Articles Tagged with ''regulations for HVACR''

Regardless of the strategy employed, many contractors are chafing at the new government-imposed regulations, noting that proper installation is far more important than mandated efficiency ratings.

HVACR industry leaders and White House officials gathered today at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, District of Columbia, to reaffirm their 2014 pledge to invest $5 billion over 10 years in the research, development, and commercialization of low-GWP (global warming potential) refrigerants.

The settlement is a victory for the manufacturers and contractors who may have been substantially harmed by the standards had they remained in place. Yet, many in the industry are concerned about the growing need to litigate in order to ensure regulations are developed properly and fairly.

While it remains to be seen how the new minimum-efficiency standards will impact the industry as a whole, most distributors are breathing a sigh of relief that their decision to stock more 13-SEER equipment is paying off, leaving them time to start thinking about what to do with the next round of minimum-efficiency standards, which the DOE is considering right now for residential furnaces.

As the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) works on its final rule and Congress works on possibly delaying that rule, HVAC industry stakeholders have settled into a holding pattern with no other option than to wait and see what happens next.

The code, scheduled to be released in 2018, will be powered by ANSI/ASHRAE/ICC/IES/USGBC Standard 189.1, “Standard for the Design of High-Performance, Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings.” 

The agreement will support the accelerated global transition to new refrigerants brought on by the Montreal Protocol’s ozone layer protection targets by addressing challenges in soundly and safely managing refrigerants. 

For two years, the commercial refrigeration industry has been reeling from a one-two regulatory punch from the DOE and the EPA. This convergence of aggressive regulations was unprecedented for our industry. It has forced us to explore every possibility to engineer the next generation of refrigeration systems.

The European Partnership for Energy and the Environment (EPEE) hosted a debate on June 30 organized by PubAffairs entitled “Heating and cooling in the Energy Union project: the challenges ahead for implementing an efficiency-based energy approach.”