What other ways can consumers compare the efficiency of A/C units? I would think some standardized testing and labels would be required.
[0] http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-470
"GAO's investigation shows that Energy Star is for the most part a self-certification program vulnerable to fraud and abuse. GAO obtained Energy Star certifications for 15 bogus products, including a gas-powered alarm clock."
Currently the minimum is a SEER of 13, but I've seen units as high as 22 advertised.
EDIT: I should mention that SEER uses different units for each part of the ratio -- BTUs of heat moved vs watt-hours expended. COP is dimensionless, and EER is just SEER but for a specific operating point. SEER extends the measurement through an entire "season", and so it theoretically gives a more realistic picture of overall efficiency.
You can get ground source heat pumps that are 50 SEER, 5.3 COP (and they'll provide all your hot water, too)
There used to be a federal tax incentive of 30% of the cost, no max, but it expired at the end of 2016.
Everyone knows GS heat pumps are more efficient.
A SEER 13-16 system might last 15-20 years (if you're lucky), while a SEER 22 system could break down much earlier at about the 10 year mark. You can sometimes replace specific parts, but depending on what breaks, it may not be cost effective.
In short, the only way we're moving to more efficient AC systems is if costs come down significantly, we see some major innovation in the field, or the government provides significant financial incentives.
As an aside, I also think we could achieve energy efficiencies by increasing the insulation in houses. It's unbelievable how much hot/cool air is lost through windows, doors, crawl spaces, and attics.
Brushless / electronically commutated DC motors are pretty interesting, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushless_DC_electric_motor
These motors are microcontroller-based. Apparently there was a rash of bad GE X13 motors in the early 2000's traced to bad thermistors. Unfortunately the board is potted in an insulating compound that makes board-level repair rather impractical.
My first motor's controller failed after about 8 years. It was cheaper to just buy a new motor vs. replacing only the controller. The second motor's rotor started grinding against the stator after about 13 months. I pulled the controller from that motor and installed it on the first motor (since it was near-perfect duplicate of the original motor). That ran for 14 months before the second controller failed.
I've been running the third (Nidec) motor for about 2 months. I'll be interested to see how to holds up long-term.
We went from SEER 10 to SEER 15. With the rebalancing that the contractor did, our house is much more comfortable with the thermostat at 80 than it was under the old system at 73.
With 2008 not being so long ago, neither job security nor resale value are that promising. We're still rebuilding consumer confidence after nine years. The economic recovery in the US is largely in a handful of major metropolitan areas pulling up the averages, with large swathes of the country still struggling. This needs to improve or some government incentive program like you mention must take it into account if we're going to sell capital-intensive home upgrades.
Anytime there are multiple standards for manufacturers to choose from, customer confusion is guaranteed.
This seems to be primarily an issue with copper coils. I was bitten by this with a brand new system that I had installed about 9 or 10 years ago. It was pretty tough to eat the labor costs of having a new coil installed (that was covered under warranty) as well as a complete refrigerant fill (at the time ~$900 for the full R410A fill) on a system that was less than one year old. Its been good since then though!
Nobody cares enough about EnergyStar to cut it, so I doubt it will be cut. It made it through the last time Congress was under Republican control totally unmolested, so I really doubt anybody is going to bother with it now.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...
I'm not saying there's no reason to worry, but there's also no reason to pretend that having the Democrats move pollution overseas solves global problems.
Democrats don't want to abolish every regulation possible in order to maximize corporate profits.
Democrats don't want to cut healthcare and entitlement programs in order to give massive tax cuts to rich people.
Democrats don't want to defund Planned Parenthood and are not rabidly anti-abortion.
Democrats don't want to ban gay marriage.
Democrats don't work their asses off trying to suppress minority votes.
Democrats don't want to prevent refugees from war zones from seeking shelter in the United States.
I can go on.
Basically, the idea that Democrats and Republicans are nearly identical is popular only amongst people who don't pay attention to politics because they are wealthy and privileged enough to not be directly affected by any of it. But if you ask a low-income woman, for example, I guaran-fuckin-tee you that she will gladly educate you on the finer details of decades of Republican oppression of women.
I'm not going to defend Bill Clinton. He made a lot of mistakes, including, as you say, making drastic, misguided changes to welfare and being "tough on crime". Although, for what it's worth, he has recently apologized for some of those mistakes [1].
In any case, fast-forward 17 years to today. Democrats and the Republicans are very, very different parties. I stand by my original statement: the only people who believe the two parties are similar are those who aren't paying attention.
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[1]http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/15/politics/bill-clinton-1994-cri...
There are a handful of figures to whom this does not apply, but the greater party apparatus fights tooth and nail against any substantive change (on the grounds that the current strategy is the only way to win elections, even as they lost all three branches of the national government and are irrelevant in more and more states) so I'm not holding my breath.
Bill Clinton had an agreement with Newt Gingrich to privatize Social Security that was only stopped because the Lewinsky scandal broke.
>Democrats don't want to ban gay marriage.
Who passed DOMA? Obama was against gay marriage until it became clear that it was going to get passed.
>Democrats don't work their asses off trying to suppress minority votes.
No, they just work their asses off to keep minorities poor and beholden to the state because that makes them good Democrat voters.
>Democrats don't want to prevent refugees from war zones from seeking shelter in the United States.
We wouldn't have refugees in Syria seeking shelter if Obama hadn't bombed Syria so much we literally ran out of bombs.
>But if you ask a low-income woman, for example
If that woman became a high income woman, she'd be much less likely to vote Democratic. The Democrats have no incentive to actually help her, only to make her more beholden to the state.
That, and generally Republicans tend to do far less cutting than they say they are going to. They talk about it to get votes, but they rarely actually follow through. Again, see the last time they had control of Congress, when spending was considered to be through the roof when the deficit was only $187 billion. And, that was when they could actually manage to pass legislation, unlike the current mess they're in right now.
So, no, it's not actually me being Pollyannaish at all. I'm being extremely cynical. I think they're basically lying about wanting to and they're too incompetent to manage it even if they did want to.