The Biden-Harris administration is pushing regulations that would make all sorts of appliances more expensive, like furnaces, water heaters, central air conditioners, dishwashers, and light bulbs.
The Biden-Harris administration is waging a war on appliances, making your home more expensive and less convenient.
Here are five examples:
Biden-Harris's War on Appliances: Making Your Home More Expensive and Less Convenient
1. **Furnaces:** A new Department of Energy (DOE) efficiency regulation will effectively prohibit new non-condensing gas furnaces by 2028. Owners of many older residences rely on these non-condensing models, and those in need of a new one would usually be best off with a straightforward replacement rather than face potentially costly installation challenges from switching to a condensing gas furnace with very different venting requirements. Even the agency admits to an $867 price increase for more difficult installations, but others think this a lowball estimate given all that the changeover from a non-condensing to a condensing unit can entail.
2. **Water Heaters:** Anyone interested in a new electric water heater might want to buy one before 2029, when another DOE efficiency standard will raise prices by an agency-estimated $953. As with the furnace rule, DOE claims homeowners will earn back the higher up-front cost of these newfangled water heaters in the form of energy savings. In reality, the rule will probably be a net money-loser for many homeowners, especially if the installation costs turn out to be higher than the agency’s often-rosy estimates.
Biden-Harris's War on Appliances: Making Your Home More Expensive and Less Convenient
3. **Central Air Conditioners:** DOE isn’t the only federal agency inflicting pain on homeowners. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a rule requiring that all new central air conditioners manufactured after Jan. 1, 2025, must use new agency-approved refrigerants deemed sufficiently climate-friendly. Manufacturers predict equipment price increases of 10% or higher — well into the hundreds of dollars. Installation costs could rise even more, since the new refrigerants are classified as slightly flammable, necessitating additional safety measures. Homeowners in need of a new cooling system will be in for some sticker shock once these supposedly eco-friendlier versions become the only available option.
4. **Dishwashers:** It is not that DOE’s latest dishwasher regulation will make things significantly worse when it takes effect in 2027, it is that dishwashers have already been badly overregulated. Thanks to multiple rounds of successively tighter rules requiring energy and water use limits, machines today take over two hours to clean a load of dishes, more than twice as long compared to models predating the government red tape. Cleaning performance and reliability have also suffered. But rather than seek ways to undo the damage from existing measures, the agency is blindly tightening the screws.
5. **Light bulbs:** The standard incandescent light bulb is well on its way to oblivion, thanks to past DOE efficiency regulations they cannot meet. But now, the more efficient light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs that have emerged as their main replacement are the target of an ultra-stringent new DOE rule. When it takes effect in 2028, the rule will knock most currently available LEDs off the market and boost the average price of the remaining ones from $2.98 to an estimated $5.68, an increase of $2.70 per bulb. Light quality may also be impacted.
Nor are gas stoves completely out of the woods, as the two Biden-Harris agencies targeting them — the Consumer Product Safety Commission and DOE — have dialed it back for the time being, but could crack down later.
Add other pending rules impacting everything from ceiling fans to washing machines to refrigerators, and there is hardly a homeowner anywhere not facing a multipronged regulatory attack that keeps getting worse.
The Biden-Harris administration claims that these regulations are necessary to combat climate change and reduce energy consumption. However, the evidence suggests that these regulations will do little to address climate change and will instead make life more expensive and inconvenient for homeowners.
For example, a study by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy found that the DOE’s new furnace regulation would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by only 0.02%. The study also found that the regulation would increase the cost of a new furnace by $867.
Similarly, a study by the Appliance Standards Awareness Project found that the DOE’s new water heater regulation would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by only 0.03%. The study also found that the regulation would increase the cost of a new water heater by $953.
The Biden-Harris administration’s war on appliances is a misguided attempt to address climate change. These regulations will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but they will make life more expensive and inconvenient for homeowners.
