Biden’s leftover regulations will decide your next light bulb unless Trump stops them
Americans have shown a real dislike for the wave of federal regulations targeting home appliances. Even more infuriating is the fact that our tax dollars bankroll this unwanted agenda. It is time to pull the plug on those inside and outside the government who make a living micromanaging our appliance choices.
A threatened regulatory crackdown on gas stoves in 2023 sparked a surprisingly strong public backlash, but it did not deter Biden administration regulators from going after nearly every other home appliance, including washing machines, refrigerators, furnaces, dishwashers, air conditioners, light bulbs and water heaters.
Most of these rules are from the Department of Energy (DOE), specifically its Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). That office has an annual budget north of $3 billion and a staff of hundreds, about a quarter of which is devoted to energy efficiency. Just about every cliché there is for a bureaucracy run amok – moving back the goalposts, mission creep etc. – is true in spades for EERE and its energy efficiency regulations. Many appliances have been subjected to three, four, or even five rounds of successively tighter energy efficiency regulations over the years, with no end in sight.
At this point, it is not unusual for regulations to substantially boost the up-front cost of an appliance, in some cases more than is likely to be earned back in the form of energy savings. Nor is it out of the ordinary for standards to compromise appliance choice, features, performance, or reliability in the single-minded obsession with forcing less energy use.
To take but one example, EERE regulated traditional incandescent light bulbs off the market by imposing a series of efficiency regulations they cannot meet. Taking their place over the last decade have been light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs, which are more efficient and can meet the standards but cost more and are not to everyone’s liking.
To be fair, the initial assault on incandescent bulbs was required under a 2007 statute, but as usual the regulators have now gone beyond any legal requirements. The most recent light bulb regulation, published last April, is so strict that most currently available LEDs can’t comply either, and average prices will rise from $2.98 to an agency-estimated $5.68. Keep those candles handy.
Even worse are regulations that compromise appliance performance, such as the dishwasher regulations that have doubled the time it takes to do a load from about an hour in pre-standards models to more than two today. Rather than try to fix the problems with existing dishwasher regulations, the Biden DOE came out with yet another set of incrementally tighter energy and water use limits – its fifth overall.
Climate change became the Biden administration’s all-purpose rationale for further tightening the screws on appliances. This explains the efforts to use these regulations to discourage appliances that run on natural gas, a fossil fuel. Beyond stoves, other appliances that come in both electric and natural gas versions, such as furnaces and water heaters, now face costly regulations designed to tilt the market away from gas. In the case of furnaces, the additional cost of a compliant gas model could be as high as $867, the agency estimates.
Assisting the federal regulators inside the government is an army of activists outside of it who also make a nice living – partially at taxpayer expense – off the appliance game. This includes organizations that focus primarily on appliance regulations as well as big environmental groups that cover appliance efficiency along with many other green causes.
For example, the Rocky Mountain Institute, which remains at the forefront of the efforts to ban gas stoves, has no less than six federal agencies contributing part of its $139 million dollar annual budget.
Several of these groups have recently received extra cash pursuant to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Even some manufacturers have been showered with IRA giveaways stretching into the tens of millions of dollars each to make appliances favored by this agenda.
Political favoritism appears to play a role in deciding who gets these handouts. For example, Democrat Stacey Abrams, after twice losing the Georgia governor’s race, moved on to a leadership position at an environmental organization called Rewiring America that is active in this space.
In particular, Rewiring America is pushing hard to eliminate natural gas appliances and make homes completely dependent on electricity. And now, the organization is part of a new coalition named Power Forward Communities that received a whopping $2 billion dollar IRA grant last April.
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