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Case number 22-1030, Ed Al.

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American Gas Association, Ed Al, petitioners, versus United States Department of Energy, and Jennifer M. Granholm, Secretary, U.S.

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Department of Energy.

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Mr. Mansi Hani, petitioners, Mr. Hazel for the respondents.

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Mr. Mansi Hani, go ahead.

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Thank you, Your Honor, and may it please the court.

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The challenge DOE rules will eliminate non-condensing appliances from the market.

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But millions of existing homes and commercial buildings were designed to be used with non-condensing appliances.

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This uncontested reality makes the challenge rules unlawful for at least two reasons.

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First, non-condensing appliances possess a distinct performance characteristic under the plain text meaning of that term.

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And so they are protected by law under EPCA.

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Simply put, they operate differently.

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And that different means that they function within existing homes that have non-condensing appliances.

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Meanwhile, condensing appliances won't perform in the millions of buildings designed to be used with non-condensing appliances without sometimes substantial renovation to safely remove exhaust gas from the building.

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Second, DOE claims their rules are economically justified by using a technique called random assignment, which assumes that appliance purchasers act with no regard to their economic interest.

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This court has twice before rejected DOE's attempt to rely on this technique, and the department has once again failed to justify its usage.

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DOE picked a random answer to the important question of, how often do market failures occur?

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But random decision-making is arbitrary decision-making, and arbitrary and capricious action violates the APA.

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I welcome this court's questions.

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Mr. Mancingani, is your position that the DOE definition in the 2021 interpretive rule is incorrect, the definition of performance characteristic?

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Of the December 2021 interpretive rule, yes.

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And so if we were to agree with petitioners on that question, do we need to provide a definition for performance characteristic?

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And what would that definition be like?

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If you agree with the department allowable?

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I mean, if we think that the department's definition is too narrow, what would be an appropriate definition of performance characteristic?

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Or do we need to even state one?

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I think it would be appropriate to state one, because I think you need to define what it is before you decide whether this is a performance characteristic.

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And the way I would define it is that it's a product attribute that provides utility to consumers desiring to use the product.

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And I think if that's the definition, then there should be no contest that this meets that definition of performance characteristic, regardless of any factual disputes at the margin.

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Just to say that again, a product attribute that provides

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utility to consumers that desire to use the product.

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that desire to use the product.

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Yes.

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I mean, it doesn't include those who don't want to use the product, and it doesn't include things unrelated to the performance of the product.

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So it has to be something about using the product.

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And here, the way that non-condensing appliances work is that they can vent gas out of existing vertical vents.

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And that's about how it performs.

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And consumers derive utility for that because they wouldn't have to renovate their homes

[00:03:31] Speaker 01:
And how does your definition square with the statutory language?

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Right.

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So the statutory language uses the word performance characteristic.

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So performance encompasses with the idea of how the product performs.

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And characteristic, of course, is a product attribute.

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So there's that part.

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And I think that the idea of utility is inherent in the idea of what's a performance characteristic.

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But it's also the word used in 6295 Q1, which we consider the companion provision here, which perfects performance characteristics by creating new subclasses.

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Tell me the site again.

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6295 Q1.

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Of course, this is all entitled for you.

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Q1?

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Q1, yes.

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Q as in queen.

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Yeah.

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And there it says that the department must create different classes for groups of products that have performance characteristics and in doing so that the secretary must consider the utility of the product.

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So that's where the notion of utility comes in.

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It seems like there's a tension within the statute in that the department says, yes, there may be costs, but those are considered, appropriately under the statute, considered in the economic justification.

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And in fact, in the non-exhausted list of statutory criteria bearing on economic justification, the Congress included decreased utility or performance of covered products, which

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So there's utility and performance in that side too, which seems to support the notion that not everything that affects, for example, ease of installation is necessarily a performance characteristic.

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So I agree that that feature you just pointed out undermines their cost argument, because otherwise you wouldn't consider utility at all either in a performance characteristic.

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But to answer your question, I think utility is considered in that, but that doesn't mean that utility is irrelevant to the idea of what is a performance characteristic.

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So maybe there is some de minimis

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a decrease in utility that wouldn't be considered a performance characteristic.

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But I think utility still has to be the focus of determining what is a performance characteristic.

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And of course, there's the non-exhaustive list of examples.

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of what are performance characteristics.

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And within that list are things like sizes and reliability, which talk about, for example, a size as distinct from a capacity and a volume is important because it determines whether a consumer can actually install it in their existing space.

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Maybe that's sizes for, this statute covers a wide range of products.

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And to me, size is a performance characteristic if it's like a hairdryer that you want to travel with or

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a mixer that you want to be able to stow in a drawer.

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So it seems like there are lots of products where size is obviously a performance characteristic for the consumer, but doesn't necessarily mean that that is always.

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I don't know if Epco covers hair dryers, but with respect to... I knew I was going to get myself in hot water by imagining some product that's covered that isn't.

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But I assume that there are many products that are where size has a different degree of germanness to the consumer's ongoing use of the product as distinct from an installation.

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So I don't know of any examples, but what I do know of is examples within the department's past rulemakings and within the statute as to where some of these things have been taken into consideration.

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So for example, the statute Congress created separate standard for furnaces, quote, designed solely for installation in mobile homes.

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Congress recognizing that installation characteristics justifies a different standard.

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In the department's prior rules, they had different standards for standard size and non-standard size packaged terminal air conditioners, which are installed within a sleeve within the wall.

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And a standard size is more efficient, but not everybody's wall has the same hole size in it.

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So they created a separate, less efficient standard for non-standard size because, quote,

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some could be forced to invest in costly building modifications to convert openings to standard size dimensions.

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So I just wonder how we, you know, following up from Judge Brown's question, how we draw the line if, I mean, at some level, every, at least installable style appliances, putting aside whether, you know, my imagine category of a lot of more affordable things, but assuming installable types of appliance, every appliance that's already in use provides, in your terms, the utility of functioning in the purchaser's existing space.

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And so any time that the Department of Energy mandates a new type of appliance, it requires some form of extra installation work.

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It's depriving consumers of that appliance, of the performance characteristic of being able to function without requiring whatever that extra installation work is.

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Right, so you have to have a product class that would be rendered unavailable and create more than de minimis installation problems, right?

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So obviously, every product can be installed.

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But if the department is eliminating an entire class of products that is generally available, that's the language of the statute, and rendering it unavailable, and then that creates significant installation problems, then I think that, yes.

