. And I understand the the benefits of the standards for consumers and for the manufacturers. Okay. Yeah.

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: I'm sorry about this typo there. It's it's, sorry. I'm including the water standards.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Oh, yeah. Okay. And then so here the difference is that non compliant products may not be sold.

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: Yeah, and I'm not exactly sure of the history of that, but typically the states have much more control over what is sold as opposed to what is brought over state borders. We don't have customs between states or what is made in state factories, that also creates problems with industries. If you say, Okay, well, I'm making washing machines on the border with New Hampshire, for example, and three out of the four ones that I make there are legal to sell anywhere, but one of them, I'm not allowed to sell in Vermont, but I want to sell in New Hampshire. New Hampshire has no problem with it, so it would be probably a constraint of trade issue.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay. And what if Home Depot in Williston some in stock.

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: Yeah. Working with retailers is probably one of the biggest challenges of implementing standards in general, at least as much because of the global economy as anything else. Home Depot is actually a great example, and I don't mean to slight any of the other large retailers either, of evolving over time to be able to better comply with the standards. What it requires is knowing the Home Depot people. The good news is that they now have folks whose job is to comply with state standards. It's mostly an issue in California because California has got more state standards and does more to enforce them than any other state, but they're set up for this now. What you find is, you go into the Home Depot website, there are items that you will see listed that you cannot actually order in states that have standards that don't allow them.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay. And I'm thinking too about why it's useful sometimes to be proactive. So right now, the standards have not been repealed or revoked at the federal level. So if we do this now, then sorry. I'm just you're literally hearing me think out loud. Yep. So if we do this now and the bill passes, then we're we're officially on the books for everybody who does business here in Vermont saying like, hey, heads up. You know, we're gonna we're gonna stick to the federal standards as of and I'm sorry. I'm not looking at the bill. I don't have the dates. But we're gonna stick to the standards as of whatever 2025 if anything happens at the federal level. So it's almost like notice has been given. And if something happens at the federal level, we won't be retroactively trying to say, oops, you know, sorry guys. We will we will be saying, this is what we're gonna do if this happens federally.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Exactly.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Did I think that through okay?

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: Yeah.

[Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Very well put.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Can get on this slide? Yeah. Good. Thank you for being patient. And I yep. Okay. And so these are the ones this is the list of areas where we have kinda gotten out ahead or been more proactive on standards that are allowed at the state level if they're not in conflict with so there is no federal standard. For these, there couldn't be. We couldn't we wouldn't be allowed to do that. So these are categories where there is no federal standard and Vermont is then allowed to say, we're gonna have one.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Okay.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: And then the yellow highlight is us having previously already done what we're contemplating doing in this bill. We're just bringing it up to speed with we're we're moving the date forward eight years. Yep. K. On we go. Great. Those are my questions. Yeah. I forgot Torre. Thanks for allowing my process.

[Dara Torre (Clerk)]: Yeah. This has been great. So what about state standards that aren't about efficiency with appliances, but are around, like, safety, emissions? Does it go through the same process?

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: That's a great question, because at the federal level there are sometimes safety and other kinds of regulations as well. But I'm focusing only on the authority that the Department of Energy has under EPCO, which is the acronym that the acronym stands for, but it's enabling legislation, and that's very narrowly focused on energy efficiency. You have a lot more latitude because as a legislature, can set laws for whatever you want. This has happened in other states. Actually, it happened here. The ban on T12 fluorescent luminaires that Vermont adopted is not actually an energy efficiency standard if you think about it. It bans specific category of equipment. There's no test procedure. It's not saying a luminaire that is not able to achieve this many lumens per watt is not legal. Vermont, it's saying, no, it's this type of fixture. States can do that, but because the federal government can't do that, states generally don't do that. There's a whole long story about fluorescent lamps and luminaires which would take another half hour, so I won't go into that. But I guess what I'm saying is sometimes it's necessary or desired and states do have the ability to be that flexible.

[Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Refers to the fixture. Yeah. It's a fixture. So so the the b 12 light bulb land can be put into one that's existing in the home or commercial area. What about the other luminaries? Are they talking about changes when they move to LED that the refractors know, they used to be in the lighting industry. You designed or selected a particular type of plastic that sat underneath the fluorescent. Right. And that bent the the rays of light to get out to the area that was intended to cover. Yeah. Exactly. And and so as the light source changed from LED the little LEDs, like, in a a bar of a street lamp or or whatever. They broadened out more. That went into the LED placement of the LED rather than a refractor or I get the reflector in the back of the lamp and and then the

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: screen. Okay. Yeah. It's this is part of that that huge change in the lighting industry that I've mentioned early on is LEDs are changing everything. It's now slowed down that they're trying to they need to adjust the standards as well to reflect everything that you just said.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Chris, you're gonna make this available to us as well. I guess my only question is that this is a great presentation. It would seem to me that industry would be reluctant to even if even if defense void standards, the industry would industry would be reluctant to to drop back in in in standards that they manufacture to because it's entirely likely that things will get put back in place in three to four years. Well, or even if I guess my question is, is

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: that your impression as well? Yeah, you know, again, the thing that industry dislikes the most is uncertainty. Sure. Also you have to think in terms of the amount of capital investment in manufacturing capacity. If you set up your line to produce products using a kind of technology to meet a standard, and then that changes, you have to make changes to that line. Think what a lot of manufacturers are concerned about is a race to the bottom scenario. If you've set yourself up to meet a high level of energy efficiency, which most American manufacturers are, if those standards are removed, suddenly you're competing not just with your normal competitors, but with the global market of low efficiency manufacturers.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: That's good point.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: That's what I was worried about, I guess. So I guess what I'm seeing as the the benefit for from my perspective, the benefit of this bill would be that if we if we pass this and we keep those federal standards in place, assuming something happens at the federal level, then we have a baseline for energy efficiency and quality that would, from my perspective, protect Vermont consumers from a market that could be, I mean, I I don't wanna say flooded, but we get, I don't know, corrupted in some ways by a bunch of cheap $200 knockoffs. Yeah. Okay.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Right.

[Bram Kleppner (Member)]: Thinking But it doesn't nothing in our bill is gonna prohibit somebody from White River to drive it all over to West LEV and buying something that they can bring home, like a wound dehumidifier. Yeah. No. Other than that and and so, I mean, if you I don't know how many people buy out price and make the mistake of paying for the difference in a dehumidifier. It make a lot of difference in an electric bill. Yeah.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: No. It wouldn't, you know, it wouldn't prevent anybody from driving to New Hampshire and buying something and bringing it back.

[Bram Kleppner (Member)]: But a depot of the world could be shipping out of a moving a warehouse. I

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: mean, the way I think about it is that it's in nobody's best interest to end up with that patchwork quilt situation. Main benefit of adopting this bill is for Vermont to stand up and say, there is a benefit to this very successful, well established federal program, and we want to help protect it.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Right. So we should.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Alright. Thanks so much. Really appreciate you being here. Yeah. If you could send that along to our committee assistant, and she'll post it. And appreciate this one zero one because I know it was really helpful to me.

[Dara Torre (Clerk)]: I really appreciate it.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah. Thank you.

[Chris Granda (Energy efficiency standards expert; Richmond resident)]: I thank you all

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: for your time.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah. And I think that we can just one sec before we go off live. I and I'm told we're always supposed to say when we'll be back. So, we will be back tomorrow at nine to talk more about this bill, and we can go off live.