At the very, very end of 2016, the Department of Energy issued “final rules” for a few types of equipment/appliances. One of the rules addressed commercial packaged boilers. As its summary states, “In this final rule, DOE is adopting more-stringent energy conservation standards for certain commercial packaged boilers.”
According to Joanna Mauer of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project (www.appliance-standards.org), the DOE reckons a large oil-fired steam boiler owner could save as much as $36,000 over the unit’s lifetime thanks to the boosted efficiency. Mauer works this improvement out to a 30-year overall savings for owners nationwide of anywhere from $500 million to $2 billion.