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The end of your argument is where the product class is rendered unavailable and it creates substantial installation costs?

[00:09:33] Speaker 05:
Well, substantial installation issues, right?

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It's not just a cost issue here, right?

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Because they have to...

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potentially renovate their home.

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And that not only creates changes to the consumer space, but also takes time to do, which that time is also a detriment to the consumers that can be very serious.

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And I would say, I don't know if significant substantial is the right word, but I would say is beyond de minimis.

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Is the venting that's required just an installation cost?

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I mean, in some sense, the venting

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you know, having to install in different kind of venting, you know, possibly losing interior or exterior space seems to be a feature that could thought to be part of the ongoing use of the new product, right?

[00:10:19] Speaker 01:
Like the venting is part of using the new product in your home with the new type of installation that was required.

[00:10:27] Speaker 05:
I agree, Judge Rao, and I think it's two things beyond just cost.

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So one is the disruption that's caused during the installation and during the renovation.

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And the second is the ongoing harm.

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And I think both would qualify.

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And the department can't just say, ignore all installation issues, because they don't count for performance characteristics.

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That's nowhere in the statute.

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But I do think it's both.

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So that's sacrificing balcony or windows.

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That's losing shelf or storage space in a business.

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That's the problems created by common venting with an appliance that's still there that's non-condensing.

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And then it's, of course, the time caused, the time disruptions caused during installation, including lost business for businesses,

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displacements, potentially freezing pipes during cold weather.

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And all of these things are what's involved in what the department admits is 40% of installations where you're replacing a non-condensing with a condensing appliance.

[00:11:26] Speaker 03:
Do you have figures on, if we disagreed with you, that the disruption at installation, the time, the cost, sometimes just getting something out of the packaging,

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is enough to cost you time, cut your fingers.

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Let's say we set that aside.

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And we're just saying ongoing sacrifices.

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Judge Rao's question was suggesting ongoing sacrifice of space.

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Do you have any information on how common that is?

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So the best information we have was at 40% number I gave.

[00:12:04] Speaker 03:
And that's what's- That's putting this all together.

[00:12:07] Speaker 05:
Yes, and that's what the department- That's your 39% figure?

[00:12:10] Speaker 05:
39%, yeah.

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I rounded up to 40%.

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We can give it a 39%.

[00:12:13] Speaker 03:
Just wanted to make sure I'm talking about the same figure.

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And I will refer the court to Joint Appendix 976 to 77, where the department talks about what's involved in difficult installation situations.

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This involves potentially multiple wall penetrations, concealing of flue vents, orphaned water heaters, interior wall displacement, vent or equipment relocation, and a joint appendix 67.

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They also admitted to potential changes in living space.

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These are not just simply cost issues.

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Your first figure was 976 to 977?

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976 to 977.

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I do want to reserve a remainder of my time for rebuttal.

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But before I do that, I do want to talk about random assignment.

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Their economic analysis was based on the assumption that consumers don't consider costs.

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This court already covered the problems with random assignment in APG 81.

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And so now the question is, have they justified the use of random assignment?

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And yet again, they have not.

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didn't read it that way.

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I thought that they were, although they're describing it somewhat differently when they say, OK, what we're trying to do here is create a baseline where we are not counting the benefits from households or businesses that would, without the rule,

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purchase condensing appliance.

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That's the point of that exercise, right?

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To put those aside.

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And so they're looking at the figures on who's already purchased based on shipping information, right?

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And then they're trying to say, who's likely

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in the future to purchase, and they looked at a bunch of variables they could have used, and they determined that the ones that seemed material were size of dwelling and newness, and that those were the entities or the owners, the situations in which, even without the rule, it was most likely that condensing units would be purchased anyway.

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And so they also included that in their modeling.

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And why wouldn't it be double counting?

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I mean, if they're right, probably those overlap to some pretty significant extent with the people who have the biggest savings.

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And so if you say, well, just also look and say who would have the biggest savings and throw them out, too, it seems to me that that's very likely double counting.

[00:14:43] Speaker 03:
DOE also said, and we looked at a bunch of other potential criteria, and we thought, no, they're not actually showing any difference, so we're not going to use those.

[00:14:54] Speaker 03:
How do we know that's not what's going on here and that your proposal would result in double counting?

[00:15:00] Speaker 05:
Oh, I don't think it'll result in double counting because what they did in those various factors to determine the share of consumers, that would be, say, choosing condensing and non-condensing.

[00:15:10] Speaker 05:
So I'm just going to give broad numbers here.

[00:15:13] Speaker 05:
Let's just say they said, in replacement situations, 60% of consumers would choose condensing and 40% of consumers would choose non-condensing.

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Now, which consumers would choose which of those?

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They said, well, we're just going to determine that by random.

[00:15:30] Speaker 03:
I mean, I think they have those two factors.

[00:15:32] Speaker 05:
They make small adjustments for that.

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But what they didn't recognize is that consumers do actually consider their economic interests.

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That's why consumers in the North.

[00:15:41] Speaker 03:
They considered that, right?

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They had all the behavioral economics modeling.

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And I mean, you don't dispute that there are also situations

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that the rule describes, where people don't act entirely rationally.

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So we don't dispute them.

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I mean, nobody here would be among the people who act irrationally.

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But there are people.

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We don't dispute that market failures can exist.

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But the question, the relevant question here is, how often do those market failures occur?

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And the way that the department answered that question is, we are going to pick an answer.

[00:16:18] Speaker 02:
So didn't they ask you

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Give us the answer to that question, and your clients didn't.

[00:16:25] Speaker 05:
So we said that real-world data shows that economic choices by consumers generally align with their economic benefits.

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So that's the reason why more efficient appliances are more popular in the north.

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That's the reason why condensing has an increase

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increasing market share.

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That's the reason why it's more common in new construction.

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And we actually provided regression graphs to show this.

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You can see that in the American Gas Association comments around Joint Appendix 744 to 746.

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And so we said, yeah, economics is clearly one thing that consumers are considering.

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And the department said, no, we're not going to assume that they consider economics at all.

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And even their examples of market failures don't completely align with what they did here.

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So there are examples of situations where a consumer currently has a condensing furnace, and the model assumed that they would replace that with a non-condensing furnace.

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So they would choose a less efficient appliance that would require them to install new venting, which means higher installation costs and higher operating costs.

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And there are hundreds of cases like that in their model.

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And there's no explanation for why a consumer would ever pay $2,000 more in upfront costs just to get a more or less efficient appliance.

