CEI Petitions Department of Energy: Stop Washington from Ruining Dishwashers
Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) petitioned the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to address the issue of increasingly slow dishwashers—a problem directly caused by DOE energy efficiency standards. CEI argues the standards have caused dishwashers to become incredibly inconvenient, eliminating the ability of consumers to choose between minor savings in energy bills and major savings in personal time.
CEI requests that DOE create new standards for residential dishwashers that need only an hour to do the job. That’s how fast these machines were decades ago, and that’s how fast they can be today, government permitting.
“It used to take you only an hour to get a full load of dishes washed and dried in your dishwasher. Today, thanks to federal energy efficiency standards, the average time is nearly 2.5 hours,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “That’s not progress; it’s bureaucracy. And for many consumers it’s a royal pain. We hope the Department of Energy will change course.”
More than 8 million dishwashers were sold last year, all of them with longer cycle times caused by the DOE standards. According to a GE Appliances survey of 11,000 dishwasher owners, the cycle time is one of the four biggest sources of dissatisfaction for consumers. CEI includes documentation of several dozen consumer complaints along with its petition.