New Stringent Appliance Standards for Home Water Heaters and Other Heating Products

DOE’s Secretary Steven Chu has announced the Department has finalized higher energy efficiency standards for a key group of heating appliances that will together save consumers up to $10 billion and prevent up to 164 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions over 30 years. These new standards—for residential water heaters, pool heaters, and direct heating equipment such as gas fireplaces—will reduce air pollution, prevent the release of harmful nitrogen oxides and mercury, and avoid emissions equivalent to taking 46 million cars off the road for one year.

“These energy-conserving appliance standards are a critical part of the Administration’s overall efforts to save energy in homes and businesses nationwide,” said Secretary Chu. “By raising the energy efficiency requirements of our everyday appliances, we will save money for American families and companies, reduce carbon pollution, and enhance our energy security for decades to come.”

The standards released on Wednesday increase the stringency of the existing minimum conservation standards for these three types of residential heating products, which account for about 18% of energy use in homes across the country. The standards will significantly reduce energy consumption by these products, including decreasing energy use in large electric storage water heaters by 47% and by more than 30% in large gas water heaters. The standards for water heaters will go into effect in 2015, while the standards for pool heaters and direct heating equipment—including gas-fired wall, floor and hearth heaters—will apply to products manufactured in 2013 and beyond.

Under the Obama Administration, the DOE has accelerated the pace for finalizing new appliance standards and has placed new resources and emphasis behind the enforcement of these important standards. Since President Obama came to office, DOE has issued or codified new efficiency standards for more than twenty different products, which will save consumers between $250 and $300 billion on their energy bills through 2030:

* March 2009 – 14 consumer and commercial products with standards prescribed in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA 2007), including dishwashers, general service incandescent lamps, and residential clothes washers * April 2009 – Microwaves, kitchen ranges, and ovens * July 2009 – General service fluorescent lamps and incandescent reflector lamps * July 2009 – Commercial heating, air-conditioning, and water-heating equipment * August 2009 – Beverage vending machines * December 2009 – Commercial clothes washers * February 2010 – Small electric motors * March 2010 – Residential water heaters, direct heating equipment, and pool heaters

To ensure that the appliance standards are as effective as possible, DOE will continue to work aggressively and consistently to enforce energy efficiency standards across the country.

GE is the new Enron. bttt

AES and GE imitate Enron on coal and climate
By: Timothy P. Carney Examiner Columnist 05/26/09 6:19 PM EDT
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/AES-and-GE-imitate-Enron-on-coal-and-climate-46120417.html

A global power company that inherited some of Enron’s coal-fired power plants in Africa has also followed the late energy giant in the effort to profit from climate change legislation.

Virginia-based AES Corp. has partnered with General Electric Co. in peddling greenhouse gas offsets while lobbying for policies to make those offsets valuable the same buy-low, lobby-hard, sell-high strategy tried by Enron. AES simultaneous expansion of coal-fired power in Asia, South America and Africa, however, highlights how environmental regulations can yield profit without necessarily yielding environmental gains.

Before it collapsed in late 2001, Enron was the leading corporate lobbyist for restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. Former Chief Executive Officer Ken Lay called on both the Clinton and Bush White Houses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, which one intracompany e-mail declared would be “good for Enron stock.” The company hoped to be the premier dealer in emissions credits that would be required after climate change legislation. Further, Enron’s natural gas pipelines would see increased demand as coal and oil would be made more costly.

At the same time, Enron owned coal-fired power plants in the developing world and was building more. Third World power plants are not covered by Kyoto, and pinching the developed world’s use of coal would make it cheaper to operate the coal plants in Nigeria.

When Enron died, its assets were scattered. Two heirs taking up both Enron’s power generation and its climate change entrepreneurship were General Electric and AES. GE got the windmills, and AES got floating coal-fired power plants off Nigeria’s shores.

AES is currently building a new coal-fired power plant in India with an accompanying coal mine. AES has also just opened a diesel-fired plant in southern Chile, adding to its four Chilean coal-fired plants. Last December, Vietnam’s government announced a joint venture with AES for a coal-fired power project there.

But at home, AES’s joint ventures have a greener hue. AES and GE have formed a company called Greenhouse Gas Services. GHGS invests in technologies aimed at reducing the gases blamed for global warming. Some of these products save money through energy efficiency, but many of them have value only if Congress passes legislation restricting emissions such as the Waxman-Markey bill currently before the House.

GHGS this month registered as a lobbying organization, working on “climate legislation” and operating from AES Arlington offices. AES, meanwhile, recently hired a new lobbying firm, Lighthouse Consulting. Lighthouse and its lead lobbyist, Merribel Ayres, are the organizational firepower behind the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, the business coalition led by GE that has spearheaded the push for cap-and-trade climate legislation.

GHGS is particularly sensitive to how climate legislation accounts for “offsets” emissions credits granted for activities, such as tree-planting, that reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the air.

How to account for offsets is a contentious issue. For instance, planting trees absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but much of that CO2 will go back into the air when the tree rots or burns. Massive tree-planting to absorb CO2 could also create land-use problems.

Clearly, the final details on Waxman-Markey are crucial to GHGS. Importantly for environmentalists worried about manmade climate change, what’s best for reducing greenhouse gas emissions isn’t necessarily what’s best for GE, AES or their joint venture.

