Washington, D.C., May 16, 2016 – Confirming long-standing suspicions of the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR), a 2015 document issued through the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) provides direct evidence of DOE’s abuse of supposed energy “research” awards, grants, contracts and other funded activities to promote and advance the adoption of ruinous DOE energy standards for manufactured housing and simultaneously break down industry opposition to those standards using industry insiders as supporters and apologists.

That document, entitled “High Performance Factory Built Housing – 2015 Building Technologies Office Peer Review” (available on the internet) details a complex DOE strategy to use paid manufactured housing energy “research” activities as cover to simultaneously drive and support ongoing standards development activity at DOE, while working to condition the industry to accept destructive, high-cost energy regulation through “integration and collaboration” with the industry’s largest businesses and the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI).

Detailing just one DOE “research” contract awarded to The Levy Partnership (TLP) since 2010 – among many other DOE contracts and grants apparently awarded to TLP since that time – the report documents nearly $2 million in actual and projected funds being paid by DOE to TLP and others not only to conduct manufactured housing energy research, but to “develop and implement [energy] codes and standards,” to “participate in the ongoing MH standards development process – informed by the R&D [research and development] work,” and to “shift” an “industry mindset focused on 1st cost” (i.e., purchase price of a home to the consumer), seen by DOE as a “barrier” to its regulatory objectives. And, indeed, in its summary of “Progress and Accomplishments” under this contract, the report brags that contract activity had already “impacted the ASRAC process” — referring to the sham manufactured housing energy standards “negotiated rulemaking” conducted by DOE through its Appliance Standards and Rulemaking Federal Advisory Committee (ASRAC) over a three-month period in 2014.

The principal of TLP, at all times relevant to this activity, Emanuel Levy, was a key member of the DOE-ASRAC “negotiated rulemaking” Working Group in 2014, who provided much of the “data” relied upon by the Working Group to support its high-cost regulatory proposal (opposed solely by MHARR) and voted to adopt that proposal. Mr. Levy is also Executive Director of the Systems Building Research Alliance (formerly the Manufactured Housing Research Alliance – MHRA), an MHI-affiliate organization which bills itself as the “research arm of the factory-built housing industry.” Among the various TLP contract “partners” in promoting DOE regulation — listed in the 2015 DOE document — are SBRA itself and four members of the SBRA Board of Directors, representing the industry’s largest manufacturers. SBRA’s Board, in turn, includes five members of the DOE “negotiated rulemaking” Working Group, all of whom voted to recommend the ruinous manufactured housing standards now pending at DOE.

Given the inherent conflict of interest involved in a contract providing substantial compensation to: (1) support, advance and promote DOE manufactured housing energy regulation and regulatory objectives on the one hand; and (2) to research and develop ostensible means and measures to comply with those standards (among other things) on the other, MHARR, on May 10, 2016, filed a new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with DOE, seeking the disclosure of all documents reflecting any amounts paid by DOE or any DOE-affiliated entity or office since 2007 to TLP, Mr. Levy personally, SBRA, MHRA, or other TLP “partners” listed in the 2015 report.

As MHARR has reiterated previously, it is committed to opposing the sham DOE “negotiated rulemaking” process and any standards resulting from that process in all available forums, including possible legal action. This latest MHARR FOIA request is another strategic step in that direction.