Environmental assessment for proposed energy conservation standards for refrigerators, refrigerator-freezers, and freezers

This Environmental Assessment (EA) on the candidate energy conservation standards for refrigerators, refrigerator-freezers, and freezers was prepared pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), regulations of the Council on Environmental Quality, Title 40, Code of Federal Regulations, Parts 1500 through 1508. The proposed energy conservation standard (Level 1) and the alternative standards are being reviewed in an energy-efficiency standards rulemaking that the Department has undertaken pursuant to the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, as amended by the National Energy Conservation Policy Act and the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act. The EA presents the associated environmental impacts from four energy conservation standards for this type of household appliance. For purposes of this EA, each standard is an alternative action and is compared to what is expected to happen if no new standards for this type of product were finalized, i.e., the no action alternative. Of the four energy conservation standard levels considered, standard level 4 has the highest level of energy efficiency and the largest environmental impact. The proposed action implementing Standard Level 1 would have the least environmental impacts, through emission reductions, of the four alternatives. The description of the standards results from the appliance energy-efficiency analyses conducted for the rulemaking. The presentation of environmental impacts for each of the alternatives appears at Section 3 of the EA