EPA rule on commercial and industrial oil boilers

Today EPA released a rule regarding the installation and maintenance of commercial and industrial oil boilers.  The rule essentially does not provide emissions limits for boilers with a capacity of less than 10 million Btus.  However, these commercial and industrial boilers must now be serviced every other year, and records must be maintained.

This rule is far different than the rule proposed by EPA last year.  The proposed rule provided emissions testing limits that were well below what was achievable by the small boilers serviced by PMAA members. Additionally, the testing of the boilers on an annual basis would have cost $10,000 to $15,000 per year, and thus essentially new oil boilers in commercial facilities would have been effectively banned.

The National Oilheat Research Alliance assembled significant technical comments showing that EPA’s proposal was impossible to achieve.  These comments were prepared in cooperation with Brookhaven National Laboratory, NORA’s technical staff, OMA and equipment manufacturers.

Additionally, NORA led a delegation of marketers and technical experts to EPA’s Research Triangle Park’s headquarters where the comments were discussed.

PMAA and NORA are extremely pleased with EPA’s revised rule, and credits much of the success to the efforts of the industry to develop clean and efficient equipment.

As you recall, OMA has been involved with this from the beginning. Special thanks go to OMA Members Vic Turk from Beckett and Roger Marran from Energy Kinetics for all their work on this project.

Here is the link if you wish to read the ruling: