Biden faces delays in undoing Trump's war on efficient dishwashers, dryers and lightbulbs that made
Source: Washington Post
Biden faces delays in undoing Trump’s war on efficient dishwashers, dryers and lightbulbs that made him ‘look orange’
Nearly three dozen efficiency standards are overdue for an update, and further delays could undercut Biden’s climate goals
By Anna Phillips
January 9, 2022 at 4:08 p.m. EST
Before Donald Trump launched his war against energy-efficient appliances, incandescent lightbulbs were on their way out. Federal rules required retailers to take them off their shelves by 2020 and sell replacements that would save customers money and energy instead.
That transition didn’t happen. Now the Biden administration is working to reinstate those rules and a dozen other efficiency regulations weakened under the former president — an unglamorous but effective way to cut energy use and fight climate change. But the Energy Department faces delays, bureaucratic obstacles and a huge backlog of long-overdue standards affecting dozens of household appliances, threatening the government’s ability to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
The plodding pace of this work shows how complicated even incremental changes to national environmental policy can be. As of last month, 33 energy efficiency standards for home appliances and equipment including gas furnaces, freezers and clothes dryers are overdue for updates, the department said, after Trump officials failed to act on them for four years. As many as 30 more will come due by the end of Biden’s term.
If the administration updates all of them — which would encompass almost every product the federal government oversees — it could make a major dent in the nation’s emissions of heat-trapping gases that fuel global warming. By 2050, new efficiency standards could prevent up to 3 gigatons of carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere, the rough equivalent of closing between 13 and 25 coal-fired power plants, according to a 2020 report by the energy conservation group American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
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Read more: https://wapo.st/3HMXoyQ
Original WaPo link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/01/09/energy-efficiency-climate-change-biden/
