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Working Families Priced Out Of Car Ownership Under Biden’s Proposals

August 28, 2023 by Leave a Comment

New car prices are up 25 percent under Biden’s Presidency and they will likely increase further as Biden’s proposed auto efficiency standards will increase automakers’ production costs. In 2018, there were a dozen new car models that sold for less than $20,000, but in 2023, there was only one: the Mitsubishi Mirage, which accounted for about 5,300 of the 7.7 million new vehicles sold in the United States in the first half of the year and is scheduled to go out of production in two years. The average new car now costs $48,000 and the average used car now costs over $27,000–up more than 30 percent from pre-pandemic levels and almost as much as the average new car did just a few years ago. And in Biden’s America, the average new car loan now has a monthly payment of over $750, with an interest rate of 9.5 percent. For used cars, the average car interest rate is 13.7 percent.  As Biden continues with his net zero carbon policies, his regulatory costs are skyrocketing and prices reflect that.  Biden’s proposed rule regarding “Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards for Passenger Cars and Light Trucks for Model Years 2027-2032 and Fuel Efficiency Standards for Heavy-Duty Pickup Trucks and Vans for Model Years 2030-2035” is estimated by the Department of Transportation to cost $88 billion.

Source: Wall Street Journal (WSJ)

Last year, Biden got behind the wheel of a Corvette Z06 at the Detroit Auto Show. The price tag for that car starts at $106,000, which is nearly $25,000 more than the previous-generation Corvette. If buyers are willing to spend more than $100,000 for a vehicle, they can choose from 32 models. For the average American, paying off a new car at current prices requires 42 weeks of income, up from around 33 before the pandemic.

Supply chain issues post-pandemic have helped to boost prices for autos. According to General Motors, the average price paid by its buyers last month rose 3 percent quarter over quarter, to $52,000. The profit from the higher prices has helped U.S. automakers make the transition that President Biden is demanding to an expensive, all electric vehicle America. Companies make up their sizable losses on electric vehicles by charging more for internal combustion vehicles, driving up the cost of transportation for all Americans.

Biden’s Auto Efficiency Standards

Biden’s fuel economy regulations that essentially mandate a transition to electric vehicles will increase the cost of buying a new vehicle for Americans. The Transportation Department’s proposed fuel economy regulations indicate on page 56,342 of volume 88 of the Federal Register, that: “Net benefits for passenger cars remain negative across alternatives,” which means that mandating more stringent fuel economy for passenger cars will increase prices for consumers as automakers pass those costs on.

Transportation’s proposed rule regarding “Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards for Passenger Cars and Light Trucks for Model Years 2027-2032 and Fuel Efficiency Standards for Heavy-Duty Pickup Trucks and Vans for Model Years 2030-2035” sets fuel economy standards for passenger cars and  trucks. Proposed fuel efficiency standards for model years 2027 to 2031 increase at a rate of 2 percent per year for passenger cars and 4 percent per year for light trucks. Proposed fuel efficiency standards for heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans for model years 2030 to 2035 increase at a rate of 10 percent per year.  These are vehicles used by businesses and tradesmen and increasing costs for their transportation will be made up by anyone requiring construction, plumbing, electrical work or handyman services, driving inflation higher.

Biden’s Transportation Department estimates that its plan of increasing passenger-car standards by 2 percent each year will reduce private welfare by $5.8 billion over the life of the cars. After accounting for alleged social benefits, such as reduced climate-change damages in foreign countries, the standard reduces total public welfare by $5.1 billion. The other “alternatives” the Transportation Department is considering have higher net costs of about $11 billion, so this is the preferred proposal. Of course, other options not analyzed exist, but the process is driven by Biden’s fixation with the “existential threat” of climate change he is using to push his proposals.

Transportation’s cost estimates, however, are questionable and are likely designed to underestimate costs. For example, the Transportation Department assumes that investing in fuel economy has no opportunity costs. To improve fuel economy, however, carmakers must sacrifice other improvements that drivers like, such as towing capacity, safety features, trunk space, acceleration and the spare tire, which has been cut to reduce weight and cost. Because modeling these trade-offs is difficult, the department’s analysts pretend the trade-offs do not exist, but that is likely to attract litigation.  Rulemaking by executive agencies is a very complex process in which the courts have shown increasing interest, and refusing to consider things which may complicate a political narrative is apt to be frowned upon.

