The building industry is casting a weary eye toward the Department of Energy, fearing its promise to come up with energy efficiency standards for home appliances may be no better than its efforts in the early '90s to come up with standards for low-flow toilets.

According to the National Association of Home Builders Research Center in Bethesda, Md., industry officials are worried the DOE will demand more efficient home appliances such as washers and dryers but will not produce in a timely fashion any performance standards or phase-in schedule.

Michael Chapman, chairman of the Research Center's board of directors, said in a letter to the DOE, "The building industry has always been a strong proponent of efforts that improve energy efficiency and reduce water consumption. Indeed, we have been at the forefront of a variety of significant research initiatives in this area for many years.

"The Research Center and the building industry therefore applaud the energy and resource conservation goals underlying a recent string of agreements between the appliance industry and the Department of Energy (DOE).

"We are concerned, however, that those well-intentioned efforts, if not accompanied by performance standards and an achievable phase-in schedule, could compromise the efficient operation of appliances, thereby defeating the purpose of the agreements and frustrating consumers."

Chapman specifically pointed to the 1993 DOE rule aimed at improving water conservation, a rule that was poorly implemented. That rule ultimately mandated the use of low-flow toilets.

"Unfortunately for consumers," Chapman said, "that regulation wasn't accompanied by any measure of performance for the products that were to be developed or any provisions to ensure that the new products would perform at least as effectively as their predecessors."

Research Center President Liza Bowles added that testing clearly demonstrates that a wide variation exists even now in the performance of low-flow toilets, and many models are not nearly as effective as their predecessors.

"Additionally, seven years later, there still exists no standard that adequately addresses the performance of the products that consumers are required to use and that are on the market today," she said.