[00:17:43] Speaker 01:
Mr. Mancing, I assume for a minute that we agreed with the Department of Energy that this sort of random assignment in the no new standards case is OK.

[00:17:53] Speaker 01:
wouldn't, would it still be a problem that they are assuming greater rationality in the standards case?

[00:17:59] Speaker 01:
I mean, so there seems to be a gap.

[00:18:01] Speaker 01:
It's sort of random assignment, you know, at point A, but like after the standards, they're assuming rational switching either to electric or to a more economically rational choice.

[00:18:14] Speaker 01:
Isn't the gap between that also a problem irrespective of whether the randomness itself is a problem?

[00:18:20] Speaker 05:
I agree there's an inconsistency there.

[00:18:22] Speaker 05:
Now, of course, they now say that with respect to fuel switching, they didn't rely on it.

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And so we don't have to consider the economic benefits of fuel switching.

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But to the extent that they did rely on it, that is an inconsistency there because they actually developed a model there with

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that judged when consumers may switch.

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And what they said there was that, hey, if an installation cost is going to be higher and the payback period is going to be really low, we're going to assume that the consumer would switch to electric.

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And they could have done the same thing with their model on the base case scenario here, but they didn't.

[00:19:01] Speaker 05:
So I agree that there is an inconsistency.

[00:19:03] Speaker 01:
Not even just with fuel switching.

[00:19:05] Speaker 01:
It seems that the department has assumed there will be some rational switching.

[00:19:09] Speaker 01:
So there's random assignment.

[00:19:11] Speaker 01:
But then if you were randomly assigned the wrong kind of furnace, you would then switch to something that made more rational sense.

[00:19:18] Speaker 05:
Well, so when you say switching, I now take it you mean condensing to non-condensing.

[00:19:21] Speaker 05:
Or non-condensing to condensing.

[00:19:23] Speaker 05:
Yeah, so with respect to that, there is no choice on the new standards case.

[00:19:28] Speaker 05:
Because everybody in the new standards case gets a condensing furnace.

[00:19:31] Speaker 05:
So that's not quite what happened here.

[00:19:36] Speaker 03:
So your answer to why Canada has required condensing consumer furnaces for several years is they don't have the legal constraints that we have or they have some kind of technology allowing them to install condensing furnaces in older buildings that we don't have or

[00:19:59] Speaker 05:
So the department didn't really do any study into what happened with Canada.

[00:20:04] Speaker 05:
They said, we know it's been done in Canada.

[00:20:05] Speaker 03:
You must know, though.

[00:20:07] Speaker 05:
You must know.

[00:20:07] Speaker 05:
Well, what I do know is that Canada is really cold.

[00:20:12] Speaker 05:
And so therefore, condensing appliances probably already consumed a very large portion of the market share, like they do in very northern states, in the United States, where it's 95% of the market share.

[00:20:23] Speaker 05:
So the fact that Canada didn't have significant problems is maybe not too surprising, because they probably already had a lot of condensing.

[00:20:30] Speaker 03:
There's going to be uptake there, rule or no rule.

[00:20:32] Speaker 05:
Right, exactly.

[00:20:33] Speaker 05:
Whereas in places like Georgia and Texas and Florida, that's only 5% of the market share of condensing appliances.

[00:20:40] Speaker 05:
If you're in Miami, you're not going to turn on your furnace very often.

[00:20:44] Speaker 05:
So it doesn't matter really too, too much about how efficient it is.

[00:20:47] Speaker 03:
In Miami, what you're worried about is air conditioning.

[00:20:49] Speaker 05:
Exactly.

[00:20:56] Speaker 03:
Question?

[00:20:57] Speaker 03:
Go ahead.

[00:21:02] Speaker 03:
Any questions?

[00:21:04] Speaker 03:
Oh, I was curious about that Meijer declaration.

[00:21:08] Speaker 03:
So there's a challenge to that as, oh, not in the record, not in comments.

[00:21:13] Speaker 03:
Well, the data, I appreciate that the data is in the record.

[00:21:20] Speaker 03:
So that doesn't seem to be the problem.

[00:21:21] Speaker 03:
But it's almost like it's a page limit problem.

[00:21:25] Speaker 03:
You're taking data and making an argument

[00:21:30] Speaker 03:
that is appended to your submissions that expands the argument space that you have.

[00:21:37] Speaker 03:
I mean, I've never seen something like that that just says, let us hire an expert to walk you through something in a way that no expert in the record has walked us through.

[00:21:50] Speaker 05:
So I don't remember what our word count, how close we were to the word count on our opening brief was.

[00:21:56] Speaker 05:
But I will say that the top line conclusions, the top line conclusions in the declaration were all repeated in the brief.

[00:22:05] Speaker 05:
The only thing that's additional is just giving the court these steps.

[00:22:08] Speaker 05:
You look at footnotes two and three of respondents brief, they basically do the same thing, except they don't give the courts the steps.

[00:22:15] Speaker 05:
They just said, we got this from the data.

[00:22:17] Speaker 05:
So we were there.

[00:22:18] Speaker 05:
It was there primarily for the court's convenience to understand how we got there.

[00:22:22] Speaker 05:
But the top line conclusions were both in the brief and in the declaration.

[00:22:26] Speaker 05:
I don't really think that that's a word limit problem.

[00:22:33] Speaker 03:
All right.

[00:22:33] Speaker 03:
And we'll give you some time to rebuttal.

[00:22:34] Speaker 05:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:22:47] Speaker 04:
Good morning, Your Honors.

[00:22:48] Speaker 04:
May it please the court, Stephen Hazel for the government.

[00:22:51] Speaker 03:
You also could speak up a little bit.

[00:22:53] Speaker 04:
Of course, Your Honor.

[00:22:54] Speaker 04:
Congress has directed the department to regularly revisit the efficiency standards for the appliances at issue here.

[00:23:00] Speaker 04:
Consistent with that directive, the agency has determined that raising those standards will yield billions in net benefits without sacrificing product performance.

[00:23:09] Speaker 04:
That determination reflects a detailed technical and economic analysis, spanning hundreds of federal register pages, and it readily withstands petitioners challenges.

[00:23:18] Speaker 04:
I want to start by clarifying all of factual misunderstandings that came up earlier today and in petitioners briefs as well.

[00:23:26] Speaker 01:
Actually, if you could start, I mean, throughout

[00:23:30] Speaker 01:
Throughout the government's briefing, there's a reliance on deference to expertise and the agency's predictive judgments.

