.png?width=500&name=2019%20e%20news%20spotlight%20logo%20(1).png)
Energy Star announced that they are sunsetting their Lighting Lamps & Fixtures certifications, taking effect December 31, 2024. In addition, the Downlights 1.0 certification will go live on January 1, 2025, maintaining the Energy Star certification for just that segment of LED lighting products. The net effect on the products is that manufacturers have to remove the Energy Star logo from these products and Energy Star will longer have lamps and non-downlight fixtures listed on the energystar.gov website as of 1/1/2025. You can see which downlights will survive the sunset by downloading the current fixture list and filter to those that were certified beginning on 1/1/2024. The effect on utility energy efficiency programs is less clear and we will explore that now.
Background
LED Lamps(general service - A19, BR30, etc), have been certified by Energy Star since 2010. LED Fixtures have been certified since 2011. Given the change in the regulatory environment, primarily the EISA efficacy change for general service lamps, Energy Star no longer needs these certifications in order to recognize the high efficiency of LED products. They can repurpose the resources involved in running that program to other technologies.
Utilities' use of Energy Star certifications
Utilities have been using the Energy Star certification product lists to qualify and quantify LED products for their energy efficiency program. Since Energy Star requires 3rd party certification of a products technical performance, like efficacy, the utilities depend on Energy Star to determine a products eligibility for an incentive. Energy Star technical information is also used to calculate the energy saved by installation of an LED bulb as part of any utility reporting energy conservation impacts to their public utilities commissions.
But lamps are still incentivized by utilities commercial/industrial rebate programs!
There are still around 200 utilities that offer LED lamp incentives though their prescriptive/downstream programs, like Dominion, DTE, PSE&G, and many other utilities. Additionally there are around 20 instant/midstream programs that offer incentives on these lamps, like ConEd, Rocky Mountain Power, Consumers Energy, and Ontario's Save On Energy program.
While the EISA change prevents the manufacture and distribution of inefficient lamps, there are plenty of commercial sockets that are current filled by incandescent, halogen and other inefficient technologies, as well as stock of those products by building owners. So for many utilities there is a still an opportunity to reduce energy usage by incentivizing LED lamps so owners will upgrade earlier than normal.
But without EnergyStar's product listings, what are utilities to do? The utility programs are still weighing their options, but here is what we have heard and imagined:
1. Eliminate Energy Star lamp incentives from their programs. There probably several programs that will go this route. It's easy and for some utilities the remaining saving opportunities aren't big enough to justify the incentives.
2. Use the last product certification list published on December 31, 2024 as the only products that can be incentivized. This approach enables programs to still offer lamp incentives and utilitize the 3rd party verification of technical performance. The rate at which that list becomes stale probably matches the rate at which inefficient products will be replaced, so could be a good solution.
3. Continue to incentivize LED lamps, but either create their own product certification list or require customers to include manufacturer specification sheets to show technical performance information. This approach would permit the greatest amount of new LED lamps to continue to be incentivized, but places a greater paperwork burden on the building owner as well as the utility.
The even bigger question is WHEN will utilities announce their approach. We would expect to see the normal three approaches:
1. Diligent utilities will announce their plans before the end of 2024, so soon.
2. Other utilities will wait to see what other announce and will release their plans the last week of 2024 into the first two weeks of 2025
3. Other utilities won't announce anything until there is an issue when a customer asks sometime in 2025.
So, be on the lookout for announcements over the next two months, plus reactionary changes into January!
