Biden’s Energy Agenda Boils Over: Natural Gas Heaters Banned
The ban, issued by the Department of Energy, targets water heaters that fail to meet stringent new efficiency standards, effectively sidelining many natural gas models widely used in American homes.
The Biden administration is once again turning up the heat on household energy costs—this time by banning certain natural gas water heaters.
In a move critics call a “lame-duck regulation,” the new restrictions are set to phase out scores of affordable, reliable models in favor of more expensive alternatives.
While the administration touts the changes as a step toward environmental progress, many Americans see it as yet another financial burden at a time when inflation is already squeezing household budgets.
The ban, issued by the Department of Energy, targets water heaters that fail to meet stringent new efficiency standards, effectively sidelining many natural gas models widely used in American homes.
Industry experts warn that the regulation will raise manufacturing costs, forcing consumers to shoulder higher upfront expenses for compliant appliances. Additionally, critics argue that these changes disproportionately impact lower-income households, who rely on affordable options to meet their basic needs, all while providing minimal environmental benefit.
From the Free Beacon:
Overall, under the regulations, roughly 40 percent of the new tankless water heaters available in the United States today will be taken off the market by 2029. Experts and industry officials say that will force consumers to purchase either more expensive or less efficient water heater models.
One industry analysis estimates that consumers will pay $450 more on average when purchasing new water heaters thanks to the regulations. And that will impact low-income and senior households, which are most reliant on the models targeted by the Department of Energy.
The move represents the latest climate-related action taken by the Biden administration in the weeks following President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump has vowed to roll back a wide swath of the climate regulations issued under President Joe Biden in an effort to boost energy production and drive economic growth.
Prominent Conservatives on Twitter slammed the Biden administration for sneaking this in the day after Christmas:
New Biden water heater ban will drive up energy prices for poor, seniors: expert https://t.co/FnbZH6t54Q #FoxBusiness
— Bo Snerdley (@BoSnerdley) January 5, 2025
Biden quietly issued a regulation a day after Christmas — no press releases or anything — that will force 40% of natural gas water heaters off the market by 2029, @ThomasCatenacci reports. https://t.co/JOW0Jv7cuQ
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) January 3, 2025
Rescind immediately https://t.co/5peN0kFlxL
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) January 3, 2025
This latest rule is just one in a series of Biden administration policies that seem more focused on virtue signaling than practical solutions for American families. By forcing a transition to costlier appliances, Washington elites appear out of touch with the financial realities faced by millions of working-class Americans. As the administration doubles down on its regulatory agenda, consumers are left to wonder: how much more will they be expected to pay for the sake of political points?
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Comments
Biden and Reptilian Newsom – NO
Reposting – at the top so that all can see
Without jumping anyone’s case, Milhouse and I generally have a very good understanding of constitutional and statutory issues with most all the legal topics (with the caveat that I sometimes get the wrong answer). Much better understanding than almost every other commentator.
Use Milhouse’s knowledge to your advantage. He is almost always correct on the legal issues. You may not like his answers from a policy perspective, but he is almost always correct on the legal issues.
Congratulations. You and Milhouse are geniuses and beyond reproach on legal issues.
Got it.
Its not a case of either of us being geniuses on legal issues , even though both of us are corrrect the vast majority of time. Its a case several commentators not only getting legal issues egregously wrong, but having near zero grasp of constitutional issues. Again, use Milhouse to your advantage to learn
I hate to break it to you but human language (and, unfortunately, legal language) is a very fuzzy construct that is open to myriads of different interpretations. Mpw, people generally understand what the language in a law means, but that doesn’t stop them from abusing language to twist it into what they want it to mean. Of course, purely linguistically, this is possible and it can be done in a manner so extreme that one can arrive at the absolutely opposite purpose of the law, though while making defensible arguments about the purely linguistic semantics of it. This is why there has to be some level of trust in those who are ultimately interpreting law, because human language is never precise enough to guard, on its own, against abuse. Someone can make the case that a skyscraper is a “chair” because someone is sitting on the roof. Now, in normal conversation such a claim would be laughed off – because it is completely retarded and known to be untrue, but these are the sorts of moronic arguments that courts and lawyers entertain to show how “objective” they are about meaning in language.