[00:23:39] Speaker 01:
After Loper-Brite, though, we need to figure out what the best meaning of the statute is, and I see much less in the government's brief explaining how its interpretive rule in December 2021 is consistent with the words of the statute in terms of what a performance characteristic is.

[00:23:56] Speaker 01:
So if you could speak to that.

[00:23:58] Speaker 04:
Absolutely, Your Honor.

[00:23:59] Speaker 04:
So let me take that in two parts.

[00:24:01] Speaker 04:
We're not asking for deference on any legal interpretation, where deference would come in when we're talking about what's actually going on with how furnaces are vented or installed.

[00:24:10] Speaker 04:
And this is a market that the agency has looked at for decades.

[00:24:13] Speaker 04:
Respect for the agency's expertise.

[00:24:14] Speaker 01:
Sort of the zeitgeist of your brief, though, is this is all about science and expertise, and we can't really figure that out for ourselves.

[00:24:23] Speaker 04:
So, Your Honor, I wouldn't say the court can't figure that out for itself.

[00:24:27] Speaker 04:
But when we're talking about how pipes are installed in different kinds of buildings, that seems like something where the agency is fast.

[00:24:34] Speaker 01:
Let's talk about the statute, though.

[00:24:36] Speaker 01:
and the agency's interpretation of the statute.

[00:24:39] Speaker 04:
Absolutely, Your Honor.

[00:24:39] Speaker 04:
I'm not sure how much distance there really is between us and the other side on the interpretation of the statute.

[00:24:45] Speaker 04:
This is about performance characteristics.

[00:24:46] Speaker 04:
It's not every characteristic of a product that would go too far.

[00:24:50] Speaker 04:
It's about how it actually performs.

[00:24:51] Speaker 04:
It's about how it operates.

[00:24:53] Speaker 04:
I think if it were really true, just to give an example where I think we actually agree with the other side, if it were really true that condensing units couldn't be installed in a substantial portion of buildings, I think that wouldn't be a performance characteristic.

[00:25:05] Speaker 04:
in those buildings.

[00:25:07] Speaker 04:
That's the venting dryers rule.

[00:25:10] Speaker 01:
The department has said that a performance characteristic is what a person experiences just using the product.

[00:25:19] Speaker 01:
And since the condensing and non-condensing furnace both produce heat, there's no difference.

[00:25:23] Speaker 04:
That's right, Your Honor.

[00:25:25] Speaker 04:
Obviously, if the furnace couldn't be installed at all, you would experience that, right?

[00:25:31] Speaker 04:
It wouldn't perform or it wouldn't function in your space.

[00:25:34] Speaker 04:
Our disagreement with the other side here is just they haven't shown that.

[00:25:38] Speaker 04:
What the agency found is they hadn't shown either the magnitude or even the existence of any of these kind of non-cost problems.

[00:25:45] Speaker 04:
That's a J.A.

[00:25:47] Speaker 04:
74.

[00:25:48] Speaker 04:
We've talked about the Canada evidence.

[00:25:50] Speaker 04:
Canada is cold, but it has a building stock very similar to that in the United States.

[00:25:54] Speaker 04:
They've had these requirements for a long time.

[00:25:56] Speaker 04:
They just haven't experienced any of these kind of non-cost problems.

[00:25:59] Speaker 01:
OK, so you don't seem to want to talk about the words of the statute.

[00:26:01] Speaker 01:
I'll just ask you a more specific question.

[00:26:03] Speaker 01:
So it talks about features.

[00:26:05] Speaker 01:
So why is it not a feature?

[00:26:06] Speaker 01:
The type of venting of a furnace, why would that not be a feature that is a performance characteristic?

[00:26:13] Speaker 01:
because it affects the way the furnace is working in a person's home, you know, in terms of like how it's being vented, right, because maybe they've had to lose a closet or a window or something like this.

[00:26:25] Speaker 04:
So your honor, again, I'm really not trying to avoid the statutory question.

[00:26:29] Speaker 04:
I mean, I think if to take another version of this hypo, if if the furnaces really were taking a lot more space, if the size were different, we agree that would be a protected characteristic.

[00:26:42] Speaker 01:
That's not answering my question.

[00:26:43] Speaker 01:
You're not.

[00:26:43] Speaker 01:
What about the venting?

[00:26:44] Speaker 01:
So I understand these furnaces are roughly the same size, the furnace itself.

[00:26:49] Speaker 01:
Right, but one kind of furnace requires a lot of different venting because it has to be vented out through a window or in some other way.

[00:26:58] Speaker 04:
So your honor, I think if the argument was that the performance of the actual sort of operation of the product is the same, but the venting works differently and we think that different venting takes up more space.

[00:27:11] Speaker 04:
We disagree with that actually, and I'd like to clarify that too.

[00:27:15] Speaker 04:
But if it was true that the venting took up a lot more space, that would of course be relevant to the cost analysis.

[00:27:20] Speaker 01:
Doesn't the department

[00:27:23] Speaker 01:
can see that about 5% of installations would be difficult, right?

[00:27:27] Speaker 01:
And that relates to the venting.

[00:27:28] Speaker 04:
Your Honor, that's right.

[00:27:32] Speaker 01:
Difficult.

[00:27:33] Speaker 01:
So 5% of consumers.

[00:27:34] Speaker 01:
So that seems to be a performance characteristic that takes something off of the market that people are using.

[00:27:40] Speaker 04:
If I could just clarify what difficult means to the department, difficult means the costs would be higher than the norm.

[00:27:47] Speaker 04:
And so they should be included in the model.

[00:27:49] Speaker 04:
What it absolutely doesn't mean, and I want to be really clear about this, is that usable space would have to be given up.

[00:27:55] Speaker 04:
What the agency actually found, and this is JA67, is that typically there is no loss of usable space, again, at JA7.

[00:28:04] Speaker 04:
Typically, there is no loss of usable space and that in any case where you're replacing non-condensing venting with condensing venting, you can actually use the same pipes.

[00:28:14] Speaker 04:
There's commercially available solutions that can do that.

[00:28:18] Speaker 01:
It doesn't typically sort of give away the game.

[00:28:20] Speaker 01:
So then it's the department's position that even in those cases where it does take up additional space, that's not a performance characteristic.

[00:28:28] Speaker 04:
So your honor, it's not clear from the record that there ever is a case where it takes up additional space in part because of the technological solution that I just mentioned.

[00:28:35] Speaker 01:
OK, so let's assume that it does sometimes take up additional space.

