Biden's war on appliances goes way beyond gas stoves
36 residential and six commerical items are included
Update 12-29-23:
Biden’s DOE quietly rolled out finalized regulations on appliances on the last Friday of 2023. Americans can expect the changes to hit their wallets in the coming years with the finalized fridge and freezer regulations starting in either 2029 or 2030, depending on the model of the appliance.
News of regulatory changes to gas stoves, furnaces, dishwashers, and clothes dryers has consistently flowed over the past year.
That news means Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is making good on and expanding on her remarks from last December that the Biden administration had already taken “110 actions” on energy efficiency standards just in 2022 alone.
More recently, according to Fox Digital, “Over the last several months, the Department of Energy (DOE) has unveiled standards to make various appliances more efficient, and experts have said this would worsen product quality and lead to higher prices.”
It’s not “various” appliances, it’s nearly every major residential item you can think of.
Under the Energy Conservation Program for Appliance Standards, the Biden administration’s Department of Energy is targeting no less than 36 residential appliances as well as six commercial appliances or equipment.
Here’s the full list of residential "conservation" appliances targeted by the Biden administration, both in proposed and final stage rules:
Air cleaners
Air compressors
Air conditioners
Automatic Commercial Ice Makers
Battery chargers
Ceiling fans / Ceiling fan light kits
Clothes Dryers
Clothes washers
Computer Room Air Conditioners
Consumer boilers
Dehumidifiers
Dishwashers
Electric motors
Fans and Blowers
Fluorescent Lamp Ballasts
Freezers
Furnaces
Furnace fans
Gas stoves
Gas fireplaces (indoor and outdoor patio/hearth models)
General Service Lamps
Metal Halide Lamp Fixtures
Microwave ovens
"Miscellaneous" Gas Products
Non-Weatherized Gas Furnaces and Mobile Home Gas Furnaces
Ovens
Pool pumps
Portable electric spas
Refrigerators
Refrigerator freezers
Refrigerated vending machines
Residential Conventional Cooking Products
Single Package Vertical Air Conditioners and Heat Pumps
Small Electric Motors
Walk-in Coolers/ Freezers
Water heaters
There are six more items on the commercial side, including ice makers, industrial pumps, water heating equipment, refrigeration equipment, distribution transformers, and water-sourced heat pumps.
These items are all flowing through what’s called the Unified Agenda, a labyrinthian and confusing subset of the U.S. Department of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
Why this assault on appliances? It’s part of the Biden administration’s climate agenda and a “clean energy future” by 2029.
The result of this regulatory raid on home and commercial appliances tramples the free market and will result in an increased cost of production which in turn will be passed on to the consumer.
"Anybody who wants to choose the more eco-friendly versions of appliances is always free to do so. But these rules force that choice on everyone, whether it makes sense for them or not," Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said in a recent interview with Fox News Digital.
"Almost all of these appliance standards raise the upfront costs,” said Lieberman. “It's not clear that you'll ever earn that back in the form of energy or water savings."
Lieberman’s comments were part of an article about Jeff Marootian, who Biden quietly installed to lead the war on appliances after Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Joe Manchin (D-WV) killed Marootian’s nomination to become head of the DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) division.
Marootian was first nominated to direct EERE in July 2022. His confirmation by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee was in November 2022 but went unconfirmed. In September, Biden put him in a role at EERE that didn’t require confirmation yet could assume the job duties of the position Congress rejected him for.
Prior to the November hearing, Granholm had hired Marootian as her senior adviser for energy efficiency and renewable energy.
When Biden transitioned into the White House, Marootian was working as the acting director District of Columbia's Department of Transportation (DDOT). He'd been given a step up from deputy director by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser in 2017.
Biden announced after his win in 2020 that he was giving Marootian a job in the "Presidential Personnel Office" as Special Assistant to the President for Climate and Science Agency Personnel. If you're wondering what the Presidential Personnel Office does, it vets people for other posts and nominated positions.
Before his time at DDOT, Marootian worked for former President Barack Obama’s administration at the U.S. Department of Transportation.
More To The Story
Biden’s war on appliances will hit every single state and territory, including North Carolina. But the NC Governor Roy Cooper’s focus hasn’t been on your stove. Instead, he wants your car.
In his January 2022 Executive Order 246 (EO) Cooper “affirmed” the state’s “commitment to bold climate action and environmental justice.”
EO 246 requires a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050. Getting to that goal means targeting cars:
“EO 246 takes important steps to reduce GHG emission from the transportation sector, the state’s top-emitting source, by establishing targets of 1.25 million zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) registered and 50% of sales by 2030.”
Cooper’s EO 246 essentially mimics the 2015 Paris Agreement, which President Trump pulled the United States out of.
The governor, now almost in the final year of his term, has stated he is all in on Biden as the 2024 candidate with a promise to deliver North Carolina for Biden, despite the president’s approval ratings continuing to be underwater across all major issues.
Cooper is also all in with Biden’s appliance war and he is one of 12 Democratic governors who have urged Biden to actually ban the sale of gas-powered cars and light trucks by 2035, forcing consumers to buy electric vehicles (EVs).
So, how's the EV push going in North Carolina?
Well, there’s the bad optics that played out in Charlotte when Cooper visited an EV charging station there in February 2022. Cooper met up with Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles at a station installed in a neighborhood where there were likely very, very few EV owners.
The governor arrived in a large SUV gas-powered motorcade, hopped out to ride around the block in an EV, and then gave some remarks. WSOC9 reporter Joe Bruno asked a resident of the area if anyone ever uses the $10,000 EV charging station and the man replied, “hell no.”
Things are also not so good for Cooper's JDIG subsidized company of choice Vinfast, a Vietnamese company that has plans to build a $4B facility in Monclure and broke ground in Chatham County this past July.
JDIG stands for Job Development Investment Grant. Under the JDIG agreement with Cooper, Vinfast was projected to grow North Carolina’s economy by a minimum of $71.5 billion over the next three decades. Considering that growth and Vinfast investments of $4 billion, the company will get reimbursements from the state of around $316 million over the same three-decade timeframe.
The Vinfast deal represented the “largest economic development announcement in the state’s history."
But there are already major speedbumps in the EV road.
In May of this year, the company recalled all 999 of the vehicles that had been sent to the United States “out of an abundance of caution” over a software issue that was blanking out the safety information screens in the VF8 model EVs.
Just this past month, VinFast reported losses of an additional $623 million for Q3 this year. With the addition of the $623 million, the company’s losses since 2021 now stand at $5.1 billion.
As of April 2023, the Vinfast site still needed $50 million for construction.
This past May, Cooper announced another JDIG deal for a company called Atom Power, which makes “critical parts” for EV charging stations. The deal will be for 12 years during which the company is estimated to boost the state’s economy by $817.9 million. The JDIG agreement “authorizes the potential reimbursement to the company of up to $1,198,500” over the 12-year period.
Moving to other energy sources for personal vehicles and public transportation is a good idea, but having the actual infrastructure should come first. Most of these government-driven plans for EVs and changes in energy requirements for household appliances are being rushed - in essence, putting the cart before the horse, but also controlling what cart and what horse the public is allowed to choose from.
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