Opinion ID: 456159
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: DOE's Reliance on 1980 Data

Text: 242 Much of the information underlying DOE's final rules was gathered in 1980 and never significantly updated, although the final rules were not issued until 1982 and 1983. Petitioners challenge DOE's reliance on data of this vintage as unreasonable; DOE replies that any effort to collect and analyze more recent information would have delayed the rulemaking even longer. See 48 Fed.Reg. 39,376, 39,379 (1983). However, we need not resolve this dispute either. We have already decided that (1) DOE must determine maximum technologically feasible levels and (2) DOE must reexamine its refusal to consider prototype and foreign-made design options as the basis for standards, and must look carefully and thoroughly at the specific characteristics of those design options in determining whether they could reasonably be evaluated under the statutory criteria. Both of these inquiries will require detailed review of the characteristics of technologically feasible design options that are not commercially available within the meaning DOE assigned to that term in this rulemaking--that is, design options that were not available on commercially manufactured appliances sold in the United States in 1980. 243 Whether or not DOE acted reasonably in issuing rules in 1982 and 1983 based on 1980 information, we think it would be patently unreasonable for DOE to begin further proceedings in the last half of 1985 based on data half a decade old. As DOE itself acknowledges, the efficiency of many products involved in this rulemaking has changed dramatically since 1980. It would be wholly futile for us to require DOE to conform its decisionmaking procedures to the statute, but permit it to trudge through the correct procedure based on information that is now incontestably antique. Such a pointless exercise would make a mockery of the clear statutory emphasis on a realistically administered appliance program based on current technology. 244 Moreover, we believe that the text and legislative history of NECPA show that Congress would not have approved reliance on such outdated data. As we have discussed, the slow pace of agency proceedings under EPCA as originally enacted was a major reason for the enactment of the NECPA amendments. Congress wanted to avoid the delays involved in monitoring industry compliance with voluntary targets, and in part for that reason it eliminated the target approach. See H.R.Rep. No. 496, Pt. 4, 95th Cong., 2d Sess. 43-45 (1977). More importantly, Congress established a strict schedule in NECPA itself that specifically keyed the dates by which final rules were due to the dates on which DOE published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking and a notice of proposed rulemaking. See supra note 11. Those notices, in turn, determine the period for notice and comment and thus the period during which major parts of the record for the rulemaking would be created. 245 Congress, then, passed provisions intended to set a specific outer limit on the time that could elapse between the closing of the record and the promulgation of final rules. Thus, when Congress defined technologically feasible as capable of being carried out, see supra at 1392, it believed that only a relatively short period would pass between DOE's evaluation of available technology and its promulgation of final rules. As Congress knew that the state of technology changes rapidly, it had good reasons for this insistence on prompt action. We believe Congress thought that technologically feasible meant technologically feasible based on information that is reasonably current at the time the final rules are validly adopted, not technologically feasible based on information that was reasonably current at the time DOE first attempts to promulgate final rules, 46 even if it turns out that some years intervene between initial promulgation and the adoption of final valid rules. Indeed, DOE has emphasized that it continuously attempted to use the most recent, reliable data, where to do so would not inordinately delay the rulemaking. 48 Fed.Reg. 39,376, 39,379 (1983). We think that policy can be reasonably effected only if DOE gathers current information in its new proceeding, including current information about design options examined in the record that closed during 1980 and new information about design options that have become technologically feasible since 1980. 246 Our decision to require a new process of data-collection is also reinforced by section 325(h) of the Act, which requires that DOE reevaluate its standards after issuance and that [n]ot later than 5 years after prescribing an energy efficiency standard, DOE make and publish its determination as to whether any standard should be amended. DOE published its final rules in December of 1982 and August of 1983, so its determinations as to amendments are due in December of 1987 and August of 1988. We note that the present rulemaking commenced in earnest with the June 1980 notice, and that DOE's reassessment of its data began in February of 1981. DOE thus took from February of 1981 to August of 1983, or some thirty months, to analyze data already collected, receive and consider comments, and publish final rules. If the process of preparing the determinations due at the five-year mark took the same time, DOE would need to begin analyzing data in February of 1986. 47 It would thus hardly be sensible for us to require DOE to redo its 1982 and 1983 rules based on 1980 information, when in a short time DOE would in any event be required to gather new data to see if its rules based on earlier data remained appropriate. Our decision, then, contemplates that DOE will investigate current design options to remedy the shortcomings we have already identified. 48 We thus do not consider whether DOE's reliance on arguably obsolete information, were it the only potential difficulty in this rulemaking, would justify overturning the rules under review.