[00:28:39] Speaker 01:
Why is that not a performance characteristic?

[00:28:41] Speaker 04:
So your honor, even in that case, I think it would be incumbent on the other side to show not just that there is like one building somewhere where there would be a problem, but that would be in a substantial portion of buildings.

[00:28:52] Speaker 04:
I mean, the statutory text refers.

[00:28:54] Speaker 01:
Let's assume it's, say, 5%.

[00:28:55] Speaker 01:
right, the difficult installations or something.

[00:28:57] Speaker 01:
Why would that not be a performance characteristic?

[00:29:00] Speaker 04:
So, Your Honor, I think the reason we win this case is because that's factually just not true.

[00:29:06] Speaker 04:
You know, the text of the statute focuses on performance characteristics of a particular product, not sort of the venting or pipes or whatever it is that might be associated with that product.

[00:29:16] Speaker 04:
So I think the scenario you're positing would be analyzed as part of the economic analysis.

[00:29:21] Speaker 04:
If people were giving up rooms, windows, and balconies, that might well swamp the economic analysis.

[00:29:28] Speaker 04:
And so the rule would just not be justified.

[00:29:30] Speaker 04:
That's just not what we have here.

[00:29:32] Speaker 04:
They haven't pointed to any actual building.

[00:29:35] Speaker 04:
where a window or a balcony would have to be given up.

[00:29:39] Speaker 04:
And that's not what the agency found in its factual findings.

[00:29:43] Speaker 04:
If they had wanted to argue that those findings just weren't supported by substantial evidence, they could have done that.

[00:29:49] Speaker 04:
They haven't done that in the brief here.

[00:29:51] Speaker 04:
And Congress put the burden on them.

[00:29:52] Speaker 04:
It's the burden on petitioners to put forward evidence showing that this really is a performance characteristic.

[00:29:58] Speaker 04:
They just haven't done that.

[00:30:01] Speaker 04:
And I do, I'll just, a couple of other JA sites that I would encourage the court to take a look at on the facts here.

[00:30:08] Speaker 04:
JA 948, always or almost always the technological solutions to these problems.

[00:30:16] Speaker 04:
JA 973 is talking about the evidence from Canada and other jurisdictions that have implemented these rules without

[00:30:23] Speaker 04:
without issues.

[00:30:25] Speaker 04:
JA 974 focuses on windows and balconies and says there's not any evidence that these can't be successfully installed in any particular place.

[00:30:35] Speaker 04:
So again, I think the root of our dispute here is a factual one.

[00:30:39] Speaker 04:
I also just want to emphasize the implications of the other side's legal interpretation, which as I understand it is sort of any time there's diminished utility, that would constitute a performance characteristic.

[00:30:51] Speaker 04:
That just can't be right.

[00:30:52] Speaker 04:
under the statute or as a practical matter.

[00:30:55] Speaker 04:
If that were true, by design, when efficiency improves, there is often going to be increased installation costs or increased maintenance or something like that.

[00:31:05] Speaker 04:
Congress anticipated that and said that goes as part of the economic analysis, but it doesn't necessarily preclude all rules in that area.

[00:31:16] Speaker 04:
This case, I think, is a good example of the problems with their argument.

[00:31:22] Speaker 04:
Any time you increase the efficiency of these types of products as a scientific matter, they produce condensate, which has to be vented through these plastic rather than metal pipes.

[00:31:33] Speaker 04:
And so if we're really true that that difference in venting is a performance characteristic, DOE would never or almost never be able to raise the efficiency standard for this whole class of important products.

[00:31:45] Speaker 04:
And that logic threatens to extend to other appliance categories as well.

[00:31:52] Speaker 03:
I'm happy to answer.

[00:31:55] Speaker 03:
I wonder if you could talk a little bit about

[00:32:00] Speaker 03:
Mr. Mansinghani's position that the department ignored the cases in which it would be most economically advantageous even without the rule for individuals or businesses to switch to condensing units and that instead the department insisted on

[00:32:24] Speaker 03:
Assuming randomness in which purchasers would turn to condensing units without the rule.

[00:32:31] Speaker 04:
Absolutely your honor and maybe if I could start by just giving an example of how the model would would project people's behavior and the base case without standards.

[00:32:41] Speaker 04:
Say, for example, that we're trying to project a building in Virginia, whether that building is going to have a condensing furnace or a non-condensing furnace 10 years from now.

[00:32:51] Speaker 04:
The agency started by looking at past shipment data for that particular state, then added trends.

[00:32:58] Speaker 04:
What do we think is going to be happening 10 years from now?

[00:33:00] Speaker 04:
The trend is generally towards condensing units.

[00:33:03] Speaker 04:
And so that's what the model reflects.

[00:33:05] Speaker 04:
The agency also found data showing that there's some correlation between household square footage and whether it's condensing or not.

[00:33:13] Speaker 04:
So it included that variable in the model.

[00:33:15] Speaker 04:
It found evidence that whether it's a replacement scenario or new condensation.

[00:33:19] Speaker 04:
construction is relevant, so it included that variable in the model as well.

[00:33:23] Speaker 04:
The agency looked at all of the data available, looked at its own data, looked at third-party data.

[00:33:29] Speaker 04:
Any time there was a significant correlation, it included the variable in the model.

[00:33:33] Speaker 04:
All of this sort of focus on random assignment is because the agency used what's called a Monte Carlo method.

[00:33:41] Speaker 04:
that method that sort of term of the last step is called random assignment, but it doesn't mean you're just flipping a coin.

[00:33:48] Speaker 04:
What it means is you include all the variables that you have in the model.

[00:33:52] Speaker 04:
And when when that runs out, you make your predictions.

[00:33:56] Speaker 03:
So I think I thought you just said that anytime there's a significant correlation between

[00:34:01] Speaker 04:
When the data shows that a variable is significant.

[00:34:04] Speaker 03:
A variable and the likelihood of moving.

[00:34:11] Speaker 03:
We're just saying that condensing.

[00:34:12] Speaker 03:
And I think their argument is, well, a variable is how much would I save?

[00:34:21] Speaker 03:
And I think it's, I mean, maybe it's a circularity, maybe it's a double counting, but I'm trying to better understand as not someone who is not a statistician, what your sort of common sense response to that is.

[00:34:35] Speaker 04:
So, Your Honor, I think if there was data that showed that even after you control for all of the other variables, after you control for square footage and state and these different trends, even after you control for all of that, sort of the amount that you would save is significantly correlated with purchase decision, the agency would have included that in the model.