Milhouse tends to go out of her(?) way, very often, to lend ridiculous interpretations to law. That might not bother you but it bothers a lot of people who understand how language actually works and what its weaknesses are and what disingenuous interpretations are.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair
Thanks for confirming that you would benefit more than almost every other commentator from learning from milhouse regarding legal issues.
Just “almost”? You disappoint me.
Really, Milhouse?
This is the best sockpuppet you could come up with?
Just vapid, naked praise?
Actually, now that I think about it, this is exactly your style.
And Azathoth lies again. What a surprise. You should sue all the other liars because you have a patent.
Ban this, censor that!
If they really cared, their actions would show it, not their orthodoxy. Don’t see them cutting back or addressing the worst offenders. Wasn’t America on the path to reductions all by itself?
Good riddance progressives. You left America like the grounds after one of your gatherings, a complete mess!
It is time to figuratively burn the EPA to the ground. It is a hive of mindless environmental drones.
The new Administration needs to jump on getting this and other such regulations (gas stoves, washers, dryers and other appliance quasi-bans) removed.
Don’t forget incandescent light bulbs!
That was Fred Upton and the Congress, I believe.
So much regulation can be tossed out the door.
How did the world survive before TPS sensors were mandatory? Well that accounts for 500 bucks of your sticker price- all in for electronics and hardware. Then it drives up repair costs too- because those aren’t cheap for people who don’t fixt their own stuff.
At the very least, its power to create rules and regulations should be ended, and the same should be done to every other agency and administration within the executive branch,
And what they ACTUALLY mean by so-called ‘energy efficiency’ is, they aren’t allowed to use more than a certain amount of energy at a time, so they have to ‘efficiently’ run longer. So the water heater instead of heating up in an hour, is going to take 3 hours to heat up the same amount of water.
Just like their so-called ‘energy efficient’ dryers or toilets, that you had to cycle twice because it didn’t do the job the first time.
Don’t forget washing machines.
And showers.
The world used to envy our water pressure …
The first thing Trump should do upon taking office is sign a blanket order cancelling every executive order and regulation enacted by the Biden administration in the last year. (For a start.) Every single one.
Failing that, postponing all of them, pending a top-to-bottom review in light of Loper Bright.
The Hawaiian Judges have already shown us that EO’s issued by Democrat Presidents are protected from being cancelled by EO’s issued by Republican Presidents…sorry…EO’s issued by President Donald Trump.
No, they didn’t.
It looked like sarcasm to me.
Thank you for fact-checking a joke …
Sheesh.
He can cancel the executive orders, but not the regulations. Once a regulation has been made, rescinding it requires going through the same APA hoops that making it required in the first place.
Or Congress can disallow it, but that requires a majority in both houses and the president’s signature, which is the same as a new law. The only difference is that the senate minority can’t filibuster a motion to disallow a regulation, while it can filibuster a new law.
And when the effort to have Congress disallow comes to the House (and to a lesser degree the Senate, particularly since the Republicans can “lose” three and still pass with the VP vote) we’ll be treated to a classic example of an action similar to herding cats. This would be the fastest and simplest method, if it weren’t Republicans attempting it.
yes he should cancell all the EO’s – However as Milhouse notes below, The trump administration has to go through all the hurdles of APA crap to rescind a regulation. Failure to follow those procedures is what got Trump in trouble during his first administration.
Yep. Congress can assist by utilizing the ARA admin review act to expedite the process. Even better would be follow up legislation that removes any leeway for future Executive Branch to deviate from narrowly defined explicit powers to be used exactly how Congress dictated. IOW Maybe the Executive could still be allowed to determine the priority of required tasks but without the ability to add to their ability to perform them absent additional Congressional action.
Another way to get Executive Branch compliance with Congress is the power of the purse. If Exec branch officials from a particular Agency deviate from explicit powers or refuse to answer questions or cooperate with Congressional inquiries then a group of Senators or Rep could refuse to vote for any appropriation bill to fund that Agency.
