Biden Administration Dials Way Back on Its Gas Stove Crackdown
The Energy Department said 97 percent of gas stoves and 77 percent of electric stoves on the market already meet the requirements it is proposing. This is down from the 50 percent impacted by the last year ‘s proposed rule.
We have been following Biden’s seemingly endless war on America’s appliances.
So far, the Biden administration eco-activists at the Energy Department have come after our:
But the climate cultists were most keen to crackdown on gas stoves, which led to the House of Representatives passing legislation to block the Department of Energy from implementing tough new energy conservation rules on gas stoves. It was a rare bipartisan move that more than two dozen Democrats supported.
The green energy goons from the Department of Energy went back to the drawing board, and released finalized energy efficiency regulations that dialed way back on the crackdown it was originally planning before the national outcry.
The Biden administration has published a rule aimed at requiring some gas and electric stoves to be more efficient — but, following immense political blowback, the requirements for gas stoves are significantly weaker than what it initially proposed.
The Energy Department said in a press release that 97 percent of gas stoves and 77 percent of electric stoves on the market already meet the requirements it is proposing.
This is down from the 50 percent of gas stoves on the market it estimated would be impacted by the rule last year.
The actual efficiency requirement for the gas stoves is also weakened, now allowing stoves that use 1.77 million British Thermal Units (BTUs) of energy per year, up from only allowing 1.204 million BTUs in its initial proposal.
The rule only applies to new stoves being sold and would not force households whose stoves do not meet the standards to get rid of their existing appliances.
There must be a scientific reason for the substantial revision in requirements. The jump to 3% from 50% seems pretty significant.
And there is….based on political science. The Los Angeles Times took a break from their layoffs and woke drama to calm readers into not panicking because Trump is ahead of Biden in polling.
A little less than a year out from the election, and the headlines are preoccupied with the latest bad poll for the president. The New York Times even wonders whether the president is “toast” as hand-wringing spreads across the progressive community.
…Over the last several election cycles, polling has increasingly become a central focus of media reporting on campaigns, particularly presidential contests. And that’s unfortunate. Average voters should rarely see or hear about polling because it’s not particularly relevant or actionable for them.
All the Depart of Energy regulations do nothing more than make appliance more expensive and less efficient, and make it harder for small businesses to prosper.
…[T]he best reform is to sunset DOE’s standard setting authority entirely. Doing so would have no downside, only upside for small businesses. Any business owner who actually wants to use the kinds of appliances favored by DOE will always be free to do so, with or without these regulations. The only thing federal mandates do is force government’s particular preference on everyone. In the meantime, Congress should consider using its authority under the Congressional Review Act to take on each and every one of these rules that poses hardships on small businesses.
Gas stove BS from Biden and WaPo @maxinejoselow:
“The standards, which would apply to stoves manufactured in 2028 or later, could increase the price tags of a few new models by a few dollars. But in the long run, the improved efficiency would save consumers money on their gas… pic.twitter.com/QmetylnNsP
— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) January 30, 2024
I suspect Biden and his bumbling bureaucrats will be backpedaling on so much more between now and November.
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If freaking deal
“All the Depart of Energy regulations do nothing more than make appliance more expensive and less efficient”
My last two cloths washing machines have been crap. Currently the wife will was a load with detergent on heavy wash and then wash it a second time with fabric softener on the heavy wash. It still does not clean as well as the washer I bought 30 years ago and lasted 25 years. The last washer died 2 months out of the 3 year LG warranty.
Laundry soap did a much better job cleaning & brightening clothing. they banned the most important ingredient, TSP. What they substituted is inferior. Adding insult to injury is that the crap they sell today is grossly expensive.
They did this to avoid water treatment costs for municipal sewage treatment, But there is no reason that People using septic systems should put up with inferior laundry over a city problem. Your lawn or garden does a good job removing TSP. You can make 4 gallons of garden friendly laundry soap in half an hour for under $5 = $90 of commercial soap.
We made our own for a number of years and have now just switched to Castile. Either regular or the Dr Bronners heavy duty stuff. Works great.
Can’t seem to locate the enumerated power that allows DC masterminds to dictate what appliances we can buy, what cars we can drive, etc., etc. There bulk of the dictatorial bureaucracy operates outside the Constitution’s boundaries.
An amendment that clarified “interstate commerce” to mean “moving goods between states and resolving disputes between states” would go a long way toward dialing back FedGov.
We had to buy a new washer and decided to try an HE model. All it did was force us to wash our clothes twice which ended up using the same amount of water as the old one. We got rid of it and found a regular washer that works well.
