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11th Circuit Pauses Tankless Water Heater Challenge

By Renée Lani posted 2 days ago

  
On March 12, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit granted petitioners' motion to hold in abeyance a legal challenge of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) final rule pertaining to efficiency standards for gas-fired instantaneous water heaters (GIWHs).
 
Recall that on January 17, APGA joined a coalition of attorneys general (AGs), trade associations, and a manufacturer (collectively referred to as "petitioners") in challenging DOE's final GIWHs efficiency rule.  Petitioners later requested that the Court stay the proceedings, as DOE announced that it planned to create a separate product class for the appliances at issue and because related litigation is still ongoing in the D.C. Circuit (i.e., the "Furnace Rule" challenge).  A pause on this legal challenge allows these other activities to move forward, as they might impact how the 11th Circuit would rule on the case.
 
Also of note in this case is that the 11th Circuit denied the intervention of Sierra Club and the Consumer Federation of America, both of which would have been represented by Earthjustice.
 
The rule also remains the subject of a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution in both chambers of Congress, having already passed in the House and expected to be voted on in the Senate in the near future.  
 
For questions on this article, please contact Renée Lani of APGA staff by phone at 202-464-0836 or by email at rlani@apga.org.

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