[00:34:57] Speaker 04:
That's just not what we have here.

[00:34:59] Speaker 04:
And to put it another way, if there's one factor we know that consumers actually don't include in their decisions, it's the agency's analysis of how much they save.

[00:35:10] Speaker 04:
The agency went through hundreds of pages to figure out everything from what are energy prices going to be for 20 years from now, all of these other factors to calculate what the optimal economic allocations are.

[00:35:25] Speaker 04:
I suspect that there's no consumer in history who's

[00:35:27] Speaker 04:
actually done that kind of analysis.

[00:35:29] Speaker 04:
That's why things like, you know, what's going on in your state, what are contractors in your area providing things like that.

[00:35:36] Speaker 04:
That's, that's what's determining the agency's analysis here.

[00:35:40] Speaker 01:
Mr. Hazelbo this, this Monte Carlo type approach.

[00:35:43] Speaker 01:
I mean, isn't it something that this court rejected in the APCA case just a few years ago?

[00:35:48] Speaker 01:
I mean, how is, how is the agency's analysis here different from what we rejected?

[00:35:53] Speaker 01:
in that case.

[00:35:54] Speaker 04:
Your honor, as I understood the court's opinion in that case, it was not sort of rejecting as a substantive matter that model.

[00:36:01] Speaker 04:
It was rejecting the agency's particular explanation there.

[00:36:04] Speaker 04:
I think in that case, it was something like a sentence or a paragraph in that particular rule, which obviously is not the rule at issue here.

[00:36:10] Speaker 04:
We have dozens of pages sort of explaining how this analysis works.

[00:36:14] Speaker 04:
And we've added many of the parameters that I discussed a few minutes ago.

[00:36:18] Speaker 01:
So you think it's just a failure of explanation in the APCA case?

[00:36:22] Speaker 04:
That's what the court said in that opinion, Your Honor.

[00:36:25] Speaker 04:
I also just want to be very clear.

[00:36:26] Speaker 04:
Monte Carlo methods, they're well accepted.

[00:36:29] Speaker 04:
Many agencies use them, not just the Department of Energy.

[00:36:32] Speaker 04:
They're used in the private sector and academia as well.

[00:36:35] Speaker 04:
So this isn't

[00:36:36] Speaker 04:
This isn't some kind of novelty.

[00:36:38] Speaker 04:
It was actually the agency trying to be very, very careful in how it did this analysis.

[00:36:43] Speaker 01:
Isn't Monte Carlo just sort of sound like it's arbitrary and capricious?

[00:36:46] Speaker 01:
I understand.

[00:36:48] Speaker 01:
Roll the dice.

[00:36:49] Speaker 01:
Sounds fun.

[00:36:51] Speaker 01:
Yeah.

[00:36:53] Speaker 01:
More fun than furnaces?

[00:36:55] Speaker 04:
Your honor, it's certainly not the title I would have chosen for the method, but it really is what statisticians use.

[00:37:00] Speaker 04:
And it's actually a method that is supposed to make the results more accurate, not less, because you're doing, in this case, sort of 10,000 simulations rather than just sort of a simple model where if you take my Virginia hypothetical, right, where we'd say like,

[00:37:13] Speaker 04:
You know, you put all those variables in and there's a 75% chance that 10 years from now this house will have a condensing unit.

[00:37:19] Speaker 04:
You actually went one step further to make this even more accurate.

[00:37:24] Speaker 04:
And I do want to emphasize, I think the other side has said, you know, we think at a minimum there should be like a middle ground, right?

[00:37:32] Speaker 04:
Sort of some people behave rationally, some don't.

[00:37:34] Speaker 04:
That's exactly what this model does.

[00:37:37] Speaker 04:
The outputs estimate that actually most people in the no new standards case are taking the

[00:37:43] Speaker 04:
picking the sort of economically justified furnace.

[00:37:48] Speaker 04:
So it is a middle ground.

[00:37:49] Speaker 04:
Many people in the estimates are making that quote sort of correct choice.

[00:37:54] Speaker 04:
Some people are not.

[00:37:55] Speaker 04:
That's not surprising given what we know about market failures.

[00:37:58] Speaker 04:
We know, for example, that people tend to undervalue long run efficiency and undervalue, excuse me, overvalue initial costs.

[00:38:07] Speaker 04:
We have examples, for example,

[00:38:09] Speaker 04:
like landlords who will rationally focus on initial costs and downplay the long-run operating benefits of a condensing appliance.

[00:38:21] Speaker 03:
What about Mr. Manzinghani's questioning the department, assuming that some people will go from condensing to non-condensing, and his claim that that's part of the model and that that's irrational?

[00:38:34] Speaker 03:
Is that a kind of irrational that you have reason to believe occurs?

[00:38:38] Speaker 04:
I'm sorry, I didn't quite follow them.

[00:38:41] Speaker 03:
From condensing and then move to non-condensing.

[00:38:46] Speaker 04:
I don't know if that's irrational or not, but the reason that's in the model is because it's part of the real world.

[00:38:53] Speaker 04:
The past shipment data that the department used shows that in new construction, some developers will put in a non-condensing unit, even though those have higher initial costs and higher long run costs.

[00:39:06] Speaker 04:
You can theorize about why that might be.

[00:39:09] Speaker 04:
Maybe contractors are just sort of

[00:39:10] Speaker 04:
used to installing non-condensing units.

[00:39:12] Speaker 04:
But because developers actually do that in the real world, it's part of the data that the agency used.

[00:39:19] Speaker 04:
It's also reflected in the model.

[00:39:20] Speaker 03:
So it's not that they're switching from condensing.

[00:39:23] Speaker 03:
Well, I guess maybe if they're developing or gutting some building, let's say.

[00:39:27] Speaker 03:
So I thought his point was that your data assumes that there already is a condensing unit, and that when the purchaser goes to market, they buy non-condensing.

[00:39:41] Speaker 03:
And if he was pausing it, that would not happen for the same reason that he thinks it's too complicated to go the other way.

[00:39:47] Speaker 03:
But I think you're saying something maybe a little bit different, which is brand new construction and or maybe gutting and redoing?

[00:39:55] Speaker 04:
Yeah, I thought that that was what the question was getting at.

[00:39:59] Speaker 04:
I think they have it's from their declaration, the statistic that sort of 80% of new construction in this particular scenario behaves in this unusual way.

[00:40:08] Speaker 04:
And our answer to that is just.

