Opinion ID: 456159
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: doe's definition of significant conservation of energy

Text: 36 EPCA instructs the Secretary not to issue standards for a type or class of covered product if he determines, by rule, that the establishment of such standard will not result in significant conservation of energy. EPCA Sec. 325(b)(2). In the June 1980 proposed rules, DOE announced a two-part definition of significant conservation, both parts of which had to be met for a proposed standard to pass the test. First, a standard governing a product type or product classes within that type would have been required to result in national energy savings for the product type exceeding 840,000,000 kilowatt hours (2.867 X 10 12 Btu) per year. Second, a standard would have been required to result in energy savings per unit over the product class involved exceeding 30 kilowatt hours (102,390 Btu) per year. See 45 Fed.Reg. 43,976, 44,031-32 (1980); U.S. Department of Energy, Economic Analysis: Energy Efficiency Standards for Consumer Products Sec. 6.3 (1980) [hereinafter cited as 1980 Economic Analysis Document], J.A. at 612-15. 37 DOE explained that this definition was drawn from figures in EPCA itself. Under EPCA as it was first enacted, the Federal Energy Administrator was required to prescribe energy efficiency improvement targets for the same thirteen products that under NECPA became subject to mandatory standards. See EPCA Sec. 325(a)(1)(A), (a)(2), Pub.L. No. 94-163, 89 Stat. 871, 920, 924 (1975). Of those products, ten were given priority. See id. Congress demanded that the targets for those priority products be designed to achieve an overall improvement in efficiency of at least 20 percent, measured by comparing the aggregate efficiency of all models of the ten priority products manufactured in 1972 against the same figure for models manufactured in 1980. See EPCA Sec. 325(a)(1)(B), 89 Stat. at 924. DOE also noted that section 325(a)(2) of EPCA, as amended by NECPA, authorized DOE to prescribe energy efficiency standards for appliances not named in section 322(a) if, among other conditions, 38 (A) the average per household energy use within the United States by products of such type (or class) exceeded 150 kilowatt hours (or its Btu equivalent) for any 12-calendar-month period ending before such determination [and] 39 (B) the aggregate household energy use within the United States by products of such type (or class) exceeded 4,200,000,000 kilowatt-hours (or its Btu equivalent) for any such 12-calendar-month period 40 .... 41 EPCA Sec. 325(a)(2)(A)-(B). 42 DOE evidently reasoned that Congress must have thought significant conservation of energy was possible from standards governing appliances that consumed energy at the minimum levels specified in section 325(a)(2), or Congress would not have authorized DOE to consider standards for those appliances. Cf. 1980 Economic Analysis Sec. 6.3 at 6.4, J.A. at 613. In light of former section 325(a)(1)(B), DOE settled on a 20 percent reduction in energy consumption for an appliance that just met the minimum consumption levels as a reasonable definition of significant savings. A 20 percent reduction in energy consumption for an appliance that consumes 4,200,000,000 kilowatt hours nationally per year yields a savings of 840,000,000 kilowatt hours (2.867 X 10 12 Btu) per year--the amount specified in the first part of the 1980 definition of significance. A 20 percent reduction in energy consumption for an appliance unit that consumes 150 kilowatt hours per year yields a savings of 30 kilowatt hours (102,390 Btu) per year--the amount specified in the second part of the definition. See 45 Fed.Reg. at 44,031-32. These levels, DOE announced, would screen out standards that produced only marginal conservation, id. at 44,032, and so fulfill the purposes of the significance requirement. 15 43 On April 2, 1982, the new administration issued proposed rules that completely repudiated the 1980 approach to defining significance. See 47 Fed.Reg. 14,42 4, 14,429-31 (1982). 16 DOE first announced that savings would be assessed as significant or insignificant over the 19-year period 1987 to 2005, see id. at 14,426-27, rather than on the annual basis proposed in 1980. DOE's basic approach was to compare, for each product, three measures of the difference between projected energy consumption during that period if standards were not imposed and if they were imposed. DOE then examined those figures, which it viewed as gauging the savings attributable to standards, for significance. 17 44 DOE's notice set forth its three measures of energy consumption and the level at which savings under each measure would be deemed significant. DOE argued that the overall goal of NECPA's conservation programs was to reduce national dependence on imported oil. For this reason, a saving for each of the thirteen product types would be deemed significant only if that saving made a significant contribution to reducing this Nation's energy dependence on foreign nations. Id. at 14,429. According to DOE, the definition proposed in 1980 recognized as significant savings so low as to be non-measurable in national reports, id. at 14,429 n. 14, and was therefore not rigorous enough under DOE's new approach. In place of the 1980 definition, DOE proposed three alternative tests for significant savings. 