President Reagan’s argument that these regulations are unnecessary and harmful to consumers has proven to be prescient.
They’re the regulations that literally hit home, and rarely in a good way. The Department of Energy sets energy efficiency standards for just about every kind of household appliance, and by now many have been subjected to multiple rounds of successively tighter measures over the years. Most of these changes raise appliance prices, and some also reduce choice, features, performance, and/or reliability. Fortunately, the Trump DOE has pushed back against several such measures through regulatory reforms, but lasting relief will require legislation. On February 24, the House of Representatives took a positive step in that direction by passing HR 4626, the Home Appliance Protection and Affordability Act.
Federal meddling in refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, furnaces, water heaters, dishwashers, and others began in the 1970s. The 1973 Arab oil embargo sparked a series of ill-advised congressional responses that may have inflicted more damage than the embargo itself. Some persist to this day, including the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 that created a program for regulating energy use in home appliances. It and subsequent amendments set out initial energy efficiency standards and required the DOE to periodically consider making them more stringent — a one-way ratchet.
If this sounds like a formula for regulation run amok, that is exactly what has happened. Fast-forward to today, and washing machines have been regulated six times, dishwashers four times, refrigerators four times, air conditioners three times, and stoves and furnaces twice. Several face an additional round of even more aggressive DOE energy use limits enacted during the Biden administration and scheduled to take effect over the next few years. Note that several of these appliances also face environmental regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Granted, in 2023, Biden’s regulators backed away from tough proposed gas stove restrictions in the face of a powerful consumer backlash, but they seemingly made up for it by going hard after everything else.
Incidentally, President Ronald Reagan tried to stop this tinkering with appliance standards back in the early 1980s, but he lost in federal court in a case brought by environmental activists. Too bad, because Reagan’s argument that these regulations are unnecessary and harmful to consumers has proven to be prescient. Just one more reason to love the Gipper.
Nearly all such regulations raise the up-front cost of appliances, and often by more than is likely to be earned back in the form of marginal energy savings. Some of the worst are yet to come, including a Biden-era furnace rule estimated by the DOE to raise purchase and installation costs by as much as $867 when it takes effect in 2028 and one for electric water heaters that will boost prices by $953 in 2029. And, to take a little more money out of our wallets, already-overregulated light bulbs will nearly double in price when the next regulation takes effect in 2028.
Costliest of all are the current measures affecting residential central air-conditioning systems, a combination of DOE efficiency standards and Environmental Protection Agency rules requiring that new systems meet certain climate-change-related requirements. Installers say that replacing a 15-year-old system that probably cost around $5,000 when new will be more than twice that now.
It should be noted that the cumulative cost of these appliance measures is a substantial but often overlooked contributor to the housing affordability crisis.
Beyond costs, many of these measures have adversely affected how well some appliances work. Dishwashers now take two hours or more to finish a normal load, about twice as long as before federal regulators decided to “improve” them. Washing machines reportedly require more maintenance and may not clean as well, and refrigerators tend to conk out several years sooner than they used to.
Some regulations effectively outlaw certain versions of appliances. For example, the above-mentioned furnace rule will eliminate non-condensing natural gas models, despite the fact that they are the best option for millions of older homes with traditional chimneys. Taking away choices in this manner likely violates the Energy Policy and Conservation Act and is perhaps the most egregious example of Biden’s regulators putting the climate agenda ahead of the best interests of consumers. By cracking down disproportionately on furnaces that run on natural gas — a fossil fuel — the rule favors electric heat. This despite the fact that natural gas is less than one-third the price of electricity on a per-unit energy basis. It should also be noted that the nation’s electricity supply is already struggling to keep up with demand, so the last thing we need is Green New Deal–inspired regulations like these nudging homeowners away from natural gas appliances and toward electric versions.
The Trump DOE hates these appliance regulations as much as team Biden loved them, and it has proposed reforms to several, including ones for washing machines and dishwashers. This is very helpful, assuming the regulatory changes survive the inevitable court challenges. But even if they do, agency-level actions can be undone by a subsequent administration, as occurred with several appliance reforms from the first Trump administration that were reversed under Biden. That is why legislation is needed to permanently curtail the regulatory excess.
The Home Appliance Protection and Affordability Act contains a number of useful provisions. Perhaps most importantly, this House-passed measure strengthens the agency’s authority to revisit past standards that did not go as planned, be it unexpectedly high costs or adverse impacts on appliance quality. As the Energy Policy and Conservation Act now stands, once an appliance regulation is issued, it cannot easily be relaxed no matter how bad the results. But under this bill, such regulatory mistakes can be revised or even repealed by the agency.
In addition, the bill raises the bar on any new standards by requiring a more rigorous showing that the consumer benefits outweigh the costs. It also prohibits climate change from being a rationale for regulation, as it had become under Biden and Obama.
The bill could have gone further — for example, by categorically excluding the most badly overregulated appliances (dishwashers spring to mind) from any further regulation. And it could have explicitly stopped the upcoming furnace rule from ever taking effect. In fact, total repeal of the program would have been thoroughly justified. Nonetheless, the Home Appliance Protection and Affordability Act is a big step toward regulatory sanity.
Keep in mind that, from a homeowner standpoint, there is no downside to less federal meddling. Those who want ultraefficient appliances and are willing to accept the costs would still be free to choose them, and manufacturers have shown that they’ll produce such models for that segment of the market. But they would no longer be the one-size-fits-all solution forced upon everyone. In the words of Representative Rick Allen (R., Ga.), the bill’s sponsor, “The American people do not need the federal government to tell them which household appliances will best meet the needs of their families.”
The bill passed with seven House Democrats joining Republicans in support. It doesn’t yet have a Senate companion version, so its prospects are uncertain. What is certain is that, unless something is done, homeowners will continue to bear the brunt of Washington giving them appliances that both cost more and don’t work as well as they should.