Legislation + Regulation

  The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) established a temporary public interest waiver to waive Buy America requirements for steel, iron, manufactured products, and construction materials in electric vehicle (EV) chargers. The temporary waiver became effective on March 23, 2023. This short-term, temporary waiver enables EV charger acquisition and installation to proceed while also ensuring the [...]

  Disclaimer: I am not an attorney, and this article is a good faith, best effort at communicating the most relevant aspects of BABA requirements, for the lighting industry. The link at the end of this article goes to a more complete article published by the law firm, Steptoe. BACKGROUND The lighting industry has been [...]

  The US Department of Transportation awarded $653 million in grants on November 3rd to upgrade 41 water-based ports around the country. The funding is through the Port Infrastructure Development Program, which provides planning support, capital funding and project management assistance, and comes from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). The projects will boost [...]

  Rural Energy for America is a new program of the US Department of Agriculture. The program provides guaranteed loan financing and grant funding to agricultural producers and rural small businesses, for renewable energy systems or to make energy efficiency improvements. Agricultural producers may also apply for new energy efficient equipment and new system loans [...]

  Colorado recently became the seventh state to ban nearly all fluorescent lamps. The other six states are: California, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The above chart shows the effective dates for each state’s phaseout of screw-based CFLs, as well as pin-based CFLs & linear fluorescent tubes. All of the fluorescent lamp bans [...]

  The US Department of Energy has announced that US states and territories can apply for more than $8.5 Billion in funding for residential energy efficiency and electrification. The funding comes from a pair of programs in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Priority will go to homes that can save the most energy, with more [...]

  In 2007, Congress passed the Energy Independence & Security Act (EISA07). This law directed the US Department of Energy (DOE) to set regulations that initially phased out the incandescent lamps in popular 40W, 60W, 75W, and 100W wattages. They were largely replaced with halogen lamps that were somewhat more efficient, as well as some [...]

The current California energy code (Title 24 Nonresidential) requires luminaires or lamps that are used for plant growth to have a photosynthetic photon efficacy (PPE) of at least 1.9 micromoles per joule (µmol/J) for indoor grow facilities with more than 40 kW of horticultural lighting load. Luminaires or lamps used for plant growth in greenhouses [...]

  On August 16, 2022, President Biden signed Reese’s Law (P.L. 117-171), which aims to protect children 6 years and younger from accidentally swallowing button cell and coin batteries. Reese’s law requires the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) to promulgate a safety standard for these batteries and consumer products containing these batteries. This law raises [...]