I am bound to get a ton of downticks for this but, here goes. I have used he washing machines for many years. The only one that was a disappointment was a top-loading LG. I sold it to somebody after 6 months because it did a terrible job. My front loaders whether Whirlpool, Samsung or LG have all done outstanding jobs. I use about two to three tablespoons of detergent, not the measuring cap. The machines stay clean and fresh as do my clothes. As for the problem of mildew in a lot of the front loaders, people are not following the directions. Leave the door open for a while after you’re done with the last load of the day and you won’t get the mold. Let the downticks begin.
I think ours was an LG. Mother In Law has a front load Samsung HE and really dislikes it.
Agreed. I’ve only owned one GE front loader but it is an HE that we’ve had for over 10 years now. It has done well and you can buy a little magnetic stick that props the door open if you need it.
This is just one example of many
https://www.ajanmore.com/products/prop-a-door-1?variant=33201323376717
Maytag Neptune front load was a disaster, their service people were so sad, because their were serious design problems with their dumb circuit board controls. Thye did not stay repaired. So my set is sitting in a bone yard, eventually to go to a scrap yard.
2-3 years ago appliance prices went sky high, and for the most part are far less reliable.
Gas ranges are better than electric, food tastes better, primarily over ability to brown and caramelize.
Unacceptable.
They’re only lying about it until after the election, then they’re going to slam on the ban pedal.
The very IDEA that they can set ‘efficiency standards’ and outright BAN things that don’t meet their arbitrary goals, is lunacy.
Let the consumer decide what is ‘efficient’ and what isn’t.
the left always wins
they along with their msm just tone down the agenda as elections approach
the agenda is still moving forward and the gop will roll over again
yeah
and obama was really a supporter of the second amendment
and biden beat up cornpop etc etc
And Biden has been fighting the evil MAGA Trump Cult for two years to secure the border.
C’mon man!
97% of the gas stoves on the market meet our proposed new standard, but we need the standard, regulation, and enforcement anyway.
It’s like the point isn’t actually having stoves meet the standard.
“The Energy Department said in a press release that 97 percent of gas stoves and 77 percent of electric stoves on the market already meet the requirements it is proposing.”
Translation: We’re not going to squash you like a bug, like we promised you at first — instead, we’re going to beat your face bloody and break your nose, and you’re going to thank us and declare yourself the victor.
The idea is to get something in place that can be modified later slowly but surely until we are all eating cold food and wearing dirty clothes in an un airconditioned room
You weren’t supposed to notice that.
Me n the wife purchased a new, super quite bosch dishwasher several years ago. Well made, maintenance free, digital, but pricey, yet we thought it time to upgrade.
We soon regretted our ‘upgrade.’ It never crossed our mind to consider this new pricey machine had no heating element to dry dishes. Energy saving ‘feature’ left us with wet dishes to dry by hand; all the time.
I replaced it last weekend with an older, nearly new ‘tradional’ dishwasher that had a heating element. Excellent machine albiet a little noisy. Worth it.
Just leave us the feff alone, do-gooders. Leave us the feff alone!
It’s to the point I would welcome a parts manufacturer who sold parts to DIY with washers, dishwashers, etc.
You can buy most any part from several online places. I have fixed my dishwasher, washer, dryer, gas range and more for just a few bucks in parts. YouTube has been a godsend for DIY repair videos!
Here is one place I have used. Several others out there.
https://www.partselect.com/
That’s the thing we really want and the one thing they would never even consider. How can you prove how superior you are to other people if you can’t meddle in their lives to make things “better?”
thanks for that knowledge
fn communists!
I’ve noticed that you have to spend a lot to get a good dishwasher these days and really do your homework.
You used to be able to get a dependable model for under $1000 but with the new efficiency standards you have to buy like a Bosch or Kitchenaid at or near the top of the market to get what used to be a more affordable model. Don’t even bother with a whirlpool…they are flat garbage now (and they used to be very good).
We had to get a new dishwasher last year when the pump and other stuff went on the old one. The new beast takes 3 times as long and doesn’t have a heating element, but if we make sure the hot water is hot before we start it, it seems to dry just fine. (Our hot water is courtesy of the boiler which also does our steam radiators, yes the house is old. And the boiler almost as.)
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)
The ratchet didn’t click quite as far as the left wanted it to. This time.
You can never take your eye off of these utterly vile, subversive, totalitarian and neo-communist Dhimmi-crats. Not for one second. Everyone knows they’ll take another swing at this idiocy, one way or another.
Exactly.
And people have to taught not to be nice to these dirtbags. They are complete scum and do not deserve to be treated like normal people. When regular people don’t push back against the left’s absolutely deranged insanity the leftists just get bolder and more aggressive and more violent. People who are nice to leftists are a major problem, and they’re idiots, to boot, because leftists (like arabs) have absolutely no concept of gratitude or goodwill. Leftists just view civility as weakness.
Woe upon those that wish us to be gone, for the serpent will strike the heel of the opressor.
Serpent’s three years late and $3 trillion short.
