Three Legal Takeaways from Fifth Circuit Decision Scrubbing Away DOE Rules on Appliance Efficiency

CEI’s 2018 petition was cited on The National Law Review about a Fifth Circuit Decision on appliance efficiency:

In 2018, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) submitted a petition for rulemaking to DOE asking it to define a new class of dishwashers under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975. CEI proposed that the new class should comprise dishwashers with a normal cycle duration of under an hour, anticipating that this new class might offer better performance than currently available machines which are subject to energy and water restrictions applicable to dishwashers with wash cycles lasting longer than one hour. The next year, DOE agreed with CEI and began a rulemaking under the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA) that established a new product class for dishwashers, and then took similar actions related to laundry machines. DOE justified the regulations on the grounds of its “recognition of cycle time as a valuable consumer utility.” These rulemakings were finalized in 2020.

Read the full article on The National Law Review.