Unlike previous rulemakings, the costs of Biden’s efficiency rule are now so high that regulators can no longer pretend that mandating greater fuel economy for passenger cars is a good thing for society. Increasing the costs of transporting Americans, as well as their goods and services, simply hurts them.  The mission of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is to stop regulatory proposals that would harm American society, and it should have squashed this proposal. But, because it is part of President Biden’s climate agenda, the proposal has survived. Page 5-39 of the department’s accompanying environmental assessment, however, estimates that in 2060 the proposal would reduce average global temperatures by 0.000 percent. The modeled effect is so small that there are insufficient decimals to notice a deviation. So, what are Americans paying higher auto costs to achieve?

Conclusion

Biden’s Transportation Department has no real basis for claiming that it can make better choices than drivers in the competitive market. In fact, it has been noted that the government has a poor track record for picking winners and losers. And, essentially taking away automobiles that are cost effective hinders mobility for Americans. Perhaps, that is the goal of the Biden Administration. That is, to make cars so expensive that everyone has to take mass transit, and perhaps relocate to urban areas to do so. So far, the result of Biden’s climate policies on American transport is “All pain; no gain.”

*This article was adapted from content originally published by the Institute for Energy Research.

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DOE Under, Biden’s Directon, Twists Numbers On Climate Spending

August 25, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Biden’s Department of Energy (DOE) has projected that President Biden’s infrastructure bill and his Inflation Reduction Act will save Americans up to $38 billion on electricity costs over the remainder of the decade, using a version of the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) National Energy Modeling System (NEMS). Despite EIA being part of the DOE, EIA was not asked to perform the analysis using NEMS. That was likely due to the spurious assumptions used by the DOE, as explained below.  As The Hill reported, “The report customized the National Energy Modeling System, which the Energy Information Administration uses in its Annual Energy Outlook, to model energy costs and national emissions in a scenario where the two laws were never implemented, based on the 2022 outlook report.” By “customizing” the model, the authors disclosed their view of our future energy picture based upon Biden’s goals rather than facts.

Further, the $38 billion does not even come close to covering the cost of the bills that will be paid by taxpayers. Goldman Sachs believes that the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will cost U.S. taxpayers $1.2 trillion—more than triple the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) estimate of $391 billion for the climate provisions. The difference in cost mainly arises from lucrative tax credits in the IRA that are not capped, and the fact that the Biden Administration is loosely interpreting conditions for those credits, driving their costs up. The President’s infrastructure bill is costing taxpayers another $580 billion in new spending, with the total cost of that bill also at $1.2 trillion. Clearly, the savings in electric consumer bills that DOE estimates are not even close to being commensurate with the cost of the two pieces of legislation to taxpayers, even by the debunked CBO scores.

DOE’s Questionable Results

The DOE reports that between now and 2030, the two laws will allow for the deployment of up to 250 gigawatts of new wind energy and up to 475 gigawatts of new solar. These numbers are vastly higher than what EIA projects in its Annual Energy Outlook 2023, where it has accounted for these laws. The EIA projects that between 2022 and 2030, wind capacity is expected to increase by 156 gigawatts and solar capacity is expected to increase by 263 gigawatts. In other words, the DOE modelers would have had to change the model’s inputs and/or assumptions to get about 100 gigawatts of additional wind capacity and over 200 gigawatts of additional solar capacity by 2030 than the EIA has forecasted.

Further, development activity for wind energy has slowed with the year-over-year downtrend in installations now stretched for nine consecutive quarters. For full year 2022, wind installations dropped by 56 percent from 2021 and in 2023, wind installations are down from 2022 levels. The industry’s pipeline of projects that are expected to come online between 2023 and 2027 increases by just 5 percent to 81,265 megawatts of capacity, from the fourth quarter of 2022 when developers had a total of 77,220 megawatts of planned capacity.

To get those huge increases in renewable capacity, the DOE assumed a Biden administration proposal that would accelerate electricity demand by assuming that 65 percent of new car sales in 2030 would be electric. This assumption is not current regulation as the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule this past spring that two-thirds of new car sales would need to be electric by 2032, which was followed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposing new car efficiency standards this summer that would also reach that level, but neither proposal has been finalized as the comment and review periods on both are still ongoing. Further, automakers claim that the new rules are not attainable as there are technical issues with electric vehicles, and even if they could reach those numbers, the U.S. electric grid would not be able to handle millions of electric vehicles plugging into the grid at different times of day and in a multitude of locations.

