Energy Department pauses rules on appliance efficiency
WASHINGTON — It may not have gotten a lot of attention yet outside the wonky world of energy efficiency. But within that world, concerns are mounting that one of the key parts of the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda may involve the Energy Department’s appliance standards program.
The program — low-profile, but quite consequential both to consumers and to the environment — sets rules governing the energy consumption levels of many familiar products and appliances. Think refrigerators and dishwashers, as well as many other pieces of consumer and industrial equipment.
The bottom line is rules setting standards for such common household appliances as refrigerators could be facing delays that, if they go on long enough, could spark litigation, uncertainty within the industry, and perhaps even an unnecessary cost to the environment.
The Obama administration pushed the standards program — rooted in the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987 and succeeding laws — into overdrive. As part of its ambitious climate policies, Obama’s team finalized more than 40 new standards. Each reduced U.S. energy use, as well as customer expenses and greenhouse gas emissions.
A few of the later rules failed to make it past the finish line at the end of the Obama years — including one for portable air conditioners and another for commercial boilers — and were promptly frozen by the Trump administration. A coalition of states and several environmental groups are suing to get those rules finalized, claiming they would save consumers $24 billion over three decades.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda seems poised to further entrain these types of rules going forward. A Trump executive order issued this year called for repealing two regulations for every new one issued. And last week Neomi Rao, Trump’s regulatory czar, said the administration had repealed 67 regulations and issued only three new ones.
At the same time, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the Office of Management and Budget, which Rao heads, released a “Unified Agenda” for regulations. It listed a large number of potential energy-efficiency measures as “longterm actions,” meaning they are “items under development but for which the agency does not expect to have a regulatory action within the 12 months after publication.”
That quickly prompted outrage among groups that watch such things closely.
“They basically have published their plan to put the national standards program on ice,” said Andrew DeLaski, the executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project. His group says the Energy Department has “indefinitely deferred action” on 20 standards.
The thing about these standards is that, well, they’re required by law. The Energy Department is supposed to revise the standards every six years or issue a decision not to do so, DeLaski explained. Manufacturers often work with Energy Department regulators to come to a compromise. DeLaski’s group and other environmentalists say the department has missed several deadlines and seems poised to blow many more.