Companies that lobby for and profit from environmental regulations often get a free pass from critics who otherwise rush to assail corporate profits. As Timothy Noah wrote in Slate seven years ago, “the mere fact that Enron stood to benefit financially from the Kyoto Treaty, and therefore was pushing energetically for its passage, doesn’t in itself constitute an argument against the Kyoto Treaty.”

It’s true that corporate profit and environmental gain aren’t necessarily at odds. But the details of how AES and GHGS plan to turn carbon constraints into profits show how the idealistic goals of the environmentalists can be perverted and undermined by businesses looking to turn green into greenbacks.

Waxman-Markey would drive down the price of the coal AES will burn in Enron’s old Nigerian plants and in AES new Chilean and Vietnamese plants. Simultaneously, if crafted the right way the bill would drive up demand for the carbon offsets the company is selling here through its joint venture with GE.

Enron may be long gone, but in AES and GE, its spirit lives on.

Obama’s hidden bailout of General Electric ( Cap and trade taxes )
Washington Examiner ^ | March 3rd, 2009 | Timothy P Carney
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Obamas-hidden-bailout-of-General-Electric_03_04-40686707.html

Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill stuffed full of unpleasant surprises
By: Examiner Editorial 05/22/09 4:39 AM EDT
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Waxman-Markey-cap-and-trade-bill-stuffed-full-of-unpleasant-surprises-45836042.html

Also see here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2258900/posts?page=10#10
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2258900/posts?page=13#13

GE CEO: “We are all Democrats Now”
Economic Policy Journal ^ | 11/16/09 | Robert Wenzel
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2387406/posts

Thanks to some great reporting at WSJ by Elizabeth Williamson and Paul Glader, now we know why General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt has been to the White House five times since President Obama has occupied the place. He wants GE to out do Goldman Sachs and Carlyle Group combined as the biggest pig at the trough of corporate handouts. David Rubenstein looks like an amateur compared to Immelt. From WSJ’s report: The financial crisis hasn’t been kind to General Electric Co. Its stock has lost almost half its value, the government has stepped in to prop up its enormous financial arm, and sales have slumped in core industrial businesses.

But Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt now has his eye on a huge new pool of potential revenue: Uncle Sam’s stimulus dollars. Mr. Immelt, a registered Republican, quips about the shift in thinking in the nation’s corner offices: “We’re all Democrats now.”...

The government has taken on a giant role in the U.S. economy over the past year, penetrating further into the private sector than anytime since the 1930s. Some companies are treating the government’s growing reach — and ample purse — as a giant opportunity, and are tailoring their strategies accordingly. For GE, once a symbol of boom-time capitalism, the changed landscape has left it trawling for government dollars on four continents.

“The government has moved in next door, and it ain’t leaving,” Mr. Immelt said at the International Economic Forum of the Americas in Montreal in June. “You could fight it if you want, but society wants change. And government is not going away.”

GE has high hopes for the strategy. It says that over the next three years or so it could bring in as much as $192 billion from projects funded by governments around the globe, such as electric-grid modernization, renewable-energy generation and health-care technology upgrades...

Reporters who called the Obama administration for information on renewable-energy provisions in the legislation were directed to GE...

When the stimulus package was rolled out, Mr. Immelt instructed executives leading the company’s major business units “to put together swat teams to get stimulus money, and [identify] who to fire if they don’t get the money,” says a person who heard him issue the instructions.

In February, a few days after President Obama signed the stimulus plan, GE lawyers, lobbyists and executives crowded into a conference room at GE’s Washington office to figure out how to parlay billions of dollars in spending provisions into GE contracts... You have to wonder what Immelt promised Obama and Rham Emmanuel in return. Buying off those boys doesn’t come cheap.

GE [hopes] To Make BILLIONS From Obama Cap and Trade Scheme
http://thecommonconservative.com/?tag=jeffery-immelt

GE bought up all the ENRON assets during the “ENRON fire sale.” they took a gamble on “new energy” and they are pissed that we are not biting ...... 12

GE amd GS [Goldman Sachs] are pigs of a different breed, but pigs nonetheless. Both are big into the Al Gore, environmental capitalism game. GS wants to control the market for carbon credits (selling free air for $ is even better than the tulip bulb scam of the 1600’s), and GE wants to sell energy efficient light bulbs, windmills, etc to the consumer via gov’t enforced mandates.

‘Green Week’ on the NBC affiliates is nothing more than corporate brainwashing of the masses in the name of making GE more money. The fact so many people do not see through this crap is amazing.

Environmentalism today is a toxic combination of enivro-wacko, anti-capialists like the WWF, Greenpeace, and Sierra Clubs, combined with the Wall St fraudsters like UBS, GS, JPM, combined with the Democratic Party. Each stands to benefit in their own way, to the detriment of the freedom, liberty and economic well being of the average citizen. 15

.. in Immelt’s case he supported BO for a reason $$$$ just like goldman sachs, jp morgan, etc $$$ and that $$$ is coming from your wallet in the end! And those banks supporting Acorn all the while whining they were forced yes well had they not offered those loans in the first place they could not have been forced and it didn’t seem to bother them to fund ACORN and the black panthers because in the end we PAID!

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