Report: Government regulations on household appliances increase costs, worsen performance

A new Competitive Enterprise Institute report explains how needless government regulations have made everyday household appliances cost more and perform worse.

“Appliance regulations have gotten progressively worse in recent years,” said Ben Lieberman, CEI senior fellow and author of the report. “It’s government presuming it knows better than consumers what appliances they should use.”

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) appliance efficiency standards program has subjected home appliances to multiple rounds of increasingly stringent regulations, the report explains. Although these rules were promoted as consumer-friendly measures to reduce energy use and costs, they have frequently produced the opposite effect – raising prices, limiting product choice, and undermining performance, reliability, and longevity. More recently, the program was stretched beyond its statutory intent and used as a vehicle for climate policy.

Appliances impacted by energy restrictions include furnaces, water heaters, air conditioners, stoves, dishwashers, refrigerators, and washing machines.

Four rounds of successively tighter standards for dishwashers, for example, resulted in cycles taking two hours to complete rather than one. And DOE has admitted its rules are the cause, decreasing allowed water use and water temperature and prompting manufacturers to increase cycle times just to get dishes clean.

“To its credit, the Trump administration sensibly ordered all regulatory agencies to stop relying upon flawed data and estimates to impose regulations,” said Lieberman. “But to fix this broken system and prevent future administrations from reverting to bad policies, Congress should take action and empower consumers to make their own decisions.”

The report urges specific reforms Congress should pass, such as:

• Sunset the DOE appliance efficiency standards program altogether; or
• Pass reform legislation like the Don’t Mess with My Home Appliances Act (H.R. 4626) to impose clear limits on future rulemaking (like requiring a consumer benefit measure for new rules) and repeal existing standards that undermine consumer interests.

> View the report, Free the Appliances! Turn out the lights on federal efficiency standards, by Ben Lieberman