The SBA has issued a final rule eliminating the unusual megawatt hours size standard applicable to six NAICS codes in NAICS Sector 22. The SBA’s revision replaces the megawatt hours size standard with a 500-employee size standard, and eliminates the requirement that a firm must be “primarily engaged” in the generation, transmission or distribution of energy for sale.
Although the megawatt hours size standard may have made sense when it was adopted in the 1970s, the SBA appropriately recognized that the market has changed. Perhaps most important, the “primarily engaged” component of the megawatt hours size standard unfairly excluded many companies from competing as “small” in NAICS Sector 22.