ISPA Position on U.S. Energy Policy
Issue:
Existing U.S. energy policies raise the cost and threaten the reliable supply of energy and critical petroleum-based raw materials required by mattress producers and other U.S. industries.
Importance:
The mattress industry needs petroleum resources for use both as energy and as raw materials. Mattress manufacturers and their suppliers use energy to heat their plants, operate machinery and ship components and finished products to customers. The industry also depends heavily on affordable energy to produce key mattress components. Energy — particularly natural gas—is used to thermally bond various non-woven products, including fire-retardant materials that meet new state and federal mattress flammability standards. Natural gas is also a critical feedstock for ingredients used to make a variety of mattress foams and other components.
ISPA Position:
The International Sleep Products Association (ISPA) supports government policies that encourage expanded and stable long-term energy and petrochemical supplies. Immediate government attention is especially necessary to address the current natural gas shortage that
U.S. industry is facing. Natural gas is clean to use and can be produced with modern equipment and technology that will not harm the environment.
Background:
Existing government policies inhibit U.S. industry’s access to energy and petrochemicals (especially natural gas), expose them to potential supply disruptions and harm the global competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers. As a result, U.S. manufacturers today pay several times more for natural gas than do their competitors in other parts of the world.
For the mattress industry, these high prices not only raise manufacturing costs across the board, but also lower the incentive for chemical companies to build and modernize U.S. plants to make the raw materials needed to produce polyurethane foam and other mattress components. This result in turn lowers U.S. capacity to produce these materials. Our foreign competitors do not face the same high costs and resulting constraints in manufacturing capacity, allowing them to compete more easily against us. In other words, outdated and misguided U.S. energy policies are in effect “outsourcing” U.S. mattress industry jobs and long-term business to foreign markets.
ISPA Action:
To address the current energy crisis and help restore stability to the U.S. manufacturing sector generally, ISPA calls upon Congress to enact legislation that will help increase and diversify the types of energy available to U.S. manufacturers. Moreover, immediate action is needed to stabilize supplies of natural gas because of its dual role as fuel and a basic building block for many consumer products, including mattresses. ISPA will continue to press the issue in Congressional visits, and ISPA’s Legislative Action Center www.sleepproducts.org/LegislativeActionCenter provides members with tools they can use to ask their legislators to support legislation that will help achieve the industry’s objectives.
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