Of course all this sort of discussion presumes that Congress wants to reclaim the powers they granted to these Agencies. They mostly don’t b/c it’s convenient to blame ‘the bureaucracy’ and the Executive Branch for dumb things. Far easier to play to play the ‘send campaign donations to help defeat the deep state bureaucracy’. The members of Congress ignore that they can always vote against funding them or introduce legislation under the ARA to void the actions of these Agencies.
What Trump should do is have every air conditioner, furnace, water heater, and electric heater removed from every EPA building or office. Let them show their devotion to the environment.
They don’t care at the EPA. They were sh*tting in the halls over there, if you recall.
Ignore this crap. The Department of Energy has no right to legislate.
It has the right to regulate. Congress authorized it to make regulations.
Really? Congress authorized them to ban water heaters?
And where in the Constitution does it authorize Congress giving the Executive legislative powers?
Congress authorized the secretary to make regulations to promote energy efficiency. This is such a regulation.
The power to authorize the executive to issue regulations doesn’t have to be mentioned explicitly in the constitution; it’s inherent in the legislative power. And it’s been that way since the first congress.
Congress is not allowed to delegate the powers given to it in the Constitution because that is tantamount to amending the Constitution.
The Constitution does not merely give power to certain government bodies for them to bargain away to their liking. That is not how it works. When the Constitution assigns some power or responsibility to a specific government entity then ONLY that entity may carry out that power or handle that responsibility. That’s how these Constitution things work.
No, that is not how it works. Congress has the inherent power to authorize the executive to make regulations on its behalf, so long as it provides an intelligible principle by which it can know whether any given regulation is the sort of thing Congress had in mind or not. What it can’t do is simply authorize the president to make laws in its place, and go home.
Congress does not have that authority. That violates the separation of powers doctrine.
No, it doesn’t. Congress has always authorized the executive to make regulations. The nondelegation doctrine merely requires that the authorization have some cognizable limits, some intelligible principle that says what sort of regulation Congress had in mind. It can’t be a completely blank check. This regulation is squarely within the regulatory authority that Congress gave the Secretary of Energy, so there’s no nondelegation challenge to be made.
No. Congress may have taken such actions in the past, but it was wrong to do so.
Anything the first congress and administration did without protest is presumed to be constitutional, because that generation was in the best position to understand the constitution and would have protested if it had been violated.
Someone should peek over the taxpayer funded WALL at Biden’s beach mansion to see how many of these heaters he has!!! Then let’s see how many congress critters own AOS stock.
Finally, can a common sense new President reverse this nonsense, Can’t joe just ban broccoli?
How about sending a team of heavily-armed FBI agents to his mansion to remove all his lawbreaking appliances? I still believe that all of this is just a warmup (pun intended) to the grand finale, his final pardon list.
What about the appliances in Dr. Jill’s panties drawer?
1. Nothing in anyone’s home is being banned. The “offending” models are to be taken off the market in 2029, assuming the regulation is still in effect by then. So there’s no call to seize anything.
2. No, a new president can’t reverse a regulation without going through the same steps that it took to make the regulation in the first place. This is why every administration issues a bunch of regulations on its way out; it started the process on them years earlier, and they were finally ready to issued just as the administration is winding up.
Milhouse please remember that the Supremes reversed the Chevron doctrine. They also affirmed that the President alone controls the executive branch. Please explain to this layman how this doesn’t equate to the President telling the EPA to change the rule. President Trump orders it and let the lawyer briefs begin. And if the Supremes side with the President it will go along way to dismantling the administrative state.
The first Trump administration lost, in court, at least one effort to remove a regulation for failing to follow (with every i dotted and every t crossed) the Administrative Procedures Act in removing regulations. It’s a PITA, when you know how bad the regulation is, to follow the method required. “But it’s the law”.
It’s got nothing to do with Chevron. Chevron is only about interpreting ambiguous statutes. Regulations are governed by the APA. The president can’t just make whatever regulations he likes, he has to go through the procedure and it takes a long time. That’s why these regulations are coming so late. The Dems started the process on them a long time ago, and they’ve only now come through.