18 Under the first of these tests, savings were significant if they amounted to at least 10,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil or an equivalent amount of natural gas. DOE later explained that this test was not satisfied if the combined savings of oil and gas equaled the equivalent of 10,000 bpd, but required that the full figure be met for one or the other of the two commodities separately. See 47 Fed.Reg. 57,198, 57,208 (1982). 45 DOE's second test for significance was based on its finding that conservation of energy would also be significant if the electricity saved would have a significant impact on the environment or significantly reduce the need for additional generating capacity. 47 Fed.Reg. 14,424, 14,430 (1982). DOE noted that according to the environmental assessment accompanying the June 1980 proposed rules, those rules would not have had a significant effect on the environment. Id. at 14,430; see 1980 Environmental Assessment at 5-11, J.A. at 241. It concluded that [b]ecause the standards proposed in the June 30 proposal were predicted to create greater energy savings than the standards analyzed in this proposal, DOE believes that no single standard considered in today's proposal could have a significant effect on the environment. 47 Fed.Reg. at 14,430. DOE further decided that to have an effect on the need for new generating capacity, a national saving of electricity would have to exceed 1 percent of national usage. See id. That figure was therefore chosen as the second threshold level for significance. 46 Finally, DOE recognized that the first two proposed tests had a built-in bias towards products that use a great deal of energy in the first instance. Id. In particular, DOE noted that those tests demanded an annual savings greater than the total annual consumption of some covered products. Standards for these products could not have resulted in significant savings even if the standard reduced energy consumption by the product to zero. DOE therefore proposed a third test, purportedly based on former EPCA section 325, under which savings would be significant if the energy saved as a result of the standard, as measured by the ORNL Model, [would] be 20 percent of the energy that would be used by the product in the no-standard case. Id. 47 These tests were hotly debated in the comments on the proposed rules, and DOE responded in its December 22, 1982 notice of final rules by making several changes. Specifically, DOE abandoned its earlier decision to calculate energy savings over the 19-year period from 1987 to 2005, on the ground that many of the covered products had very different useful lives. Covered products with different useful lives necessarily have different penetration rates--that is, the shorter the useful life of a covered product, the more quickly new appliances of that type will tend to account for a large proportion of all such appliances in use. The penetration rate of a covered product in turn affects how quickly more efficient models will influence national energy consumption. DOE therefore adopted the average life of a product, beginning in 1987, as the appropriate period for analyzing savings for that product under the first two tests for significance. See 47 Fed.Reg. 57,198, 57,203 (1982). 48 The third proposed test presented a special timing problem because, as several commenters informed DOE, 49 [S]ome products would not meet the test even if a standard required every new product sold to use no energy at all. This anomalous result occurred because so much of the energy being measured in the standards case would be energy consumed by products purchased before the standards were put into effect. 50 Id. at 57,208. For this reason, DOE settled on the one-year period following the year of the retirement of the average product purchased immediately preceding the application of a standard, id., as the year during which the third test was to be applied. For example, if standards were put into effect in 1987, the measuring year for an appliance with an average life of 18 years would be 2005. Products purchased in 1986--the last year before standards were imposed--would on average wear out in 2004. Thus in 2005, according to DOE, relatively few pre-standard models would remain to skew the calculation. Finally, DOE noted that former section 325 of EPCA referred to a 20 percent improvement in efficiency, while DOE's definition required a 20 percent decrease in energy use. In fact, however, a 20 percent improvement in efficiency mathematically results in only a 16.67 percent decrease in fuel use, and accordingly DOE substituted that lower percentage in its test. See id. 51 Although commenters voiced numerous other criticisms of DOE's proposed definition of significance, DOE adhered to that definition with the revisions described above. Under