The Reason for the Study

President Biden wants the American public to believe that the economy on his watch is robust, despite inflation of about 15 percent since he took office and higher prices for necessities, including food and gasoline. Biden is using the first anniversary of his signature Inflation Reduction Act to pitch the climate law as an economic powerhouse. However, the U.S. public remains largely unaware of its contents despite the legislation providing billions of dollars in tax credits to push consumers into buying electric vehicles and companies to produce renewable energy. Biden claims that the legislation already created 170,000 “clean” energy jobs and will create some 1.5 million jobs over the next decade. He makes those claims despite the fact that only one percent of fossil fuel employees have moved to “clean” energy jobs. Fossil fuel jobs pay better than the “clean” energy jobs, according to Biden’s Labor Department.

Further, according to Robert Bryce, under the Inflation Reduction Act which incentivizes the production of electric vehicles among other green technologies, each new “green” job at the GM’s battery plant (which the company is developing with Korea’s LG) in Spring Hill, Tennessee, will cost taxpayers $7.7 million and each new “green” job at the Ford plant (which Ford is partnering in with China’s CATL) in Marshall, Michigan, will cost taxpayers $3.4 million. Clearly, green jobs do not come cheap.

Also according to President Biden, the legislation has shifted production of critical components away from China and into the United States. But, that is not true. China still dominates the battery supply chain for electric vehicles, processes most of the rare earth and other critical minerals needed for electric vehicles and renewable technologies, and supplies most of the solar panels the U.S. needs either directly or indirectly from other Southeast Asia countries. While Senator Manchin added provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act to industrialize the United States in critical minerals, Biden has done all he can to waylay that by revoking leases, delaying permits, and adding flora and fauna to the endangered species list. His actions conflict with his words.

Conclusion

The Department of Energy has posted a report that uses the National Energy Modeling System to show that President Biden’s signature laws will produce savings in electric bills for American consumers. However, the estimated savings are a drop in the bucket of the cost that taxpayers will have to pay to cover the provisions in the bills that incentivize “clean” energy. While Biden is traveling the country, trying to make Americans believe that his economy is robust despite inflation and high gasoline and food prices, he is finding that Americans are unaware of the bills and their supposed successes. That’s because those successes do not exist, at least not yet! Biden realizes this and is having his regulators do more to push Americans into buying electric vehicles and in furthering his climate plan. Unfortunately for Americans, the Biden climate plan will be all grief and no joy as American energy will become unreliable, expensive and dependent upon China.

*This article was adapted from content originally published by the Institute for Energy Research.

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The Unregulated Podcast #145: About Last Night

August 25, 2023 by Leave a Comment

On this episode of The Unregulated Podcast Tom Pyle and Mike McKenna discuss the first Republican presidential primary debate, inflation, smart cars, and the latest coming from the Fed and Wall Street.

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Hawaiian Tragedy Reveals Dangers of Single-Minded Renewable Mandates

August 23, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Hawaii, like California, has pushed electric utilities to invest in renewable energy, rather than maintaining their current transmission lines and ensuring that brush would not affect their operations. Now that Maui has had a fire that has killed over 100 people and cost tens of billions of dollars in property losses, blue state politicians and liberal newspapers like the New York Times have blamed the wildfires on climate change. Hawaii’s Democratic Governor Josh Green repeatedly suggested in the wake of the disaster that climate change and its effects were the primary cause, with Governor Green stating that climate change is “the ultimate reason that so many people perished.” While that is an easy scape goat, it is fake news. There are many contributing factors to the fire, but the biggest one is the left’s obsession with “green energy.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, four years ago, Hawaiian Electric indicated that it needed to do more to prevent its power lines from emitting sparks. The utility vowed to take steps to protect its equipment and its customers from the threat of fire. Between 2019 and 2022, it invested less than $245,000 on wildfire-specific projects on the island, according to regulatory filings. The utility did not seek state approval to raise rates to pay for broad wildfire-safety improvements until 2022 and has yet to receive approval.