(Also much/most regulatory authorizations are not to the president but to the secretary of the relevant department.)
Without jumping anyone’s case, Milhouse and I generally have a very good understanding of constitutional and statutory issues with most all the legal topics (with the caveat that I sometimes get the wrong answer). Much better understanding than almost every other commentator.
Use Milhouse’s knowledge to your advantage. He is almost always correct on the legal issues. You may not like his answers from a policy perspective, but he is almost always correct on the legal issues.
“This is why every administration issues a bunch of regulations on its way out; it started the process on them years earlier, and they were finally ready to issued just as the administration is winding up.”
Also, the white stuff in the baggies isn’t theirs and they don’t know how it got there.
The Congressional Review Act is a shortcut way to nix regulations that are imposed in the last few months of an Administration. This one is crying out to be killed this way, as is Biden’s banning offshore drilling.
It’s not much of a shortcut. It requires exactly the same steps as making a new law, which makes it almost useless. The only shortcut it offers is that the senate minority can’t filibuster it, so you only need 50 senators to pass it, not 60. Other than that you may as well just pass a new law.
That’s not how it should be. The executive makes regulations on behalf of Congress, so all it should take to disallow a regulation is one house saying “That’s not what we meant”. Unfortunately the Supreme Court got it wrong in INS v Chadha.
It is however a shortcut in comparison to jumping through the hoops of normal rule making timeline via compliance with APA. The other benefit is that it also prohibits future regs that are the same/substantially similar as what Congress guts with CRA. In theory a Congressional majority could gut a regulation inside a week.
milhouse – In the chadha case, only the house voted the legislative veto, so I think the SC was correct. If the house, senate voted and president signed (or overrode veto) then the legislative veto would have worked. But a single chamber is insufficient.
No, Joe, I think Chadha was very wrongly decided.
Of course only one house voted to veto the regulation. That was the whole point. By what right does the government make regulations in the first place? Because Congress has authorized it to do so, and provided an intelligible principle for determining what sort of regulations it had in mind.
The government makes them on Congress’s behalf. That means on behalf of both houses. Every time a secretary publishes a regulation (having jumped through the appropriate APA hoops), he is acting with the consent of both houses of Congress. So it makes perfect sense that either house should be able to say “Hang on a minute, that is not what we had in mind. When we authorized you to make rules, we didn’t contemplate that you would do something like this.” And that should automatically negate the authority under which the secretary acted.
The Biden Administration should not have made this move: it is not the place of the feds to make up these rules.
On the other hand, exactly none of the bloviating, vague articles on the web today, including the one here, had any specific technical information, and this is complex technical topic. The rule bans non-condensing gas-fired tankless water heaters after 5 years. Why, and what are the alternatives?
Ignoring the small number of New England steam boilers with “hot water loops” and the smaller number of wood fired gravity secondary loops, there are six common forms of water heaters. The simplest is the electric resistance tank heater, which is 100% efficient (all the energy goes into the water). There are hybrid tank heaters, which use a heat pump, and rely on stealing heat energy from their surroundings. These can be up to 250% efficient where there is excess heat available (Arizona?) but are just very expensive resistance heaters where it is cold. There are electric resistance tankless heaters, which are 100% efficient, but are expensive to install because of the serious wiring needed. On the gas side there are traditional tank-type gas heaters with sealed and open combustion variants. Tankless gas heaters come in low-cost, reduced-efficiency non-condensing form, and higher cost condensing form.
Condensing gas tankless heaters need 7 connections: hot and cold water, hot and cold air, electricity and condensate ejection, and a fat gas line. These are the highest cost to buy and the highest cost to install, but have the highest efficiency. For high-use situations, these can work well because the energy savings pays for the high install cost.
The Biden admin is getting rid of non-condensing gas-fired tankless units. These units are less efficient than electric systems and cost less than condensing tankless gas units. These are easy to install but cost more to run than their condensing gas cousins.