DOE's final definition, energy savings from a proposed standard were significant only if they met at least one of the following three tests: (1) the standard would result in the saving of 10,000 bpd of oil or the saving of natural gas equivalent to 10,000 bpd of oil over the period of the average life of the product in question beginning with the year 1987, id. at 57,209; (2) the standard would result in the saving of one percent of national electricity use over the period of the average life of the product in question beginning with the year 1987, id. ; or (3) the savings attributable to a standard for a product were equal to 16.67 percent of the energy that would be used by that product in the absence of a standard measured over the one year period following the period of the average life of the product purchased in the last year before the standard would be imposed, id. at 57,209.
52 EPCA does not define significant conservation of energy, and DOE maintains that its interpretation of this statutory term is entitled to great deference. We agree that Congress left DOE with substantial discretion to set specific levels of significance, but no one disputes that the levels selected must be consistent with the express terms and underlying congressional intention of the Act. We must, as the Supreme Court has directed, decide whether EPCA's definition is a reasonable choice within a gap left by Congress. Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., --- U.S. ----, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 2793, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984). Answering that question requires us to determine whether, as DOE thought in 1980, Congress meant to exclude only marginal savings as insignificant, or as DOE thought in 1983, Congress licensed DOE to create so formidable an obstacle that it blocked standards for seven of the eight priority products at issue here. To conduct that inquiry, we first look to the structure and text of the Act and then examine the rationale DOE offered for its most recent position. We conclude that DOE's definition of significant conservation is inconsistent with the congressional design reflected in NECPA. 53 We think the basic decisionmaking structure of the Act suggests that DOE has made a fundamental mistake. First, the elaborate NECPA provisions governing standards and their legislative history leave no doubt that Congress expected DOE to prescribe mandatory efficiency standards. Congress apparently intended the threshold significance determination only to weed out standards promising such negligible benefits that they were not worth the trouble of further examination. We note that DOE may not issue a standard it has disqualified under the significance provision even if that standard imposes absolutely no burdens at all. Consequently, even an efficiency standard with no technological or economic drawbacks whatever--one that offers a completely painless way to energy conservation--will be discarded if it fails to achieve significant conservation. If, on the other hand, the standard under consideration survives this first look, DOE must still decide whether the standard would be economically justified. In reaching that decision, DOE is explicitly directed to weigh the total projected amount of energy savings likely to result directly from the imposition of the standard. EPCA Sec. 325(d)(3). Thus, a finding that a proposed standard results in significant conservation is far from a prologue to inevitable promulgation of a mandatory standard; instead, that finding simply triggers a much more thorough review in which the amount of energy a standard would save is assessed in light of any other benefits and countervailing burdens of the standard. 54 We think it unlikely that the Congress that enacted NECPA and its four related energy statutes intended DOE to throw away a cost-free chance to save energy unless the amount of energy saved was genuinely trivial. 19 Moreover, that general view is bolstered by the few specific figures Congress included in the sections of NECPA that created the appliance program. In particular, review of the energy consumption level at which DOE was authorized to prescribe discretionary standards for an appliance is revealing. 55 As we note above, section 325(a) of EPCA permits DOE to prescribe an energy efficiency standard for an appliance if its average per-household energy consumption exceeds 150 kilowatt hours, and its aggregate national household use during one year exceeds 4,200,000,000 kilowatt hours, or .014335 quadrillion Btu (Quads). Congress plainly thought that saving some part of the energy consumed by an appliance operating at those levels would be significant, or it would not have authorized DOE to prescribe mandatory standards for such an appliance. Our review of DOE's figures suggests that standards for three of the appliances DOE considered in this rulemaking would have saved more energy per year than the total annual energy consumption necessary to qualify an appliance for discretionary standards. These standards, in other words, would have saved more energy than would have been saved if a standard instantly reduced to zero the total energy consumption of an appliance operating at the minimum level for discretionary standards. Yet for two of those three appliances, DOE branded the savings from standards insignificant, and thus rejected savings that exceeded 100 percent of consumption for appliances Congress was willing to regulate. 