Hawaiian Electric is now facing scrutiny, litigation and a financial crisis because its power lines might have played a role in igniting the fire, despite the fire’s source having not yet been determined. The situation is reminiscent of California forcing Pacific Gas & Electric to pay for fires in its territory a few years back. In 2018, the downed power lines owned by the PG&E were linked to the Camp Fire that killed 85 people in and around the town of Paradise. The company agreed to pay $13.5 billion in settlement payments to victims of that fire and several others.

According to CNN, last year, Hawaiian Electric asked the state Public Utilities Commission to allow it to spend $189 million on climate resiliency efforts over the next five years, including to protect against wildfires and downed power lines. “The risk of a utility system causing a wildfire ignition is significant,” the company’s application stated, citing the PG&E situation. The document states Hawaiian Electric had launched wildfire “prevention and mitigation” programs in 2019 and that the company planned to upgrade hardware, replace equipment and install video cameras, among other efforts, in wildfire-risk areas in coming years. The utility said that it would not begin the work until it had negotiated a deal with the state to recover the costs from ratepayers, which is typical for utility companies making major investments.

According to the Washington Examiner, “After the 2019 wildfire season, Hawaiian Electric even commissioned a report, which concluded that the utility should do far more to prevent its power lines from setting invasive grasses on fire. Since that report less than $245,000 was spent on wildfire projects.  Instead, the utility spent millions trying to meet a 2015 mandate created by Democrats that would require 100% of the utility’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2045.  Because of the Democratic Party’s obsession with climate change, Hawaiian Electric devoted all its resources to renewable energy and next to nothing towards wildfire suppression. And now over 100 people are dead as a direct result.”

According to Travis Fisher at the CATO Institute, “An objective look at the data does not reveal a link between CO2 emissions and wildfires, certainly not the causal link needed in a court setting. That causal link may be shown eventually, but the IPCC reports do not provide the degree of attribution certainty required in a lawsuit.”

For years before the fires, government agencies understood that Western Maui, the hardest-hit area, was particularly susceptible to wildfires because of high concentrations of non-native grasses in the area. An assessment report from 2020 stated that the region had a 90 percent chance of wildfires each year on average, a percentage calculated due to the non-native dry grasses. Despite the dry grass in the region posing a threat, the state allowed it to grow without doing much to trim it or otherwise keep it under control. Grasses had taken hold as Maui’s sugar plantations were closed, with the last one closing in 2016.  Some had complained about the ritual of burning cane fields as part of the agricultural process, but those fires were managed, unlike the non-native invasive grasses that replaced the sugar cane farming.

According to the Daily Caller, the fires began in earnest the morning of August 8, when a downed power line reportedly sparked some dry grass and started the fire. At 1 p.m., West Maui Land Co. made a request to the state’s Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR), asking the agency for permission to divert stream water to their reservoirs so that firefighters on the front lines could have access to more water to battle the flames. In response, the department’s Commission on Water Resource Management told the company to contact a downstream farmer to ensure that a temporary diversion would not impact his taro farming operation in undesirable ways. The company tried to make contact with the farmer, but communications were spotty owing to communications breakdowns related to the fires. The agency eventually granted approval to the company at 6 p.m., about five hours after the request had been made. By that point, the fires were raging out of control, shutting down a key roadway and making it impossible for the company to access the siphon which would have allowed it to divert the water into the right places for the firefighters to access.

Conclusion

Instead of spending millions of dollars on fire prevention as was recommended, Hawaii’s Public Utility Commission spent that money and more on complying with a state law that insists by 2045, the state will be 100 percent renewable energy. Now, like California and PG&E, the left wants to blame the wildfires on the utility and have them pay for damages, but the real corruption is the law that makes the spending go to renewable energy rather than maintaining the lines and discarding the brush around them. The lawmakers should be held responsible for making companies invest in renewable technology that is not needed, shuttering perfectly good generating plants, and then charging the utilities for the damages, while they continue to provide their mission–supplying power to their communities. To blame fires on climate change when there were clear breakdowns in the prevention of and response to the fires is simply demagoguery.

*This article was adapted from content originally published by the Institute for Energy Research.