The primary effect is to sharply raise the cost of install of a new or retrofit unit, and lower the operating cost. Condensing tankless gas systems have the lowest operating cost but it is hard to know the ROI because return depends on usage pattern. In all cases gas system are less efficient than electric systems, but total cost of operation is lower because of the lower cost per joule compared to electricity. People care less about efficiency than operating cost.
Prices are sharply higher. I did a somewhat complicated install in one location and spend around $5K in parts. More recently I did a retrofit at my father’s house from an old gas tank system to a new condensing gas tankless, and spent $2600 in parts, plus 3 days labor. Last week I priced out a similar update at my own house, and parts would come in at about $4K, depending on the exact configuration, with up to $6K worst case.
The press release from the Biden admin claims a $400 increase in cost. This ignores the very real cost of installing the correct sealed combustion inlet and exhaust, and ignores the very real cost of installing a condensate drain system. Compared to traditional tank-type gas systems, condensing gas tankless systems need a dedicated circuit for the water heater (a non-GFI, non-arc-fault single-use appliance circuit) and an outlet for the condensate ejector pump. The electric part of the gas water heater update is ignored in the cost estimate from the Biden admin.
Tankless gas systems require high gas flow. Lots of sites cannot run a retrofit gas tankless without doing a partial gas repipe. I always run a new dedicated 3/4″ CSST line, but some sites will need to use a new high-pressure gas meter and install new low-pressure regulators for existing appliances. This too is ignored in the cost estimate from the Biden admin.
Housing prices will rise. Biden will not be concerned.
Thank you for the detailed explanation of the situation … but the plain fact is that the federal government really has no power to make any sort of “efficiency” laws barring people from making or buying products. Yes, I know they have been doing it for a while, but it has always been completely un-Constitutional. How much water I use is none of the federal government’s business, how much gas I use, … and how much gas some appliance uses is not the federal government’s concern, as per the Constitution. I challenge anyone to find me the wording in the Constitution that assigns such powers to the federal government.
*Democrats energy agenda
Biden’s Democrat handlers have made all of the decisions for him since he took office. “Biden’s agenda” = Democrat Party’s agenda
After four long years, there are only two decisions that we actually know were made by Biden personally:
1) Put Trump in jail. Any excuse will do. Get it done.
2) Which flavor of ice cream next.
There needs to be a change in the lame duck period, some legislation which’s limits Presdential powers with EO’s and time to shorten the lame duck period!
30 days should be enough!
Legislation can’t limit the president’s powers. Only a constitutional amendment can do that.
Congress can by legislation shorten the lame duck period, by moving the election into December.
Yep. Being POTUS is like being pregnant you either are or you aren’t and if you are then you are
the Executive. The Constitution is very clear on this point ‘The Executive power shall be vested in a President…’
The war powers and presidential records act come to mind
Neither of which limit the president’s powers. The constitution explicitly gives the power to declare war to Congress and not to the president. And no president has the right to steal government property. The PRA declares that records the president creates in his official capacity are the property of the USA and not his private property, so of course he can’t take them.
All they really need to do is extend the lookback time of the Congressional Review Act to 2 years instead of 2 months.
It isn’t ‘two months’ it is 60 legislative/session days. The usual or most common start of the period is July but it has been as early as May and as late as September. All depends on the end of the prior legislative calendar.
No, they need to do more than that. They need to reenact the legislative veto that was struck down in INS v Chadha and see whether SCOTUS will strike it down again.
“one in a series of Biden administration policies that seem more focused on virtue signaling”
I’ve been chucking the finger at people for decades myself, and never realized I was virtue signaling.
Yep. That seems to be exactly what this is; an example of ‘get bent, I’ll do it b/c I can and damn the impact’.
Even moreso a new effort to increase control of the people and cause the people a financial harm, all while giving them the finger, For the watermelon “green” activists and Democrats this trifecta is so satisfying.
Unelected Department of Energy, I think I see the problem.
The Church of Global Warming realy has their claws into this administration, thankfully only 13 more days of it.
The Department of Energy is elected the same way the whole executive branch is: at the presidential election. The constitution says that the president is the executive branch, and everyone in it works for him and exercises his authority (or authority that Congress has specifically delegated to a particular departmental secretary).
But you’ve also said a president cannot rescind regulations imposed by the Executive branch. So is the president the executive, or are the regulators?
What Milhouse wrote was that the President (new administration) can’t remove a regulation passed pursuant to the Administrative Procedures Act WITHOUT following the Administrative Procedures Act requirements to remove the offending regulation.
So Milhouse was wrong when he said that Congress can’t limit presidential powers?
No, I was right when I said that. Congress can’t limit the president’s powers. Making regulations is NOT a presidential power. It’s an authorization from Congress, so Congress can limit it any way it likes.
It seems more focused on destruction and the infliction of pain than virtue signaling.
I am pretty convinced that this is all being directed by Soros. Barky and his gang are too stupid to think up any of this stuff and Biden and his few “people” are retards, too. No … all of this stuff – and all of the lawfare and all of the policies are being thought up by someone who knows very well what he’s doing and is very good at it. The same sort of person who would identify lowly DA positions as vulnerable to cheap attacks in order to foist lawlessness on major cities.
I think, once Soros finally bites it (hopefully, very, very soon and, hopefully, very, very painfully) we are going to see all of this crap pretty much stop. Sure, they will still be trying to destroy America, but they will not be thinking up these sorts of tactics and moves.
Of course, it could be someone else directing all of this … but I don’t think so. I see Soros’ hand in everything that’s been done against this country since Barky slimed into office in 2009.
Embrace the healing power of AND.
Soros’s sons have already mostly taken over the “philanthropy”
Soros handed control of his operation ($25 Billion USD value) to his third son Alexander. According to reports Alex is every bit the Communist activist his father is and likely why the two older sons were passed over in favor of Alex having control.
Oh, just shut up about stuff that you have no idea about and just make up.
Soros is still alive. Guess what, just because his retarded kid is the face of things these days doesn’t say anything about who is actually running things.
What the hell is wrong with you?
The point isn’t about who is running things now, it’s who has been confirmed to carry on the agenda of destruction after the old man dirtnaps. It’s all in place. The kid has even married Hillary’s girl toy, to close the loop. She’s a bit long in the tooth to continue a dynasty, but there are thousands of 20-30yo Tren de Araguan orphans available and looking for adoption.
No. The point is who is the brains behind the operation. That is the key. That is always the key.
Soros’ kid doesn’t seem to be very swift – which is a great thing.
Of course, it might not be Soros who is the brains behind the left wing destruction operation that has been running amok since Barky first slimed into office … but I have not seen any other contenders for the spot and the actions that have taken place in the left’s drive to take America apart all seem to bear the fingerprints of a Soros idea (from his operations that we all know of).
If this is true – that Soros has been the brains behind the left – then we will know very quickly once he dies.
As Alexander the Great said,
“I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.”
It’s all about control. Cradle to grave, every aspect of your life. leftists know how to live your life better than you.
Can’t he issue a superseeding or conflicting regulation to nullify?
Only by going through the same lengthy procedure that the current administration went through to make the regulation in the first place.
‘lengthy procedure’
What ‘lengthy procedure’?
This was quietly done the day after Christmas with little to no notice.
Are you suggesting that Biden went through some long process to kill gas water heaters and no one noticed?
There was no ‘lengthy process’–this is your brethren trying to destroy everything before they are thrown out of power..
Azathoth is lying as usual.
No, it was not quietly done the day after Christmas with little to no notice. Yes, there was a long APA process. That is the only way to make a regulation.
The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was filed a year and a half ago, in July 2023, and everyone relevant noticed. More than 17,000 public comments were received.
I am just getting over the financial burden of replacing my working but old heating and AC because of the new, highly flammable, refrigerant that makes a HVAC system cost 30% more.
Trust me, it ain’t only the refrigerant.
My homeowner and car insurance have zero moving parts, yet they’re in the same boat.
And don’t get me started on my boat insurance.
Pretty soon you’ll need dishwasher, stove and flamethrower insurance.
The Congressional Review Act is the best way to nix this. It allows no filibuster and has expedited rules. A bare majority in both Houses should be enough.
THIS is what authoritarianism looks like.