56 We must briefly sketch some technical background in order to illustrate this anomalous result. The consumption figures in section 325(a) measure energy use at the site of consumption, i.e., the energy actually consumed by an appliance in the household. However, the ORNL model calculates the energy a standard would save in terms of source consumption, or the energy used as input to powerplants that in turn generate electricity used in the household. Because of inefficiencies in the generation and transmission of electricity, a given number of Quads in site savings yield a substantially larger number of Quads in source savings. 57 Under section 325(a), DOE may prescribe a discretionary standard for an appliance if, among other criteria, its national energy consumption exceeds .014335 Quads. According to DOE's figures, an appliance that consumes that amount of electricity at the site of use consumes approximately .0483 Quads annually at the source of generation. 20 The table below compares DOE's estimate of savings from standards for the six covered products considered in the 1983 final rules, calculated over the average lifetime of an appliance purchased in 1987, with the total consumption of an electrical appliance during that same period. 58 Thus, DOE's definition does not recognize as significant energy savings equal to the total annual consumption of an electrical appliance that in the view of Congress might appropriately be subject to a mandatory standard, even when that savings is calculated according to DOE's own figures and over the periods DOE itself selected for analysis. 22 We think that such a high definition of significance is inconsistent with the congressional decision to authorize discretionary standards for appliances consuming the amounts of energy Congress specifically designated. Congress determined that discretionary standards for such appliances might be appropriate if they would result in substantial conservation of energy. Congress plainly thought that substantial conservation was possible for an appliance operating at the minimum level stipulated in the statute; and it therefore could not have thought that the total energy consumption of such an appliance might reasonably be considered an insignificant amount to save. 23 59 In the December 1982 notice, DOE responded to a somewhat different version of the argument we have presented in the following way: 60 DOE does not believe that because the oil or gas and the electricity savings tests would require greater savings of energy by the eight products subject to this rule than is required to be used by some other products in order to be possibly considered for standards means that these tests are unlawful or precluded by the statute. As indicated above, the oil or gas and electricity savings tests were designed with a bias to products that use large amounts of energy. 61 47 Fed.Reg. 57,198, 57,204 n. 11 (1982). DOE's comment, however, is directed only to the first two of its three tests. It does not acknowledge that, as we have shown, a standard might save an amount of energy equal to the total consumption necessary for a discretionary standard and nonetheless fail all three tests. 24 62 More importantly, we think that DOE's approach is inadequately sensitive to the relationship between different passages in section 325 of EPCA. In effect, DOE points out that a fixed amount in energy savings might be a very small percentage of total use for a high-consumption appliance and a much larger percentage for a low-consumption appliance. DOE concludes that it may therefore reasonably regard energy savings as insignificant for a high-consumption appliance, even if the same amount would be significant for a low-consumption appliance. 63 In the abstract, we have no occasion to disagree with that idea. For example, we do not hold that the Act forbids DOE to set levels of significance for each product type as a percentage of the energy consumed by that product type, provided that the levels selected reasonably accommodate the policies of the Act. Our point is simply that DOE's definition of significance must show some awareness of the range of energy savings Congress thought worth pursuing. Congress unmistakably believed that savings for an appliance that just qualified for discretionary standards might be worth pursuing, even though the absolute amount of energy saved would be small. Perhaps DOE need not say that precisely the same amount of energy such a standard might realistically save would be significant if saved by a high-consumption appliance. However, DOE has gone much further than that. Obviously, the total consumption of an appliance subject to discretionary standards is much higher than the amount of energy Congress could have expected such a discretionary standard to save. Yet DOE has rejected as insignificant savings equal to the total minimum consumption of an appliance subject to discretionary standards. 64 As we have discussed, a determination that a standard does not result in significant savings means that DOE must discard the standard at a preliminary stage of decisionmaking as unworthy of detailed study. Moreover, DOE must reject the standard even if it imposes absolutely no costs on manufacturers, consumers, or anyone else. In our view, DOE's definition rejects savings that, judged against figures Congress included in the text of the Act, must be regarded as significant. At least in the absence of strong countervailing evidence of congressional intent, we think the anomalous and disproportionate results of DOE's definition are a powerful sign that DOE has passed beyond the limits of its statutory discretion. We turn, then, to the specific rationales DOE offers for its three tests to determine if they satisfactorily explain the strange consequences of those tests.
65 DOE claimed that the definition of significance announced in its December 1982 notice was based on congressional intent, although it had previously made the same argument for the radically different definition of significance advanced in June of 1980. In support of its first two tests, DOE cited the general findings in NECPA that stressed the importance of reducing national dependence on oil imports. See NECPA Sec. 102(a), Pub.L. No. 95-619, 92 Stat. 3206, 3208 (1978); 47 Fed.Reg. 57,198, 57,205 (1982); 47 Fed.Reg. 14,424, 14,429 (1982). These broadly stated findings, however, describe overall goals for the national energy program from all sectors of our Nation's economy, NECPA Sec. 102(a)(3), 92 Stat. at 3209, to be approached progressively in a step-by-step pattern to produce savings of a significant proportion. National Energy Act, Part I: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Energy and Power of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. 2 (1977) (statement of Rep. Dingell). DOE could reasonably decide that a standard must make some progress towards the goals of the Act to be considered significant, but those general goals furnish little support for the specific tests DOE has adopted. Moreover, the appliance program is, of course, merely one program in a vast plan encompassing five statutes and scores of initiatives. Yet DOE steadfastly refused to consider that fact in deciding how great a contribution each standard must make to national conservation efforts in order to be deemed significant. Commenters echoed the view of Representative Dingell, Chairman of the House Sub-Committee on Energy and Power and a member of both of the House Ad Hoc Committee on Energy and the NECPA Conference Committee, that conservation must be approached on a nickel and dime basis and that the cumulative impact of a series of conservation initiatives, which in themselves might appear insignificant, could be enormous, id., but DOE was unmoved. It merely replied that the statute makes clear that the determination of whether a standard will save significant energy is to be made on an individual product type basis, not on the basis that standards for all products together would save significant energy. 47 Fed.Reg. 57,198, 57,203 (1982). 66 DOE is right to think that under section 325, standards for each product type must result in significant conservation. But DOE is plainly wrong to think that the overall conservation possible under the appliance program, and indeed under other aspects of the 1978 national energy program, has no relevance at all to what qualifies as a reasonable definition of significant conservation. DOE itself relied heavily on the ultimate end Congress declared for its program: a gradual end to massive dependence on foreign sources of energy. But DOE cannot isolate that end from the means Congress selected--namely, a massive plan involving numerous programs. No single program was expected to be decisive in achieving Congress' ultimate goal, let alone a single standard within the appliance program. In this sense, the cumulative savings possible from the appliance program as a whole is certainly relevant to whether the conservation that standards for a particular product type might achieve should be deemed significant. By rejecting that linkage, DOE has plucked the general goals Congress set for NECPA from their place in the statutory scheme, and failed to consider important evidence of how far standards for one product type should be expected to go towards achieving those goals. 