It changes the decision-making process for energy efficiency standards rulemaking for consumer and commercial equipment. The amended rule applies a threshold approach to determine whether projected energy savings would be “significant”, defined as saving at least 88 TWh (0.3 quads) of energy over 30 years or improving energy use by at least 10% above existing standards. This significantly raises the bar for the minimum energy efficiency improvements before the agency will even consider implementing it, thus endangering future attempts to update and improve appliances’ efficiency standards.