Biden Targets Air Conditioners In Latest Attack on Americans’ Quality-of-Life Choices
Energy Department rules focused on window air conditioners, which are used disproportionately by poor people and minorities to cool down from summer heat.
First, they came for gasoline-powered cars and diesel trucks.
Then, they came for your gas stoves.
Now, Biden and his eco-extremist bureaucrats are coming for your air conditioning units.
The Biden administration announced its latest home appliance regulations this week, targeting air conditioners in an action it said would reduce the nation’s carbon emissions.
The regulations, unveiled Thursday by the Department of Energy (DOE), finalize energy efficiency standards for home air conditioning units, or window air conditioners, and portable air cleaners. The DOE said the move would cut air pollution and push consumer costs down by billions of dollars via energy savings.
“Today’s announcement builds on the historic actions President Biden took last year to strengthen outdated energy efficiency standards, which will help save on people’s energy bills and reduce our nation’s carbon footprint,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement.
“DOE will continue to engage with our public and private sector partners to finalize additional proposals like today’s that lower household energy costs and deliver the safer, healthier communities that every American deserves,” she continued.
The promises the Department of Energy is making are extravagant.
Window air conditioners — also known as room air conditioners — are smaller air conditioners that can be put into window frames. They are the main cooling source for 21.4 million U.S. households, according to the Energy Department.
The new standards, shared first with The Hill, would save consumers a total of about $1.5 billion per year on their electricity bills, the Energy Department said. It also expects the standards to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 106 million metric tons over 30 years — the equivalent of the annual emissions of 13.4 million homes.
Together, they are expected to cost manufacturers a total of about $82.1 million to comply with.
Biden and his misery-spreading minions have found the perfect legislation to target Florida, Louisiana, and all the rest of the Red State South.
[Air conditioning] enabled the sweeping postwar development of the South, where all new single-family homes today include central air. In automobiles, it made the commutes between air-conditioned homes and air-conditioned offices possible. In the Southwest, its arrival facilitated new methods of rapid construction, replacing traditional building designs that once naturally withstood the region’s desert climate.
The extra costs will surely help increase the rate of Bidenflation. The new rules will make these window air conditioning units more expensive, adversely impacting those on fixed incomes and the poor.
Subsequently, there will be “unintended consequences.” As Professor Glenn Reynolds notes, among the hardest hit by the new requirements are blacks and the elderly.
More than 80% of heat-related deaths in America are among people over 60.
Many older people live in older buildings without central air. Their only prospect for staying cool during summer heat waves may be a room or window-unit air conditioner, which will see price hikes and quality drops under these new rules.
(Ironically, one of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s top heat-related recommendations for older adults is to stay in air-conditioned spaces.)
Black people are another group more likely to die from heat stress, with New York City blacks, for example, almost 2½ times more likely to die from the heat than whites.
What’s more, CNN reports, “Health officials said many of the deaths directly caused by heat occurred at home and a significant number did not have an air conditioner or one was either not working or not in use.”
Reynolds asks: “Why do Jennifer Granholm and the Biden administration hate minorities and the elderly?”
Minorities and the elderly are just two of the numerous groups of freedom- and comfort-loving Americans hated by Biden and his administration.
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Comments
Subsequently, there will be “unintended consequences.”
Foreseeable consequences are never “unintended”. They just don’t care.
Toilets that don’t flush, dishwashers that don’t clean, and now air conditioners that don’t cool. Come on, man.
The Democrats want to go back to the Era of Good Feelings- ya know, the pre-Civil War days of the 19th Century.
Don’t forget the non-venting gas cans that end up spilling fuel everywhere.
And leak. I had one overturn and leak gas all over my trunk last week.
I’d feel more sympathy for “poc” if they didn’t vote for Biden and Democrats in general. They seem to never put two plus two together, do they?
I guess HVAC tech will have to “learn how to code”?
It will save you a ton of money if you can’t buy an air conditioner I guess. lol
So, which third party lobbyists working on behalf of CCP are talking to Granholm to create new AC regulations?
After all, where do you suppose the new compliant AC units will be manufactured?
China
Cut the air-conditioning off in DC first. All of the public buildings.
then we will talk.
Might not be very effective as many DC area bureaucrats haven’t had to return to their offices. Many are still playing the ‘Covid emergency’ work from home lifestyle game.
This proposed regulation is dangerous to the health of the e,lderly and minorities. If you are a homeowner, install a unit in the wall not a window
Typically idiotic, destructive and obnoxiously totalitarian diktats, from the vile Dumb-o-crat apparatchiks. Any person who’s spent five minutes in a major American city understands that large, older apartment buildings contain apartments that don’t have central HVAC systems, and, thus, window air conditioners are the only feasible cooling option.
As Leslie aptly observes, this idiotic diktat will hurt poor tenants and tenants “of color” more than anyone else. Well-heeled, deep-pocked Dumb-o-crat elites living in houses and condominiums that feature central HVAC cooling systems won’t be affected, at all.
“Together, they are expected to cost manufacturers a total of about $82.1 million to comply with.”
Economically illiterate or intentionally lying?
It will cost the consumers, not the manufacturers.
And, as always, the “expectations” will turn out to be grossly underestimated and the projected benefits will never materialize because they’ll have to turn the “new” units up higher to get the same effect.
What exactly are the new standards? Is this just a lot of noise for requiring something like Energy STAR compliance?
Perhaps it’s tied in to this push to electrify everything. They realize the grid can’t handle that as things stand but rather than try to expand capacity they are instead trying to reduce demands in other areas.
Or it could just simply be as others have stated: they hate us and are trying to make our lives miserable in every which little way they think they can get away with.
Don’t worry WE will just pay to upgrade the poor. These rich assholes never put their money where their mouth is.
1) CO2 is not a pollutant
2) Any energy savings will be completely erased, and then some, by the increased cost of a new unit. Government always ignores capital costs when touting “savings”, probably because government accounting rules expense capital improvements 100% in the first year.
Sounds like they are trying to wipe out the elderly and poor. I would suggest before doing this they should cut off all AC in every Federal building.
I was fortunate to grow up in a period when everyone in America agreed it was a good thing to keep making the lives of Americans better.
I thought progress was a ramp, like Western Civilization.
It took “progressives” to teach me that progress was actually a pendulum, and they were now intent on ensuring a 100-year backswing.
I think its more like a 10,000-year backswing myself. YMMV.
However, I’m sure Joe, and Dr. Jill, and the Obamas, Kerry, etc will be enjoying air conditioning because they’re important, unlike you and me
I hope some environmental crusader outfits their private jets with openable windows.
If it saved me money for the same results, I’d already be all over it. Less power consumed, perhaps. It’s a sucker bet, more expensive, less durable, less reliable, crappier air, slower to cool, less humidity-wrangling. Probably louder and smells bad, too.
Of course these folks expect stuff to work just by proclaiming, and no trade-offs because they’ve never had to make any.
Wasn’t it Pres Obama who said he’d “fundamentally transform” the country.
Oh, right. This is his third term.
Implicit in all rule-making is that the rule only applies to the peasants. The Democrat Reich’s ruling caste gets as much air conditioning as it desires and more.
Basically Biden is saying he wants to kill elderly people and black people without actually saying the words.
Biden voters that are victimized and killed by Biden policies are useful idiots being disposed of. Voters who didn’t vote for Biden are collateral damage. In both cases, the Biden admin is happy with the outcome. They’re meeting WEF, 1% quotas. SMDH.