67 DOE also relied on 1979 decisions by two congressional committees rejecting a contingency plan for restricting the use of lighting for advertising during energy shortages. See 47 Fed.Reg. 14,424, 14,429 (1982). The committees found that the plan would save only 4,400 barrels of oil per day, which they regarded as inadequate to justify enactment of the program. See S.Rep. No. 98, 96th Cong., 1st Sess. 10-11 (1979); H.R.Rep. No. 122, 96th Cong., 1st Sess. 4 (1979). An unfavorable recommendation by two congressional committees on a substantially different proposal after passage of the legislation at issue is weak support indeed for DOE's test. Congress might well have thought that a single nation-wide emergency program should produce higher savings than the savings demanded for a standard governing any one of thirteen covered products, particularly since the appliance program was itself only part of the large-scale national conservation program embodied in the 1978 energy acts. Moreover, DOE set its first test at 10,000 barrels of oil per day, or more than double the 4,400 barrels of oil per day that the rejected program would have saved. If stronger support for DOE's definition cannot be found in congressional intent, this isolated, unrelated, and post-enactment example of legislative inaction cannot rescue it. 68 In addition, more direct evidence of congressional intent casts further doubt on the relevance of these committee decisions. The report on NECPA by the House Ad Hoc Committee on Energy predicted that the Act would result in the following savings: 69 Table 2 Estimate of oil import savings achieved by H.R. 8444 Thousands of barrels Initiative: per day, in 1985 -------------------- Transportation 360 Buildings 420 Appliance Program 50 Industry/utility conservation 170 Increased residential/comercial gas availability 120 Oil and natural gas pricing 260 Synthetic use 420 Coal conversion 820 to 1,150 Total Savings 2,620 to 2,950 70 H.R.Rep. No. 543, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. 80 (1977) (footnotes omitted). The House Report commented that the NECPA conservation programs, considered as a bundle, would provide[ ] a solid start toward reducing oil imports and chang[ing] the way we use energy. Id. Of those programs, Congress expected the lowest immediate return from appliance regulation, which was expected to save 50,000 barrels per day of imported oil in 1985--less than one-half the benefit projected from the program with the next smallest return and less than 2 percent of the total oil import savings projected from NECPA during that year. 25 Similarly, the minority members of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce commented that appliances consume only 2.7 percent of the energy consumed annually in the United States. H.R.Rep. No. 496, Pt. 4, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. 291 (1977) (minority views), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1977, p. 8679. 26 Yet those members supported the program. See id. Congress, in short, had a realistic notion of the relatively small energy savings to be expected from the appliance program, but nonetheless decided to regulate appliance efficiency as part of a national assault on unnecessary energy use. 71 DOE's first test for significance, in contrast, requires that standards for each of the eight covered products considered in the rulemaking save 10,000 barrels of oil a day or an equivalent amount of natural gas, even though Congress projected a 1985 saving from standards for all thirteen appliances of only 50,000 barrels a day. That congressional estimate, moreover, describes the saving Congress thought probable, and not the smallest saving that justified detailed evaluation of proposed standards. In light of these statistics, we think DOE's reliance on the obscure fate of quite a different program in committees of a later Congress is misplaced. 72 DOE justified its second test for significance on the ground that a national savings of electricity would at least have to exceed 1 percent of national usage over the period of analysis in order to have an effect on the need for new generating capacity. 47 Fed.Reg. 14,424, 14,430 (1982). DOE followed its statement of this test with the following table: 73 Table 3 1980 Electricity Usage Electric usage Percent of total Appliance in quads electric usage --------------------------------------------------------- Central space heater 0.96 3.8 Room space heater 0.62 2.5 Air conditioner room 0.38 1.5 Air conditioner central 1.47 5.9 Water heater 1.35 5.4 Refrigerator 1.17 4.7 Freezer 0.44 1.8 Range 0.54 2.1 Clothes dryer 0.45 1.8 74 Id. (citing as source ORNL Residential Energy End Use Model) (footnotes omitted). 75 According to this table, each of the eight covered products identified in the table accounts for small percentages of national electricity consumption. Only a very dramatic drop in electricity consumption by a product would enable even the high-consumption covered products to meet DOE's test, and evidently some of the low-consumption appliances could not meet the test at all. 27 We view as suspect a test that demands a fixed amount of energy savings greater than the savings that low-consumption covered products could ever possibly achieve. By including low-consumption appliances in the mandatory standards program, Congress showed that it believed improved efficiency for those products could result in significant conservation. A test for significance that demands far higher savings than standards for low-consumption covered products could realistically