Every minor concession to common sense and rationality that is made by the vile, lawless and totalitarian Dhimmi-crats, is motivated not by doing what is fair and rational, but, by transparent political self-interest and self-preservation, in an election year.
Whether Biden is “toast” or not depends on whether they have gotten to regs for improving” toasters. /s
I still wish I had the metal, weighty toaster that my mom and dad got as a wedding gift, and which we used pretty much until I was in my mid-20s. Toasters today are crap.
Also, it functioned well as a toaster and could be used as a weapon if the need arose.
Toaster ovens are your salvation….or those combo air fryer, toaster, etc. Some of those are actually quite good.
Still using the toaster oven and pressure cookers we got as wedding presents 51 years ago. You won’t do that with today’s. Also, the food grinder, sewing machine, and a handful of other appliances from back when they were made of real metal parts, before the “plastic plague” hit. One of my prized nostalgic possessions is a genuine Fuller hand and nail brush that I remember my mother buying from a door-to-door salesman, new, in 1956. Whatever it’s made out of still looks practically new, even though it gets used at least weekly. All these magnificent paeans to true capitalist progress were produced without the aid of (and sometimes despite the intercession of) government.
But the gas stoves are giving all the little children asthma and they’re dropping by the billions. Billions of dead kids … every day … because some greedy adult just had to turn on a gas stove.
I don’t care how much “weaker” the new regulations are. The feral government has no right to make any of these regulations, at all. NONE. And these feral executive branch goons have to start going to prison. State AGs and local DAs need to get on the ball and start issuing indictment after indictment against these dirtbags. I don’t care what it is – if one of them is caught jaywalking in Mississippi then he should be charged with possibly impeding an ambulance, illegally detaining every driver that had to wait for him to get out of the street, … whatever, and extradite the guy back to sit in jail while waiting for his trial … which could be scheduled any time in the next year or two … or three or four … That’s how this game is played.
The gas stove / asthma study was pure junk science.
Population Attribution Faction (PAF) is meaningless when there are multiple variables.
Numerous other blatant red flags
None of the asthma advocate organizations list gas stove in the top ten causes of asthma, but somehow the study found 12% of cases were associated with gas stoves.
The top three cause take up 70% of the cases. 30% of cases are caused by the next 7 causes.
It is time to remove ALL rule-making and regulation-making power from the federal agencies.
As these agencies are under the executive branch their rules and regulations, which have the force of law, are unconstitutional.
The agencies should be restricted to advisory to Congress roles.
Yes. Absolutely.
Congress is not allowed to delegate its Constitutional powers unless the Constitution specifically says so. OTherwise, it is the Congress amending the Constiutition by legislation, which is most definitely not allowed, as it goes against the entire point of the Constitution and a Constitutional Republic.
The agencies should be allowed to write “regulations” that enact the law Congress passed.
What that should mean is they can design and print forms, hire inspectors, set deadlines for compliance (once you’ve been shown out of compliance, what is the process for being back in compliance… within the confines of the law), hire lawyers who will go to court (a regular court) when you contest the rules, etc. But that authority got morphed into “Hey, we passed a vague law to show we’re Doing Something! and now it’s up to you to do what needs to be done.”
Also, Congress needs to have its feet held to the fire over being confined to their Constitutional powers. “You can’t do that” should be the refrain from the people, followed by the people throwing them out on their ear.
But that requires the people to take responsibility.
It also requires a mechanism that actually allows people to throw them out on their ear, which we discovered actually did not exist for federal “public servants” during the “Dump McCain” movement. Waiting for a new election is simply impotent, as my colleague Anthony Garcia explained:
“When I want to drive my car someplace, I get behind the wheel and drive, as opposed to having somebody lock me in the trunk, drive me around, and let me out every four years to ask “Are we where you wanted to go yet? No? Okay, get back in the trunk and I’ll try again.”
This, exactly this, along with Vivek’s proposal of mass firings and shuttering of agencies that have been completely
corrupted and have outlived their usefulness.
I don’t think Congress ever authorized the DOE to regulate end consumer products. It is self created. That is why it is backing down.
“That is why it is backing down.”
Temporarily.
2 cases at the Supreme Court are scaring the hell out of the administrative state. The Supremes aren’t blind. They read the papers and watch tv. I’ll bet they all have gas stoves, ac’s, washing machines, etc. If they overturn Chevron this crap will stop immediately. No more rule making by fiat. It also puts Congress on notice, make a law with specifics and limits. No more open ended gray area BS.
FJB
Ending Chevron won’t immediately accomplish that. Unfortunately.
But it will hamper them and just maybe begin to provide some proper accountability.
True. It isn’t a panacea but it and a couple of other cases this term could remove a host of evils from undue deference and the ideology of bureaucrats becoming nearly paramount to putting Art III courts and Judges back in the driver seat instead of in house Agency Admin Judges.