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European Energy Crisis Shows Folly Of Biden’s Energy Agenda

August 18, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Europe’s plan to slash carbon emissions and reach net zero carbon by 2050 is seeing a backlash as the spiraling cost — both political and economic — needed for the transition is becoming clearer to Europeans. Wind and solar projects are now getting more scrutiny with Siemens indicating huge costs to fix operational problems. A new offshore wind project in the North Sea was canceled due to high costs and the negative effects on the environment it would create. French President Emmanuel Macron recently called for a European regulatory break, warning that without it, the European Union will lose all its industrial companies. Germany is abandoning green energy, opening coal mines and successfully arguing for internal combustion engines to continue to be sold, only now with biofuels as fuel rather than diesel, despite such fuels not being economically viable for mass use. In the U.K., Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced his decision to open the North Sea to more oil and gas drilling as it was better for Britain to produce its own oil and gas than import them. Europe is waking up.

According to French President Macron, Europe was doing its part and is “ahead of the Americans, the Chinese and of any other power in the world.” But, that isn’t true. The United States reduced its emissions by more than any country in the world–by 1047.4 million metric tons between 2005 and 2022. The next largest reduction was in Japan with 225.9 million metric tons. Carbon dioxide reductions in the entire European Union between 2005 and 2022 were still less than the reductions of the United States by 100 million metric tons. The U.S. reductions were achieved not by President Biden’s heavy handed climate programs as carbon dioxide emissions rose 363 million metric tons since Biden became President, but mainly due to natural gas replacing coal power in the generating sector, as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing made natural gas abundant and affordable.

Source: Energy Institute

The largest carbon dioxide emission increases were in China, where emissions grew by 4471 million metric tons between 2005 and 2022–over 4 times U.S. reductions—as China continues to pour on the coal in pursuit of economic dominance.   The next largest increases were in India with 1395 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. The prevailing notion of “climate justice” suggests that wealthy countries that grew their economies while emitting carbon dioxide for a century need to do more than poorer, less developed countries that are historically less responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. Interestingly, this is a direct admission that energy use makes life better for people, which runs counter to the popularized impression in the West.

Source: Energy Institute

But, according to Benjamin Zycher in Real Clear Energy: “Government policies to reduce GHG emissions would have future climate effects either trivial or indistinguishable from zero, as predicted by the EPA climate model under a set of assumptions that exaggerate the prospective impacts of such emissions reductions. Net-zero U.S. GHG emissions effective immediately would yield a reduction in global temperatures of 0.173°C by 2100. That effect would be barely detectable given the standard deviation (about 0.11°C) of the surface temperature record. The entire Paris agreement: about 0.178°C. A 50 percent reduction in Chinese GHG emissions: 0.184°C. Net-zero emissions by the entire Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: 0.352°C. A global 50 percent reduction in GHG emissions implemented immediately and maintained strictly would reduce global temperatures in 2100 by 0.687°C. Note that GHG emissions in 2020 fell by about 3.7 percent as a result of the COVID-19 economic downturn.”

President Biden’s Climate Agenda Has Unreachable Goals

Despite those low temperature reductions when very aggressive emission reductions are assumed, President Biden is pushing with a monumental regulatory program that will hurt Americans’ life style and economic well-being. His power plant rule requires technologies that are not commercially available—carbon capture and sequestration and “green hydrogen.” The Edison Electric Institute has indicated that the rule is not achievable.

Car manufacturers are saying the same thing about Biden’s automobile efficiency rule that requires vehicles sold in 2032 to have an average efficiency rating of 58 miles per gallon. The only way to achieve it is to ensure two-thirds of car sales be electric. Two huge automakers announced their EV divisions are in trouble. Ford Motor posted a $4.5 billion loss this year and Volkswagen is cutting EV production due to falling demand and increased competition. And, reports are emerging that the promised energy cost savings from electric vehicles may not be the case as electricity prices increase.

Biden’s appliance efficiency standards are having similar problems. Manufacturers are saying that they cannot meet the stove and the tankless water heater standard with gas technologies. Thus, Biden is forcing electric appliances on homeowners, taking away their option to choose what is the most cost-effective and efficient option for them.

Biden is even confusing locking up uranium for nuclear power plants with his climate fixation.

Conclusion

While the British and Europeans want to reduce carbon emissions, they do not want to make lifestyle changes or spend a lot of money to do so. Britain’s Unherd magazine nailed the problem for the green agenda: Public support for goals like net zero are a bit like world peace or ending poverty: almost everyone likes the idea, but no one wants to pay for it. That is also true for Americans who have been surveyed. Given that the temperature changes are so trivially small with very large reductions, it is inconceivable that politicians should be pushing Americans to attain such large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Europeans are revolting and so should Americans as the green agenda is helping just one country—China—who is not participating in the shenanigans that President Biden and his climate czar, John Kerry, are hawking.