ever produce is thus out of scale with the congressional view that these products should be included in the Act. 76 Moreover, our dubiousness about this test is heightened by DOE's equivocal response to comments submitted during the rulemaking. DOE summarized those comments by noting that: 77 [S]everal commenters attempted to translate the aggregate electricity savings for all products using electricity, if standards were adopted for all those products, into additional new capacity that could be avoided. These estimates ranged from 16.8 GWe [gigawatts] ... to 17.6 ... GWe in the year 2005. Each of these commenters also reflected these estimated avoided capacities in terms of powerplant equivalents, which ranged from 17 1000 MW [megawatt] plants to 22 800 MW plants. 78 47 Fed.Reg. 57,198, 57,207 (1982) (citations and footnote omitted). DOE first complained that the commenters had impermissibly aggregated total savings from standards covering all covered products. When these aggregations were broken down into the savings attributable to standards for each product type, DOE maintained that: 79 Under even [the] methodology [of commenter American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE),] the largest reduction in need for new, incremental capacity attributable to one standard (electric water heaters) would be only 36 percent of the aggregate figure presented [for total electricity saved as a result of standards]. Under DOE's base case projection, the largest reduction would be only 17 percent of the aggregate figure presented, or approximately 3 GWe or three 1000 MW powerplant equivalents nationwide. As discussed earlier, Section 325(b) requires DOE to make a determination of significant savings on an individual product type basis, not on the basis of the aggregate savings if standards were imposed on all products. 80 Id. 28 As we have explained, we agree that savings for standards must be evaluated separately by product type, but DOE may not therefore close its eyes to the cumulative effect of imposing standards. We thus cannot agree that DOE's first reason supports its rejection of the comments submitted. DOE also argued that: 81 [I]t is not at all clear that even a 17 to 18 GWe theoretical reduction of additional new capacity is significant in terms of actually affecting potential new, incremental capacity. The 17 to 18 GWe capacity savings projected by the commenters would be less than 2 percent of the approximate forecast capacity for the year 2005, and these savings would for the most part be spread over large parts, if not all, of the Nation. The reuslt of this is that in some utility services areas, the level at which decisions are made as to the need for new, incremental capacity, these marginal savings could be so small compared to other factors, e.g., demographic changes, that they would have no impact on actual construction decisions. Thus, one cannot reliably assume that whatever number of gigawatts one may mathematically back out as a result of reduced kilowatt hours attributable to a standard represents the actual gigawatts of capacity construction foregone. 82 Id. (footnote omitted). Part of this passage relies on the demographic uncertainty that is inevitably involved in projecting electricity use long into the future. However, that uncertainty results mostly from the lengthy period for analysis DOE itself chose, and characterizes many of DOE's own predictions. 83 The quoted passage also argues that the savings in question would be spread out over the entire nation, and consequently those savings might not affect the need for additional generating capacity in any area. Petitioners maintain that the market in electricity is essentially a national one, and that incremental savings achieved across the nation really do diminish the need for new generating facilities. See Oral Comments of Angelo F. Orazio at 9 (May 20, 1982), J.A. at 3116. DOE did not details its reasons for rejecting that argument, and we therefore have some difficulty in assessing the reasonableness of the opposing views in this subsidiary controversy. However, we are not now considering whether DOE's general doubts about the effect of savings on the need for new generating facilities would, if DOE's basic approach to significance were sound, support the particular quantities of energy DOE specified in its test. As we have discussed, DOE's definition of significant savings produces incongruous results in light of other EPCA provisions, and we are now searching for an agency explanation that might prop up this faltering definition. DOE's argument does not persuade us that DOE has, after all, acted within the discretion Congress allowed it. 84 Finally, DOE argued that its third test is grounded in former section 325 of EPCA. That section required the Federal Energy Administrator to set target figures for appliance efficiency improvement so that the ten priority appliances named in the Act would register an aggregate efficiency improvement of 20 percent between 1972 and 1980. Thus, unlike DOE's third test, section 325 established a target, not a threshold figure below which regulation would be abandoned as not worth the trouble. That target required an aggregate improvement for all ten appliances of 20 percent, thus recognizing that standards for some covered products might fall short of that level. In addition, the 20 percent target was based on a comparison of 1972 efficiency to 1980 efficiency and so is quite unlike DOE's comparison of its standards case with a projected no-standards base case. Given these major differences, we are unconvinced by DOE's argument. 