Appeals court cancels Biden’s CAPRICIOUS energy regulatory actions targeting dishwashers and washing machines

By bellecarter // 2024-01-12

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A federal appeals court has found President Joe Biden's Department of Energy (DOE) regulatory actions on the use of dishwashers and washing machines to be "arbitrary and capricious" and would probably have the opposite of their intended effects. Thus, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down the federal ruling that is part of the administration's aggressive climate change agenda. "The 2022 DOE was required to reasonably consider the relevant issues and reasonably explain its decisions…. It failed to do so." The ruling said: "Specifically, it (a) is unclear that DOE has statutory authority to regulate water use in dishwashers and clothes washers. But even if DOE has water-usage authority over the relevant appliances, the department (b) failed to adequately consider the negative consequences of [its new rule], including the substitution effects of energy-and-water-wasting rewashing, prewashing, and handwashing. In all events, the 2022 DOE (c) failed to adequately consider the impact of the energy conservation program on 'performance characteristics.'" In 2020, President Donald Trump's DOE issued a rule creating a new class of dishwashers whose normal cycle lasted less than an hour. This was done to address concerns that "burdensome regulations made dishwashers incapable of, well, washing dishes," at least at a rate that suits consumers' needs, wrote Judge Andrew Oldham. The DOE issued a similar rule for washing machines. (Related: Energy Department's proposed washing machine guidelines a dirty deal for Americans.) Right after he assumed office, Biden ordered federal agencies to reconsider all Trump-issued regulations, with the 2020 DOE rules mentioned specifically. In January 2022, the DOE promulgated its own rule revoking the 2020 rules; the court referred to this as the "Repeal Rule." "Even if DOE could consider dishwashers' and clothes washers' 'efficiency' in both 'energy use' and 'water use,' the 2020 rules likely promoted greater efficiency in both categories than the Repeal Rule," the court's decision stated. "Assuming both energy conservation metrics are on the table, the States argue, and DOE does not appear to dispute, that one important aspect of that problem is whether appliance regulations actually reduce energy and water consumption." It continued that the administrative record contains ample evidence that DOE's efficiency standards likely do the opposite because these make Americans use more energy and more water for the simple reason that purportedly 'energy efficient' appliances do not work. The decision of the three-judge panel also stated that highly efficient dishwashers that use less water often force consumers to run multiple cycles or to manually handwash dishes, leading to both more overall energy and water use. It remains unclear if the Biden administration will appeal. The ruling came amid Biden's "war with appliances" to "decrease the energy consumption" of the residential sector. According to federal data, the commercial and residential sector accounts for 30 percent of total end-use carbon emissions in the U.S., the largest share of any sector including industry, transportation and agriculture.

Experts: DOE efficiency standards are part of agenda to electrify appliances

Last year, Biden's government also sought to impose regulations for items like water heaters, furnaces and pool pump motors. It has also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on helping state and municipal governments pursue building codes. Their rhetoric: these will reduce carbon emissions and lower prices. DOE said its finalized and proposed regulations will curb emissions by 2.4 billion metric tons cumulatively over 30 years. "At the direction of Congress, DOE is continuing to review and finalize energy standards for household appliances, such as residential furnaces, to lower costs for working families by reducing energy use and slashing harmful pollutants in homes across the nation," Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in September. However, experts have repeatedly warned over the last 12 months that these energy efficiency actions will ultimately harm consumers and drive prices even higher since manufacturers will be forced to adopt newer technologies to achieve the standards. "Ostensibly, these DOE efficiency standards are supposed to benefit consumers. That's the way the law is written," Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Fox News Digital in an interview. "But they're clearly being done as part of the climate agenda, especially this agenda to electrify everything." Last April, Lieberman and 15 other consumer organizations wrote a letter, arguing DOE's efficiency standards for stovetops proposed in February "almost certainly compromise some of the features that gas stove users want, and all for the sake of saving an insignificant amount of energy." According to the agency's analysis, those standards would effectively ban half of all available stoves. "The agency's exaggerated claims of climate change benefits do not alter the fact that the proposed rule violates the consumer protections in the statute," the comment letter stated. "For these reasons, we believe the proposed rule should be withdrawn." Visit GreenTyranny.news to read more stories on government tyrannical drives toward "green living." Watch the video below that talks about the radical greenies' war with household appliances under the pretense of fighting climate change. This video is from the NewsClips channel on Brighteon.com.

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Experts: DOE efficiency standards are part of agenda to electrify appliances

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