[Federal Register Volume 74, Number 123 (Monday, June 29, 2009)]
[Notices]
[Pages 31016-31017]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: E9-15194]


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DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY


Proposed Agency Information Collection

AGENCY: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

ACTION: Notice and Request for the Office of Management and Budget 
(OMB) Review and Comment.

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SUMMARY: DOE has submitted to OMB for clearance, a proposal for 
collection of information under the provisions of the Paperwork 
Reduction Act of 1995. The proposed collection will allow respondents 
to submit applications for a National Priority Project Designation 
(NPPD) as called for by Section 1405 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 
(EPAct 2005).

DATES: Comments regarding this collection must be received on or before 
July 29, 2009. If you anticipate that you will be submitting comments, 
but find it difficult to do so within the period of time allowed by 
this notice, please advise the OMB Desk Officer of your intention to 
make a submission as soon as possible. The Desk Officer may be 
telephoned at 202-395-4650.

ADDRESSES: Written comments should be sent to the:

DOE Desk Officer, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office 
of Management and Budget, New Executive Office Building, Room 10102, 
735 17th Street, NW., Washington, DC 20503. And to
Patrick Shipp, Office of Information and Business Management Systems 
(EE-3C), Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. 
Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Ave., SW., Washington, DC 
20585.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Requests for additional information or 
copies of the information collection instrument and instructions should 
be directed to Patrick Shipp, Office of Information and Business 
Management Systems (EE-3C), Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable 
Energy, U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, DC 20585, (202) 586-
7769; Jody Barringer, Office of Information and Business Management 
Systems (EE-3C), Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. 
Department of Energy, Washington, DC 20585, (202) 586-5404; or by e-
mail at [email protected].

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: This information collection request 
contains: (1) OMB No.: New; (2) Information Collection Request Title: 
National Priority Project Designation; (3) Type of Request: New 
collection; (4) Purpose: This collection of information is a form that 
DOE will make available electronically on the internet and which 
persons or organizations seeking NPPD under Section 1405 of EPAct 2005 
(Pub. L. 109-58) must use in applying for such designation. The draft 
application is available at http://www.eere.energy.gov/office_eere/docs/npp_application.doc. DOE is publishing as an attachment to this 
notice the guidelines for requesting NPPD. The purpose of Presidential 
designation is to recognize energy projects that have advanced the 
field of renewable energy technology and contributed to North American 
energy independence; (5) Type of Respondents: Public and Private 
Sector; (6) Estimated Number of Respondents: 20; (7) Estimated Number 
of Burden Hours: 400 annually.
    Statutory Authority: Energy Policy Act of 2005, Public Law 109-58.

    Issued in Washington, DC, on June 16, 2009.
Steven G. Chalk,
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Energy Efficiency and Renewable 
Energy.

Appendix

Department of Energy

Guidelines for National Priority Project Designation
    Presidential National Priority Project Designation (NPPD) may be 
earned by organizations involved in projects that are leading the way 
in using energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. This 
designation, established by Section 1405 of the Energy Policy Act of 
2005 (Pub. L. 109-58) provides the President of the United States and 
the Secretary of Energy with a mechanism to recognize projects that are 
making the greatest strides in helping North America reduce its 
dependence on fossil fuels and promote domestic energy security.
    Projects that receive NPPD will be highlighted by the Department of 
Energy (DOE) as transformational energy efficiency and renewable energy 
leaders. DOE will work with recipients and with national media sources 
to spotlight these projects as models for the rest of the country and 
the world.

I. Eligible Projects

A. Categories of Projects

    DOE will accept applications for NPPD in the following project 
categories:
    (1) Grid-Scale Generation by Wind and Biomass Energy Projects. To 
be eligible for NPPD, a wind or biomass project must provide 
electricity to the national power grid, rather than electricity 
designed to serve only specific end users.
    A wind energy project is any installation of technologies that 
generates electricity, fuel or other usable energy by harnessing the 
power of wind.
    A biomass energy project is any installation of technologies that 
generate electricity, fuel or other usable energy derived from biomass, 
and may include co-firing or co-gasification techniques if biomass is 
responsible for 51 percent or more of the energy produced. The term 
``biomass'' means any lignin waste material that is segregated from 
other waste materials and is determined to be nonhazardous by the 
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; and any solid, 
nonhazardous, cellulosic material that is derived from--
    (A) Any of the following forest-related resources: mill residues, 
pre-commercial thinnings, slash, brush, or non-merchantable material;
    (B) solid wood waste materials, including waste pallets, crates, 
dunnage, manufacturing and construction wood wastes (other than 
pressure-treated, chemically treated, or painted wood wastes), and 
landscape or right-of-way tree trimmings; but not including municipal 
solid waste (garbage), gas derived from the biodegradation of solid 
waste, or paper that is commonly recycled;
    (C) agriculture wastes, including orchard tree crops, vineyard, 
grain, legumes, sugar, and other crop by-products or residues; and 
livestock waste nutrients; or
    (D) a plant that is grown exclusively as a fuel for the production 
of electricity.
    (2) Distributed Generation by Photovoltaic and Fuel Cell Energy 
Projects. A photovoltaic or fuel cell project must produce distributed 
generation to be eligible for NPPD. DOE considers distributed 
generation to be any power source that is designed to power an end user 
within a radius of one mile from the source.