85 We think DOE's argument is also at odds with other signs of legislative intent. The Senate Report on NECPA, for example, set forth the following table: 86 Table 4 Estimated Improvements in Average Appliance Efficiency Over 1972 Levels (Percent) Expected Expected Improvements Improvements From From EPCA Appliance President's Program Initiative ---------------------------- Refrigerators 27 47 Freezers 17 30 Clothes Dryers 5 ele(c)., 8 elec., 10 gas 18 gas Water Heaters 10 elec., 18 elec., 14 gas 25 gas 13 oil 23 oil Room Air Conditioners 15 54 Clothes Washers 15 20 Furnaces 5 23 87 S.Rep. No. 409, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. 147 (1977). The first column of the table indicates the improvement in efficiency the administration expected between 1972 and 1985 under EPCA as originally enacted. Id. The second column indicates the improvement in efficiency the administration expected during the same period under its proposal for mandatory standards, which in somewhat modified form became NECPA. 88 These projections were submitted to Congress by the Deputy Administrator of the Federal Energy Administration. He commented that under the administration proposal, 89 [m]inimum efficiency standards shall be prescribed as soon as possible for refrigerators/refrigerator-freezers, freezers, water heaters, room air-conditioners, kitchen ranges and ovens, central air-conditioners, and furnaces. These products account for about 80 percent of the energy used in American households. Standards for these products would be required because significant improvements in the energy efficiency of each is [sic] possible and a substantial national savings would result. 90 Id. at 132 (statement of David J. Bardin) (emphasis added). 91 Because the table shows energy efficiency improvements as a comparison between 1972 statistics and 1985 projections, the figures it states are not directly comparable to those DOE used in calculating its 16.67 percent test. Nonetheless, the range in the table is instructive. For example, the table predicts that with standards, clothes washers would be 20 percent more efficient in 1985 than in 1972; without standards, the difference would be 15 percent. For electric clothes dryers, the figures are 8 and 5 percent; for gas clothes dryers, 18 and 20 percent. As these numbers show, Congress knew that standards for some covered products would produce quite modest incremental gains in efficiency and consequently in energy conserved. Congress was also authoritatively informed by the Federal Energy Administration--the predecessor agency to DOE in administering the appliance program--that the savings revealed by the table for each of the covered products were significant. On that understanding, Congress enacted the program. 92 We emphasize once again that we do not view the table we have reprinted above or any of the other legislative history we have discussed as absolutely binding DOE to any particular definition of significance. [A]n agency to which Congress has delegated policy-making responsibilities may, within the limits of that delegation, properly rely on the incumbent administration's views of wise policy to inform its judgments. Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., --- U.S. ----, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 2793, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984). Nonetheless, when an agency does not reasonably accommodate the policies of a statute or reaches a decision that is not one that Congress would have sanctioned, id. 104 S.Ct. at 2783 (quoting United States v. Shimer, 367 U.S. 374, 383, 81 S.Ct. 1554, 1560, 6 L.Ed.2d 908 (1961)), a reviewing court must intervene to enforce the policy decisions made by Congress. [A] new administration may not choose not to enforce laws of which it does not approve, or to ignore statutory standards in carrying out its regulatory functions. Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass'n v. State Farm Mutual Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 103 S.Ct. 2856, 2875 n. , 77 L.Ed.2d 443 (1983) (Rehnquist, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). 93 We have acknowledged that Congress granted DOE considerable discretion to define significant conservation. This case does not require us to define the precise limits of that discretion: all we must decide is whether DOE has reasonably enforced the decisions Congress made when it enacted NECPA. For the reasons stated above, we believe DOE has failed to do so, and we accordingly hold that its definition of significance is inconsistent with the Act. 94