View Rule

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is considering revisions to its regulations at 10 CFR part 430, subpart C, appendix A (the Process Rule). As part of this effort, DOE issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that sought to modernize a variety of aspects to the Process Rule. While the majority of these procedural changes were finalized earlier, see 85 FR 8626 (February 14, 2020), comments received by DOE pointed to the need to further address the question of how DOE would consider consumer impacts in determining whether a standard is economically justified and to clarify that DOE's determination of economic justification would be based on comparisons across the full range of trial standards - an approach consistent with the Energy Policy and Conservation Act.  DOE issued a separate Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (SNPRM) specifically addressing this issue (85 FR 8483 (February 14, 2020)) and to solicit further public comment.