[[Page 31017]]

    A photovoltaic energy project is any installation of technologies 
that converts light directly into electricity through a solid-state, 
semiconductor process.
    A fuel cell energy project is any application of technologies that 
uses fuel cells to transport energy. The term ``fuel cell'' means a 
device that directly converts the chemical energy of a fuel and an 
oxidant into electricity by electrochemical processes occurring at 
separate electrodes in the device.
    (3) Building Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Projects. This 
category of eligible projects consists of energy-efficient buildings 
and building-based renewable energy projects.
    An energy-efficient building project is one that will retrofit an 
existing building or build a new building such that the building 
performs all of its intended roles while using significantly less 
energy than conventional building stock. DOE considers the term ``new 
building'' to mean a building that is completed to the point of being 
ready for occupancy not earlier than two years before the date of the 
application for NPPD.
    A renewable energy project is one using technology that generates 
electricity or usable energy in the form of heat, steam, or fuel from 
any of the following sources: solar, wind, biomass, landfill gas, ocean 
(including tidal, wave, current, and thermal), geothermal, municipal 
solid waste, or new hydroelectric generation capacity achieved from 
increased efficiency or additions of new capacity at an existing 
hydroelectric project.
    (4) First-in-Class Building Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy 
Projects. DOE considers a first-in-class project to be one that 
incorporates a new energy-related technology or technique not used 
before, not used in the same manner before, or not used on the same 
scale before.

B. Time of Construction

    DOE will accept award applications both for projects that are being 
planned (are under construction or will begin construction within the 
next two years) and projects that are complete (were completed within 
the past two years).

II. Designation Criteria

    To obtain NPPD, a project must:
     Utilize energy-efficient or renewable energy technologies 
and fit into one of the four categories of projects identified in 
Section I.A. of these guidelines;
     Be located within the United States; and
     Meet the following criteria (for applicable category):
    [ctrcir] For wind and biomass--the project must involve the 
installation of not less than 30 megawatts of renewable energy 
generation capacity.\1\
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    \1\ For purposes of the National Priority Project Designation, 
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has defined the term 
``capacity'' to mean the maximum amount of energy that can be 
generated or stored by a device at any given time. For example, the 
capacity for a wind turbine would be the maximum electricity (Watts) 
it could generate given ideal wind speeds. The capacity of an energy 
storage device would be the total amount of energy that can be 
stored in the device under ideal conditions.
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    [ctrcir] For PV and fuel cells--the project must involve the 
installation of not less than 3 megawatts of renewable energy 
generation capacity.
    [ctrcir] For buildings--the project must have all of the following 
attributes:
    [dec222] Meet guidelines for Leadership in Energy and Environmental 
Design (LEED) certification (any level);
    [dec222] Use whole-building integration of energy efficiency and 
environmental performance design and technology, including advanced 
building controls;
    [dec222] Use renewable energy for at least 50 percent of the energy 
consumption of the project;
    [dec222] Use ENERGY STAR[supreg]-labeled products wherever 
possible; and
    [dec222] Include at least 5 million square feet of enclosed space 
(not necessarily all in one building or at a single site). ``Enclosed'' 
means space closed off from the elements that is heated, cooled, or 
both.
     For first-in-class building projects--the project must 
represent a first-in-class use of renewable energy or a new paradigm of 
building-integrated renewable energy use or energy efficiency. Any 
project establishing a new paradigm would need to include techniques 
that fundamentally change the assumptions made about energy systems as 
they relate to building science. This category could potentially 
include innovative project-financing approaches. There are no scale 
parameters for first-in-class building projects.

III. DOE Review and Designation

A. Selection Process

    After the close of the application period, DOE will review the 
applications and determine which projects have the potential to receive 
NPPD. DOE will ask the applicants of those projects to have a 
professional engineer inspect their project and certify that the 
information contained in their application is correct. The professional 
engineer may be an employee of the applicant organization. Once this is 
done, DOE will consider these projects to be ``certified projects.'' A 
certified project is one that is reasonably expected to meet the 
selection criteria set forth in these Guidelines.
    DOE technical staff will then conduct an additional review of all 
certified projects. This review may involve follow-up questions for the 
applicant organization. At the conclusion of this review, the Secretary 
of Energy will select a maximum of three projects in each category to 
be recommended to the President for designation as that year's National 
Priority Projects (NPP). While DOE will accept award applications in 
all four project categories, the Secretary of Energy may not recommend 
NPPD for projects in all categories.
    Any organization that applies for NPPD may remove its project from 
consideration at any time.

B. Promotion of Designated Projects

    Organizations whose projects are designated by the President as NPP 
will receive recognition from DOE in the form of:
     Receipt of a NPPD medal at a national event;
     National news releases;
     Prominent recognition on the DOE Web site; and
     Other suitable forms of publicity and recognition

C. Additional Information

    (1) Applicants may request confidentiality of information that they 
believe is exempt by law from public disclosure; this information must 
be clearly marked on the application by the applicant. DOE intends to 
honor requests for nondisclosure of information to the extent permitted 
by law, and it will make a final determination with regard to 
disclosure or nondisclosure of the information in accordance with DOE's 
Freedom of Information regulations (10 CFR 1004.11).
    (2) Submission of an application for designation does not create 
any obligation on DOE to grant such designation.
    (3) Questions or requests for additional information about NPPD 
should be directed to [email protected].

[FR Doc. E9-15194 Filed 6-26-09; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6450-01-P