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The Unregulated Podcast #144: Rich Men North of Richmond

August 18, 2023 by Leave a Comment

On this episode of The Unregulated Podcast Tom Pyle and Mike McKenna discuss bumbles from Biden and co. this week, the Maui wildfire, and the latest ups and downs from the 2024 presidential contest.

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Coalition to Congress: IRA Does Nothing to Help Struggling American Families

August 17, 2023 by Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON DC (08/17/2023) – The American Energy Alliance (AEA), the country’s premier pro-consumer, pro-taxpayer, and free-market energy organization, has joined a coalition of free-market organizations working to save taxpayers from runaway Washington spending on green corporate welfare found in the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act.”

AEA President Thomas Pyle issued the following statement:

The Biden Administration’s victory lap on the one-year anniversary of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act shows just how out of touch Washington is with the American people.

American families are paying $700 more on their monthly budgets than they were 2 years ago, mortgage rates are approaching 8% in many states, and credit card debt is at an all-time high and the IRA will do nothing to help them with any of that. Instead, it lavishes green subsidies on large corporations, foreign competitors, and wealthy taxpayers.

The federal government has no business telling consumers what types of cars they can drive or restricting our access to affordable and reliable energy sources. Even Senator Joe Manchin, the author of the IRA, has stated that the Biden Administration is seeking to implement the IRA as a “radical climate agenda.” Instead of providing Americans with real relief from their economic struggles, the Biden Administration is dishing out billions in subsidies to their corporate cronies and special interest groups. No wonder songs like Rich Men North of Richmond are going viral.”


The Congressional Budget Office’s initial estimate for the “green” subsidies of the IRA was $391 billion. However, a more recent assessment by Goldman Sachs suggests that the overall expenses might escalate significantly to as much as $1.2 trillion. The House Ways and Means Committee clarified that the primary factor behind this substantial surge in costs is the unexpectedly high rate at which taxpayer-funded subsidies for green energy are being utilized by major corporations, international rivals, and affluent taxpayers.

We applaud the efforts of lawmakers who have taken action to eliminate the “green” subsidies within the IRA. Legislators should leverage all the resources at their disposal to resist the legislation, which includes incorporating policy provisions into funding bills and utilizing Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions to express disapproval.

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The Unregulated Podcast #143: In the Community

August 11, 2023 by Leave a Comment

On this episode of The Unregulated Podcast Tom Pyle and Mike McKenna discuss the latest “rebrand” for the green movement, Biden’s most recent moves against domestic energy and mineral production, and some fun headlines from a busy week in Washington.

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If You Like Your Water Heater, You Can Keep It…

August 8, 2023 by Leave a Comment

The Biden administration is proposing to tighten energy efficiency standards for new residential water heaters–the second-largest energy-using appliances in most households. Heating and cooling are the largest residential use of energy with water heating accounting for about 13 percent of both annual residential energy use and consumer utility costs. If finalized, the proposal would take effect in 2029. Under the Department of Energy’s proposal, the most commonly-used electric water heaters would be required to use heat pump technology in place of electric resistance, while gas-fired instantaneous water heaters would be required to use condensing technology. The rule would also set standards for gas-fired storage water heaters and oil-fired water storage water heaters. The Energy Department expects the rule to reduce energy use from residential water heaters by 21 percent.

The proposed rule would raise standards for tankless gas-fired water heaters to 90 percent efficiency and leave the standards for tank gas-fired water heaters at 70 percent efficiency. Achieving 90 percent efficiency with non-condensing technology is “technologically impossible,” according to Rinnai America President Frank Windsor. “Consumers who rely on access to tankless water heaters will see their options limited, resulting in higher energy bills and shorter appliance lifespans, while the very environmental goals prompting this rule will go unfulfilled.” According to Rinnai America, which sells tankless water heaters, the standards will “unreasonably restrict consumer access” to some products and ultimately put domestic jobs at risk.