[00:40:10] Speaker 04:
It happens in the real world.

[00:40:11] Speaker 04:
It happens in the model.

[00:40:12] Speaker 04:
I think that's a broader answer to many of their questions.

[00:40:16] Speaker 04:
We're looking at past shipment data for these particular models.

[00:40:20] Speaker 04:
So what did consumers of purchasing furnaces, what have they done in their state?

[00:40:26] Speaker 04:
So it's grounded in what people have really done.

[00:40:30] Speaker 03:
So I am also trying to understand the department's position on fuel switching.

[00:40:40] Speaker 03:
Maybe that's enough of a question.

[00:40:44] Speaker 04:
Thank you, Your Honor.

[00:40:45] Speaker 04:
So fuel switching is often considered as part of these rules.

[00:40:50] Speaker 04:
Any time you change efficiency standards, there's a possibility that some consumers on the margin are going to say, I'm not going to use that product anymore.

[00:40:58] Speaker 04:
I'm going to switch to something else.

[00:41:00] Speaker 04:
That's why the agency has at least considered the possibility and rules going back many administrations.

[00:41:07] Speaker 04:
In this case, fuel switching didn't turn out to play a key role in the agency's conclusion that these rules were economically justified.

[00:41:16] Speaker 04:
With respect to the water heaters rule, the agency looked at fuel switching and said, we actually don't think there's going to be a significant amount of that.

[00:41:23] Speaker 04:
With respect to the furnaces rule, the agency said there could be some amount of fuel switching here.

[00:41:29] Speaker 04:
It's hard to estimate exactly.

[00:41:31] Speaker 04:
And so we're going to explain that even if there was no fuel switching, the economic justification would still be there.

[00:41:39] Speaker 04:
The agency said that explicitly in the rule.

[00:41:41] Speaker 04:
That's not something we're sort of adding in our briefs now.

[00:41:45] Speaker 04:
And the agency also said that, look, even if we assume the maximum amount of fuel switching, in other words, even if we assume that everyone fuel switches when it's sort of economically justified to do so, we would still come to the same conclusion then.

[00:41:59] Speaker 04:
I think that came up, maybe Judge Rao was one of your questions earlier, that wasn't the agency assuming that everyone behaves rationally.

[00:42:05] Speaker 04:
It was a sensitivity test to make clear that, you know, even if that was really the fuel-spitching behavior, it still wouldn't affect the agency's conclusions.

[00:42:14] Speaker 04:
It wasn't a declaration by the agency that we think people behave perfectly over here and imperfectly over there.

[00:42:22] Speaker 03:
So they make an argument, and they sure make it better than I do, that EPCA requires, because EPCA requires different energy conservation standards for products that use different types of energy,

[00:42:38] Speaker 03:
that the department cannot adopt an energy conservation standard, that it renders that requirement meaningless.

[00:42:49] Speaker 03:
If you can issue a standard for gas-powered appliances that for many consumers makes gas-powered appliances so expensive that they have no practical option but to switch,

[00:43:01] Speaker 03:
to electric, so it's sort of doing de facto what the statute appears to disallow if you were to do it explicitly.

[00:43:13] Speaker 03:
So it doesn't matter whether you have an electric or a gas-powered furnace.

[00:43:17] Speaker 03:
Here's our standard.

[00:43:18] Speaker 03:
Congress says, no, no, no, no.

[00:43:19] Speaker 03:
You have to give standards for those separately.

[00:43:22] Speaker 03:
Right?

[00:43:22] Speaker 03:
Am I right about that?

[00:43:24] Speaker 04:
Product classes generally need to be different based on fuel source.

[00:43:28] Speaker 03:
That's right, Your Honor.

[00:43:30] Speaker 03:
Based on fuel source, right.

[00:43:31] Speaker 03:
Based on fuel source.

[00:43:32] Speaker 03:
I think their argument is that if you issue a standard that is only formally for gas-powered appliances, but it's demanding enough that for many consumers, it makes gas-powered appliances so expensive that their practical option is to switch that you are doing the prohibited thing.

[00:43:55] Speaker 04:
So I don't think that's right for a couple of reasons.

[00:43:57] Speaker 03:
It may not be exactly their argument, and they can correct me.

[00:44:00] Speaker 04:
Understood, Your Honor.

[00:44:01] Speaker 04:
I mean, one, of course, is just actually this isn't this is it's like 5% projected fuel switching, right?

[00:44:07] Speaker 04:
So this isn't a huge number of consumers.

[00:44:09] Speaker 04:
And that's not necessarily a situation where someone would say, like, you know, practically, I have no choice, right?

[00:44:14] Speaker 04:
People can sort of make decisions on the margins without feeling that kind of financial pressure.

[00:44:19] Speaker 04:
I think, you know, more

[00:44:21] Speaker 04:
More broadly, there were a couple instances in the statute where Congress said, you know, we we want to make sure that when you issue rules in this area, it does not cause any significant shift in fuels.

[00:44:35] Speaker 04:
Congress said that explicitly in a couple of narrow areas.

[00:44:39] Speaker 04:
It didn't say that here and that

[00:44:40] Speaker 04:
makes pretty clear that that was not something that Congress was worried about.

[00:44:44] Speaker 04:
Again, even assuming that these were rules that would produce a significant amount of fuel switching, which, as we discussed, is just that's not what the agency found.

[00:44:55] Speaker 03:
And you said even though the benefits were calculated of fuel switching, the cost savings to consumers, something that DOE did calculate, right?

[00:45:04] Speaker 04:
It did, Your Honor, and the conclusion was that with fuel switching or without it, these are heavily economically justified on the order of billions of dollars a year in the case of net billions of dollars a year in the case

[00:45:16] Speaker 04:
the furnaces rule and hundreds of millions of dollars a year with water heaters.

[00:45:21] Speaker 04:
So this isn't a situation where the sort of balance was closely poised and one small change could have shifted it from justified to not.

[00:45:30] Speaker 04:
These were strongly justified under the incredibly careful analysis that's reflected in these three rules.

[00:45:42] Speaker 04:
Unless the court has

[00:45:45] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:45:50] Speaker 03:
Mr. Mensinghani, now you can fix all my mistakes.

[00:45:56] Speaker 05:
I think you have it mostly right.

[00:46:00] Speaker 05:
You know, I will briefly cover fuel switching and say that I think you have it right with respect to the 6295 Q1 argument.

[00:46:09] Speaker 05:
What I would add to that is that the economic justification provisions in both sets of statutes require them to determine the economic benefits of the new standards for the covered products.

