On July 9, the EPA issued its rather lame version of a justification for its continuation of bad decision making in a letter from its Lighting Program Office. As the letter states, "Since the release of RLF Version 4.2, EPA has received a number of comments and questions related to whether and how the specification will ensure only high quality LED products will qualify for the ENERGY STAR. With this letter, EPA would like to summarize the steps it has taken to address important quality issues and to provide stakeholders an opportunity to comment on the requirements." It then goes on to insist it is terribly concerned about the quality of products that qualify for the program and that the new specification depends on well-vetted and accepted test procedures which are well-vetted and tested because they say so.

The most amazing thing was the incredibly selective hearing that must have been applied for them to believe that the comments they have received are simply centered on whether the spec will assure high quality products. I guess the requests to rescind the surprise specification, including complaint filed by the Solid State Lighting International Trade Association to the office of the Office of the Inspector General, is about the quality? Or the refusal to support RLF 4.2 by the Consortium for Energy Efficiency is just about how quality is handled in the new spec. (In 2007, CEE members’ budgets represented over 90 percent of the total $3.7 billion in US state- and Canadian province-authorized energy efficiency incentive program budgets). They put together a good letter, although it did take a little more "politically correct tone" than I would personally wished that they had (read it here). According to our sources, the cited CEE Lighting Committee came out with a simple request, "Suspend RLF 4.2 until it can be considered correctly." It appears that there was some additional massaging to help make the point a little less directly at the EPA, and more towards the Energy Star SSL program in general. The letter did this by raising some of the other known issues that are slated to be addressed, including the effectiveness of IESNA LM-80 as a precise predictor of 70% lumen depreciation data, as well their suggestion of the need for a more precise definition of "directionality". It doesn't miss on the key point that, "In the near term, CEE believes that luminaire efficacy should be used for all SSL light fixtures." Hopefully no one reads the letter and gets the impression that DOE and EPA have together created a specification mess that needs to be fixed when the only mess is the EPA's doing with RLF 4.2.

You've got to read the EPA letter to believe it. Keep in mind that this is the same group that insisted the specification did not need to be created in an open forum, with stakeholder input, because it introduced all new language and specification components rather than "changing wording of an existing specification." They apparently contend that the EPA only needs to adhere to a public process after they've created a new "final specification with immediate effectivity." Thanks for this new open approach (yeah, right).

So, if we fall for this approach, how open will the process be? As they state in the July 9 letter, "To address concerns about quality issues, EPA is offering the opportunity for interested parties to comment on the technical amendment of the RLF specification. To this end, EPA will be accepting written comment until August 25, 2008. Please send comments to RLF@icfi.com. After this period, EPA will compile any comments received and consider the appropriateness and timing of any suggested changes." Seems like that's pretty much, "We'll do what we want, after giving it as much careful consideration as we did in creating the secret specification in the first place." If the EPA was serious about considering the comments, they would rescind the so called "technical amendment" and redo the process by publishing a draft, asking for comments, publishing the comments, working up a new draft based on the comments, publishing it, asking for comments on the draft until they get a real consensus document. Oh, and then it should be published with a minimum effectivity notification period of 270 days, as required by the Federal regulations that apply to Energy Star programs (42 U.S.C. 6294a(C)(7)).