A couple of wins here from of SCOTUS and a genuine commitment by our Congressional majority to employ the Congressional Review Act on a consistent basis to wipe Cray Cray Agency rules off the slate would be tremendous. What is necessary is a real commitment by our HoR and Senate to actually do the difficult work of governing; each committee of jurisdiction passing out legislation for a full vote and signature of the POTUS instead of subcontracting out rulemaking to the ideological bureaucrats which populate the Agencies/Departments.
Exactly.
What is necessary is a real commitment by our HoR and Senate to actually do the difficult work of governing
Which, in turn, requires the people to require that of their elected legislators. That’s where the hard lift is.
It will help if SCOTUS knocks down Chevron deference. They have a case in that area this term.
“What else do those revolting peasants use in their homes we can break?”
This is down from the 50 percent of gas stoves on the market it estimated would be impacted by the rule last year.
Which means it was a start, but still 23% too many.
And while I think what the House did was good, it doesn’t go anywhere near far enough for me. They need to ensure the Energy Dept. has no ability, whatsoever, to tell me what sort of stove I can have, nor how efficient it must be, nor what sort of fuel it can use. That should be outside the purview of said department. Their job is to ensure we all have energy, not to scold us for using it.
And, if they can’t get that right, then they should be disbanded altogether.
I bet the Biden 2024 campaign doesn’t take credit for this …
HHS Announces Department Actions to Slow Surging Syphilis Epidemic
https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/01/30/hhs-announces-department-actions-slow-surging-syphilis-epidemic.html
U.S. syphilis cases reach highest levels since the 1950s, creating a critical public health need. In response to the surging number of syphilis and congenital syphilis cases nationwide, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is taking action to slow the spread with a focus on those most significantly impacted. Through the establishment of the National Syphilis and Congenital Syphilis Syndemic (NSCSS) Federal Task Force, the Department is utilizing its agencies, its expertise, and its stakeholder network to respond to the U.S. syphilis and congenital syphilis epidemic.
People are getting syphilis from their stoves?!
Somebody ought to Do Something! Yeeeeaaaaarrrggggghhhh!
Nope, it’s coming over the borders.
Inside killer bees or something, that part’s still totally unclear.
This has been going on a long time. At least as far back to the halcyon days of Blue Oyster Cult………….
‘I’m burning, I’m burning, I’m burning for you’
“the requirements for gas stoves are significantly weaker than what it initially proposed.”
Odd phrasing for saying “common sense” prevails over bureaucratic society stupidity.
The aim here is to get you to call it common sense when they still get to kick your ass. Don’t do it.
The Overton Window shifts again. They proposed changes they knew would never fly, then rolled them back to a certain degree while writing the regulations so they can be shifted back to the original strangling level with a few bureaucratic decisions. They’ll ratchet them up when nobody is looking.
” They’ll ratchet them up when nobody is looking.”
Exactly so.
We need to assume now, that every law, regulation, authority, finding, or judgment is a Trojan horse Camel’s nose into the tent. What they’re doing isn’t what they are doing. They’re setting up an authority to regulate, especially ban non-patented nutrient therapies, not to keep us safe from quackery. They’re not trying to constrain organized crime, they’re setting up to turn law enforcement full-on into robbery under color of law, to fund this or that. They’re setting up to seize anything that looks likely for resale — they tried to seize a public ferry in Seattle, on the most contrived grounds — they found a couple seeds in a crack in the ferry’s railing, not looking to remove the means of committing drug crimes.
etc.
Presumptively everything they propose is a scam at best, robbery at worst. The burden is on them to prove that it can’t be abused. Because they’ve earned that distrust.
An environmental impact statement of some program takes months or years, thousands of pages, and usually a lawsuit.
The people’s impact statement on a regulation … I was gonna say “doesn’t get considered”, but that’s wrong. They’re all the time looking to make the little people’s miserable, little lives, littler and more miserable. Whatever the proclaimed motivation, they just found a new fig leaf to cover more meddling more in your little life. The meddling is the point, until at the last “Everything not compulsory is forbidden!”
Turns out, Biden’s coming for the electric appliances! Plot twist! Now the only way to get a decent amount of heat out of your stove will be gas.
Maybe he’s trying to save the electric grid for all those EV’s he wants us to buy.
I can drill out the jets on my gas stove. What is harder for me to do is to find a new washing machine with a real agitator. That doesn’t just suggest to the clothes that they might want to shift a bit, but moves them around vigorously.
This should not be hard, but it is. It’s like the government doesn’t want me to clean my clothes well, have a machine that doesn’t accumulate mildew if I don’t leave the door open, etc.
They don’t want anyone, but themselves, to have any modcons. They want us naked, in caves, eating bugs.