According to the Energy Department, the water heater standards, which were last updated in 2010, were required by Congress and had the backing of two of the largest water heater manufacturers. The water heater rule is estimated to cost manufactures more than $228 million in conversion costs to bring water heaters into compliance and $2.2 billion a year in increased product costs, resulting in $19 billion in total “incremental product costs,” making it the costliest set of energy efficiency standards thus far during the Biden Administration. But, according to the department, the rule would result in far more annual benefits. It would supposedly save consumers about $11.4 billion in energy and water costs annually, totaling $198 billion and reduce 501 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions over the rule’s 30-year lifetime.  The Biden Administration has an “all of government” approach to climate policies stemming from the president’s promise to “end fossil fuels.”

The Department of Energy is planning to hold a webinar on September 13 to hear public comment on the proposal, and will accept written comments for 60 days after the proposed rule has been published in the Federal Register. Comments regarding the competitive impact of the proposed rule should be sent to the U.S. Department of Justice within 30 days.

Other Department of Energy Actions

Energy efficiency standards for household appliances have been under political scrutiny during the Biden administration. In January, a U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commissioner wanted to ban gas stoves, drawing outrage from Congress and the public. Despite the White House issuing a statement that said the president did not support banning gas ranges, Biden’s Department of Energy issued new efficiency rules in February that would take at least 50 percent of the gas stove models off the market, and according to some, as many as 95 percent. Gas stoves are used in about 35 percent of households nationwide, or about 40 million homes. The household figure is closer to 70 percent in some states, such as California and New Jersey. Other states where many residents use gas stoves include Nevada, Illinois and New York.

In May, the Department of Energy released tighter rules for dishwashers, which would cut water use by more than one-third and energy use by 27 percent for dishwashers sold in the United States. The changes would apply to new models on sale once the new rules officially come into effect, which is expected to be in 2027. Manufacturers would be forced to limit dishwashers to using 3.2 gallons of water per cycle, far below the current federal limit of 5 gallons, and reduce their products’ energy consumption by nearly 30 percent. While most dishwashers on the market meet the Energy Star Standard of 3.5 gallons per cycle, they would still need to be redesigned to cut energy use. The result of the new rules would be higher upfront prices for the appliance, making it more difficult for lower-income Americans to afford them, hitting poor Americans especially hard. Appliance performance has historically been affected by energy regulations, with many consumers complaining of extraordinarily long cycle times and dishes that are not clean when finished.

Conclusion

The Biden Energy Department has issued over 100 energy efficiency rules on appliances and household equipment, which they claim will fight climate change and save consumers money. If that were true, market forces would have resulted in the same goals without needing the federal government to enforce them. Historically, appliances the Energy Department reviewed ended up performing worse and costing more. DOE rulemaking, combined with state and local efforts to ban natural gas hook-ups in new homes and buildings, is how the federal government and environmentalists plan to take gas stoves and now gas water heaters away from consumers.

Stressed families, already pressed for time and struggling to pay bills, may find Biden’s climate agenda frustrating given the continuing string of performance-robbing regulatory changes the Biden Administration is forcing upon them, for which they will be paying upfront and possibly operational costs as well.

*This article was adapted from content originally published by the Institute for Energy Research.

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President Biden is Not Serious About Energy Policy

August 8, 2023 by Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON DC (08/07/2023) – Last week, the Biden administration’s Department of Energy (DOE) released its latest Critical Minerals Assessment, which included uranium as a near-critical supply risk for the United States both in the short term and the medium term.

And yet, this week The Washington Post is reporting that President Biden is planning a trip to Arizona to reportedly designate a vast area near the Grand Canyon as a national monument to safeguard it from uranium mining…” There is no uranium mining proposed in the Grand Canyon, although opponents of nuclear power and its attendant uranium mining try their best to confuse casual observers of the news by mentioning the Grand Canyon.

If true, this is simply a land grab using the Grand Canyon as an icon to disguise an anti-nuclear power agenda. In 2022, nuclear continued to be the largest single source of carbon-free electricity generation in the United States, producing more than wind and solar combined and providing 19% of all electricity.

AEA President Thomas Pyle issued the following statement:

The next time the Biden administration talks about climate change or net zero, remember they have zero interest in doing things like increasing uranium mining in the United States that would make us more energy secure and help reduce carbon dioxide emissions. They also seem not to care about the Russian predominance in the nuclear fuel process. The Biden administration is only interested in taking actions that increase the federal government’s power while giving money to the right special interest groups—not actually reducing carbon dioxide emissions.


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