{"id":112,"date":"2025-05-13T01:36:48","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T21:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.actutech.app\/trump-administration-announces-illegal-rollback-of-energy-and-water-efficiency-standards\/"},"modified":"2025-05-13T01:36:48","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T21:36:48","slug":"trump-administration-announces-illegal-rollback-of-energy-and-water-efficiency-standards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/trump-administration-announces-illegal-rollback-of-energy-and-water-efficiency-standards\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration announces \u2018illegal\u2019 rollback of energy and water efficiency standards"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"\"

<\/figcaption><\/p><\/figure>\n

The US Energy Department says it\u2019s rolling back long-standing efficiency standards for appliances, which advocates are calling a clear violation of the law. Continuing the Trump administration\u2019s assault on federal water and energy efficiency programs, the department announced today what it\u2019s calling its \u201clargest deregulatory effort in history<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The agency is trying to rollback 47 regulations<\/a> it says are \u201cburdensome and costly,\u201d including more than a dozen efficiency standards for appliances and battery chargers. The proposed rules target the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA), which contains an anti-backsliding provision<\/a> \u2014 and that the Trump administration is seemingly trying to bypass.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this attack on consumers succeeds, President Trump would be raising costs dramatically for families as manufacturers dump energy- and water-wasting products into the market. Fortunately, it\u2019s patently illegal, so hold your horses,\u201d Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, said in a press statement<\/a> released today.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\u201cFortunately, it\u2019s patently illegal, so hold your horses.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

The Energy Department didn\u2019t immediately respond to a press inquiry from The Verge<\/em> asking why it believes its proposals do not violate EPCA, which passed Congress in 1975 and had the anti-backsliding provision added in 1987. However, drafts of proposed rules on the Federal Register\u2019s website<\/a> say that it wants to return standards to previous limits set by Congress.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In some cases, doing so could eliminate decades of energy and water saving standards, deLaski tells The Verge<\/em>. A proposed rule for commercial clothes washers<\/a>, for instance, would bring water conservation standards back to a \u201cstatutory baseline\u201d set in 2007. Other rules target microwave ovens, conventional ovens, dish washers, faucets, portable air conditioners, and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The law\u2019s anti-backsliding provision stipulates<\/a> that the energy secretary can\u2019t amend a standard in a way that \u201cincreases the maximum allowable energy use\u201d or \u201cdecreases the minimum required energy efficiency\u201d<\/a> of a covered product. In other words, the agency can\u2019t issue rules that are weaker than they were before. In many cases, the Energy Department has updated standards initially set by Congress as more efficient technologies became available \u2014 which it\u2019s required to do by law if it is \u201ceconomically justified.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rules proposed today attempt to go back to limits set by Congress years ago, undoing tougher standards set more recently. The Energy Department is also attempting to get rid of standards altogether in cases where limits weren\u2019t explicitly set in law by Congress.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the proposed rule for commercial clothes washers, the agency argues that the anti-backsliding provision applies to energy efficiency but not water<\/em> standards. \u201cWater use has nothing to do with the energy consumed by a clothes washer. Therefore, the anti-backsliding provision does not apply,\u201d it says<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The agency still needs to open up its rules for public comment before attempting to finalize them, and is likely to face legal challenges. Courts have previously weighed in on the strength of the anti-backsliding provision. A 2004 decision<\/a> from a federal appeals court says EPCA \u201cunambiguously\u201d constrains the Energy Department\u2019s ability to weaken efficiency standards once they are published as final rules in the Federal Register.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing the wholesale abandonment of a dozen-plus energy efficiency standards without any justification, and that absolutely violates the anti-backsliding provision,\u201d says Kit Kennedy, who was one of the attorneys in the 2004 case and is currently a managing director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.<\/p>\n

The move follows a presidential memorandum Trump signed on Friday<\/a> that takes aim at water use rules and related energy efficiency standards, as well as news that the Environmental Protection Agency plans to wind down the Energy Star program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Experts warn that the proposed rules could lead to higher utility bills for consumers. While a program like Energy Star can help people choose more efficient appliances, standards the Trump administration is now targeting are supposed to ensure that more efficient technologies are accessible to anyone regardless of what they can afford to purchase.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Appliance\u00a0energy\u00a0efficiency standards have been a great success. They save households on their electricity bills every month,\u201d Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for\u00a0Climate Change\u00a0Law at Columbia University says in an email to\u00a0The Verge<\/em>. \u201cRefrigerators are just as cold and just as large as they ever were but they are now much cheaper to run.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US Energy Department says it\u2019s rolling back long-standing efficiency standards for appliances, which advocates are calling a clear violation […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-non-classe"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/STK466_ELECTION_2024_CVirginia_E-IL7F5e.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.actutech.app\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}