A few days ago, the Department of Energy (DOE) finalized a rule setting energy efficiency standards for metal halide lamp fixtures. Last October I wrote a public interest comment to the DOE to point out several problems with the agency’s preliminary economic analysis for the rule. As part of the Administrative Procedure Act, agencies are required to solicit, and respond to, comments from the public before finalizing regulations. Unfortunately, the DOE failed to even acknowledge many of the points I made in my submission.
As evidence, here are some of the main takeaways from my comment:
1) The DOE claims consumers and businesses are acting in an irrational manner when purchasing metal halide lamp fixtures because they forgo modest long term energy savings in order to pay a low upfront price for lamp fixtures. Yet the agency offers no convincing evidence to support the theory that consumers act irrationally when purchasing metal halide lamp fixtures. At the same time, roughly 70% of the estimated benefits of the rule are the supposed benefits bestowed upon the public when products people would purchase otherwise are removed from the market.
2) The DOE is currently adding together costs and benefits that occur in the future but that are discounted to present value using different discount rates. It makes no sense to add together costs and benefits calculated in this manner.
3) The DOE is using a new value of the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), a way to measure benefits from reducing carbon dioxide emissions, that may be of questionable validity since the analysts who arrived at the estimate ignored recent scientific evidence. Additionally, the DOE is using the new SCC in its analysis before the public has even had a chance to comment on the validity of the new number.
4) In its analysis, the DOE is including benefits to foreign countries as a result of reduced carbon dioxide emissions, even while the costs of the metal halide lamp fixture regulation will be borne largely by Americans.
Regarding #1 above, the DOE provided no direct response to my comment in the preamble to its final rule. This even though #1 puts in doubt roughly 70% of the estimated benefits of the rule.
The DOE also failed to respond to #2 above, even though I cited as support a very recent and relevant paper on the subject that appeared in a reputable journal and was coauthored by Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow.
Regarding #3 and #4, the DOE had this to say:
On November 26, 2013, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced minor technical corrections to the 2013 SCC values and a new opportunity for public comment on the revised Technical Support Document underlying the SCC estimates. Comments regarding the underlying science and potential precedential effect of the SCC estimates resulting from the interagency process should be directed to that process. See 78 FR 70586. Additionally, several current rulemakings also use the 2013 SCC values and the public is welcome to comment on the values as applied in those rulemakings just as the public was welcome to comment on the use and application of the 2010 SCC values in the many rules that were published using those values in the past three years.
In other words, the DOE is committed to continuing to use a value of the SCC that may be flawed since the public has the opportunity to complain to the Office of Management and Budget. At the same time, the DOE tells us we can comment on other regulations that use the new SCC value, so that should reassure anyone whose comment the DOE ignored related to this regulation!
All of this is especially troubling since the DOE is required by statute to ensure its energy efficiency rules are “economically justifiable.” It is hard to argue this rule is economically justifiable when roughly 94% of the rule’s benefits are in doubt. This is the proportion of benefits justified on the basis of consumer irrationality and on the basis that Americans should be paying for benefits that will be captured by citizens in other countries. Without these benefits, the rule fails a benefit-cost test according to the DOE’s own estimates.
The requirement that agencies respond to public comments is designed to ensure a level of democratic accountability from regulators, who are tasked with serving the American public. A vast amount of power is vested in these agencies, who are largely insulated from Congressional oversight. As evidence, Congress has only used its Congressional Review Act authority to overrule major regulations once in its history. If agencies ignore the public, and face little oversight from Congress, what faith can we have that regulators will be held accountable for any harms that inevitably arise from poorly designed regulations?