The House of Representatives, which is currently dominated by the Republican Party, has ushered in a bipartisan bill. The intend of this legislation is to curb the Biden administration’s inclination towards using the federal machine to either completely ban, or extensively restrict, an enlarging array of domestic appliances. This stance of the administration is facilitated under the rationale of fighting against climate change.
The bill expresses opposition to the potential removal of Americans’ appliances by government officials. The cause for this removal is stated to adhere to an extreme environmental campaign. The covert way these appliances have been banned or limited under the Biden Administration incites further concern.
This newly-introduced legislation is underpinned by three primary requisites. Initially, it stipulates that any emerging energy efficiency standards should be worth the cost of implementation. If the price outweighs the return, then the standard should not be considered, as per this directive.
Next, the legislation insistently posits that new standards must lead to real and measurable savings of energy or water. The standards should be practical and demonstrate tangible benefits; they shouldn’t just be theoretical ideals.
The third and final criterion outlined in the bill is a prohibition on the federal government from eliminating any domestic appliance based on its fuel type. Under this mandate, the type of fuel that an appliance uses could not serve as a justification for its banishment.
The legislation, if converted into law, would empower the Department of Energy (DOE) to approve a petition that pleads for the revocation or modification of energy conservation standards. This approval would be based on the DOE’s judgment that the standards result in greater expenditures for consumers, fail to make a substantial difference in conserving energy or water, don’t align with technological capabilities, or if they lead to the unavailability of a product (gas stoves as an example) for all consumers in the United States.
Furthermore, the supposed law would impose an obligation on any new or altered regulations to be both ‘technologically feasible and economically justified.’ The bill emphasizes that these regulations should not just be possible to implement on a technological level; they should also be able to be defended from an economic standpoint.