[00:46:20] Speaker 05:
But because electric appliances are not part of the covered products, counting the benefits of switching to them would

[00:46:30] Speaker 05:
would not be part of the correct economic analysis.

[00:46:32] Speaker 05:
And with respect to the impact of fuel switching, this is over 50% of their cost savings in the furnace rule.

[00:46:40] Speaker 05:
So it's primarily a rule about getting people to switch to electric and without fuel switching and without random assignment.

[00:46:49] Speaker 05:
In the model, it goes from the 10,000 consumers in the model saving $1.9 million to the 10,000 consumers in the model

[00:46:56] Speaker 05:
losing $2.5 million.

[00:46:58] Speaker 05:
So those two things together, that's not one small change, I think it's his words, those two things together flip the economic justification.

[00:47:06] Speaker 03:
You're saying without fuel switching and without

[00:47:09] Speaker 05:
And without random assignment.

[00:47:10] Speaker 03:
If we disagreed with you on random assignment, and they say, well, fuel switching doesn't put us into the red, do you have a response to that?

[00:47:18] Speaker 05:
Well, they didn't rely on fuel switching as the sole basis for their economic justification.

[00:47:22] Speaker 05:
So you still have to go back if you agree with us on fuel switching.

[00:47:25] Speaker 03:
No, they're saying no fuel.

[00:47:26] Speaker 03:
We're putting, setting aside fuel switching.

[00:47:28] Speaker 05:
Right.

[00:47:28] Speaker 05:
Well, so you're saying, oh, without random assignment.

[00:47:31] Speaker 03:
I think- They disagreed with you on random assignment, but thought maybe it's not

[00:47:37] Speaker 03:
allowable for them to count fuel switching, maybe for the reason that you said, because they have to look at the benefit for the covered products.

[00:47:44] Speaker 03:
And so we're not going to count that.

[00:47:47] Speaker 03:
Then isn't it enough, though, if we credit their Monte Carlo modeling?

[00:47:52] Speaker 05:
Yeah, with respect to that, I don't think so, because I think they'd have to decide, even if it's a positive number, whether that is still economically justified.

[00:48:01] Speaker 05:
I think if there was like $1 in savings without fuel switching, they would have to say, well, maybe forcing consumers to go through these things wouldn't be justified.

[00:48:09] Speaker 05:
I do want to spend some time on Monte Carlo here.

[00:48:12] Speaker 05:
It may be a valid statistical concept in other cases, just like correlation is a valid statistical concept.

[00:48:19] Speaker 05:
But if an agency said correlation equal causation, you would say, no, you can't do that, even if correlation is a valid statistical concept.

[00:48:26] Speaker 05:
And here, they have not just one variable that's changing over the same case.

[00:48:31] Speaker 05:
The 10,000 cases are all different cases.

[00:48:33] Speaker 05:
So they have a variables randomly picked in 10,000 different cases rather than the same case with 10,000 different options for that one variable.

[00:48:42] Speaker 05:
And to the point that, Judge Pillard, you were asking my friend on the other side,

[00:48:49] Speaker 05:
The situation I was pointing to was a replacement situation, not a new construction situation, replacing a condensing with a non-condensing.

[00:48:56] Speaker 05:
If you want to look at this giant Excel spreadsheet, I would refer you to trial case number 24.

[00:49:02] Speaker 03:
Okay, go ahead.

[00:49:03] Speaker 03:
What did you say?

[00:49:04] Speaker 05:
Trial case number 24 on the giant spreadsheet is a situation where it's an existing home.

[00:49:11] Speaker 05:
They're replacing a condensing with a non-condensing and paying $2,000 more in upfront installation costs to do so.

[00:49:18] Speaker 05:
That's just irrational.

[00:49:19] Speaker 01:
Can you also speak, please, to the government says you haven't met your burden here of showing that this actually affects consumers or would, you know,

[00:49:32] Speaker 01:
that both that you have the burden and that you failed to meet it as a factual matter.

[00:49:38] Speaker 05:
So with respect to the performance characteristics arguments, we've met our burden of showing with the preponderance of the evidence.

[00:49:45] Speaker 05:
And that is not a very high burden, as the department itself argues in trying to justify its own rule.

[00:49:51] Speaker 05:
But there is no dispute of all those things I listed, like multiple wall penetrations, et cetera,

[00:49:56] Speaker 05:
that these things will have to happen.

[00:49:58] Speaker 05:
They're not just cost issues.

[00:50:00] Speaker 05:
They say, well, you can always still install it in the same place.

[00:50:04] Speaker 05:
First of all, that would also be true of a space constrained appliance if you renovate your laundry room to install a not very compact washing machine.

[00:50:12] Speaker 05:
But second, their reliance on these commercially available products.

[00:50:17] Speaker 05:
We pointed out in our comments at Joint Appendix 51 and Footnote 1 as to why those actually won't work in a lot of situations.

[00:50:25] Speaker 05:
And when we did so in the final rule, they actually backtracked and said, well, we're not actually relying on these products because we understand they are developing technology that are proof of concepts that are a potential solution.

[00:50:37] Speaker 05:
You can find those words at Joint Appendix 74.

[00:50:40] Speaker 05:
and they recognize the limitations of that new technology.

[00:50:43] Speaker 05:
You can find that at Joint Appendix 975.

[00:50:46] Speaker 03:
You just mentioned trial case number 24.

[00:50:49] Speaker 03:
When I read your brief, I thought that the

[00:50:54] Speaker 03:
going to non-condensing was about, in your brief I thought it was about new construction and now you're drilling down and finding what you say is an example of existing construction.

[00:51:05] Speaker 03:
Did you mention in your brief anything about existing construction moving from condensing to non-condensing and if so where?

[00:51:13] Speaker 05:
So in the brief, we talked about how 60% of replacements were the less economic option.

[00:51:22] Speaker 05:
And so that includes the less economic option of both non-condensing to condensing and condensing to non-condensing.

[00:51:29] Speaker 05:
And that's paragraph seven of the Meyer Declaration, which we've talked about before, but it's also repeated in our brief.

[00:51:36] Speaker 05:
I don't have the exact page number.

[00:51:42] Speaker 03:
Any questions?

[00:51:43] Speaker 03:
I think that concludes the morning.

[00:51:48] Speaker 03:
The case is submitted.

[00:51:50] Speaker 03:
Thank you all very much.

[00:51:51] Speaker 02:
Thank you.