Consumer advocates won a federal regulatory battle for more powerful household appliances in the waning days of the Trump administration, but their victory may be short-lived.
A proposed Energy Department rulemaking would scrub the Oct. 30 rule creating a product class of residential 60-minute dishwashers, as well as the Dec. 16 rule establishing a class for 45-minute front-loading clothes washers and dryers and 30-minute top-loading washers and dryers.
The latest effort by the Biden administration to reverse all things Trump would foil a years-long campaign to bring faster, more effective dishwashers to the American public spearheaded by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Federal performance standards on household appliances are intended to conserve energy and water, but CEI general counsel Sam Kazman and others argue that the rules actually end up wasting energy because they force consumers to pre-wash dishes or run additional cycles.
“Some folks do extensive pre-scrubbing of their dishes. It’s the only way they come out clean when they go through the dishwasher, and that’s a pretty wasteful habit,” Mr. Kazman said.
“Other folks just give up on dishwashers and wash everything by hand, which is also wasteful from the standpoint of water and energy. And some people actually run double cycles — they run the dishwasher once, and then they run it again — and that, of course, is hugely wasteful.”
In its Aug. 10 rulemaking, however, the Department of Energy said the Trump-era rules for the short-cycle product classes failed to meet the requirements of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act on energy efficiency.
“Creation of those short-cycle classes effectively removed the energy and water conservation standards that had previously applied to those products,” the department said in the Federal Register.
Those supporting the Biden administration proposal include the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, 16 Democratic state attorneys general, environmental groups, and the major California investor-owned utilities, which said that dishwashers already include a short cycle.
“Data published by DOE relating to dishwasher cleaning performance indicated that a dishwasher quick cycle is perfectly adequate at cleaning a normal load of dishes,” said the California utilities, including Pacific Gas and Electric. “Across 29 tested units with a quick cycle option, the majority of units actually received a higher per-cycle cleaning index score than their normal cycle.”
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Meanwhile, CEI argued that “DOE has failed to consider the wasted water and energy caused by hand-washing and other actions that consumers take in order to deal with slow dishwashers,” citing 2011 department data showing that handwashing uses 140% of the energy use and 350% the water of dishwashers.
“Our survey showed that 23% of consumers always wash their dishes by hand because their dishwasher takes too long,” CEI said in its letter. “Another 27% of consumers do so often and 37% do so sometimes. In total 87% of consumers hand wash dishes at least sometimes due to the slow speed of their dishwashers.”
The free-market group also disputed the department‘s claim that the law prevented the creation of a short-cycle product class, saying that “Congress designed EPCA to allow consumers to continue to have choices and not be automatically forced into whatever DOE regards as the most efficient product.”
The Trump-era proposal drew more than 2,200 comments in support, including entreaties such as, “Please mother of God, allow someone to make a dishwasher that will get my dishes for a family of 5 clean enough, fast enough to empty the dishwasher by bedtime!”
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, said the proposed rule would “block innovation in technology and new classes of products in the marketplace to meet citizens’ demands.”
Read rest at Washington Times
Lets see Biden in the Whitehouse Kitchen doing the dishes lets see him put his money where his mouth is and get Dishpan Hands or see his reflection in a Dish