We have regularly covered Biden’s seemingly endless war on America’s appliances.
So far, the Biden administration eco-activists at the Energy Department have come after our:
There were also attacks 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.
And who could forget the moment Biden’s “climate activism advisor” Gina McCarthy chortled over 100 new rules the administration planned to impose on appliances.
However, Americans who find their appliances useful now have the last laugh.
The Biden administration must revisit actions to toss Trump-era efficiency rules that created new appliance categories for shorter-duration dishwashers and washing machines, a federal appeals court ruled.Repeal efforts by the Energy Department in 2022 were arbitrary and capricious, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in an opinion published late Monday. The court sided with the petitioners, a group of 11 states led by Louisiana, in finding the department didn’t properly weigh alternatives from supporters of the Trump administration’s rules.The ruling creates uncertainty for how the Energy Department will finalize new standards for the two appliances this year, said Timothy Ballo, senior attorney with Earthjustice. Last September, efficiency advocates joined manufacturers to jointly recommend energy and water efficiency standards for six product categories, including washing machines and dishwashers.
The high-handed approach of the Department of Energy (DOE) toward adopting regulations prompted the legal review. Specifically, how did the entity that covered energy issues have purview over water?
According to the ruling, the DOE changed regulations regarding dishwashers and washing machines by revoking a 2020 rule excluding short-cycle appliances from existing requirements, which prompted a legal review.”There is no fourth branch of government sanctioned in the United States Constitution,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, among those to bring the review, wrote following the court ruling. “Federal bureaucrats can’t just tell you what kind of appliances you have to use.”…In the judgment, Oldham said that Congress appeared not to have given the DOE the authority to regulate water usage in appliances that also used energy—instead giving it authority to regulate energy usage, as well as water usage in appliances that do not require energy, such as faucets and showerheads.
The court’s opinion was brutal on the DOE.
The court’s opinion also points out that there is “ample evidence” to support that DOE’s dishwasher standards actually accomplish the opposite of their intent, stating that “they make Americans use more energy and more water for the simple reason that purportedly ‘energy efficient’ appliances do not work.”Beyond clothes washers and dishwashers, the Biden DOE has also sought to impose energy efficiency regulations for items like water heaters, furnaces and pool pump motors. The administration has also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on helping state and municipal governments pursue building codes“In this opinion, the court has forced DOE to follow the law and even noted that one of the positions DOE took in this suit ‘borders on frivolous.’ This decision allows manufacturers to build better dishwashers, not be encumbered by counterproductive federal regulations,” Devin Watkins, an attorney for CEI, said of the opinion.
Chalk up another war the Biden administration has lost.
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