How Obama is invading your home

How Obama is invading your home

Ben Lieberman
New York Post
October 11, 2010

The Obama administration isn't satisfied giving the American public vast things we don't want — from stimulus packages to bailouts to ObamaCare: It's a small-scale nuisance, too — witness its attempt to redesign home appliances.

In the pipeline are dumb regulations for almost everything that plugs in or fires up in your home.

Just weeks after taking office, the president ordered the Energy Department to speed up the process of issuing harsh new energy-efficiency standards for appliances. Since then, the agency boasts, it "has issued or codified new efficiency standards for more than 20 different products," and still more are on the way.

These regulations are sure to raise the price of appliances — often by more than consumers are ever likely to earn back in the form of energy savings. And some will make the product perform well.

The administration is meddling with every room in the house:

The basement: New standards are in the works for water heaters and furnaces. For water heaters, the Energy Department estimates price hikes from $67 to $974, depending on size and type.

The bathroom: The same 1992 law that gave us those awful low-flush toilets also restricted the amount of water shower heads could use to 2.5 gallons per minute. Some consumers who disliked the resulting weak trickle opted for models with two or more shower heads, each using the maximum 2.5 gallons. But Team Obama has now eliminated this "loophole" by requiring that the total flow must comply with the limit.

The kitchen: Think remodeling a kitchen is expensive now? Pending regulations target refrigerators, dishwashers, microwaves, ovens and ranges.

For refrigerators (at least), this is a clear case of overkill. The American fridge has already been hit by several rounds of tighter standards, with each new rule saving less energy than the last — but boosting the price and compromising performance and reliability. Even the Energy Department admits that most consumers will lose money on its latest refrigerator regulation.

The laundry room:New standards are on the way for washers and dryers. When the last clothes-washer regulation hit in 2007, Consumer Reportslamented that several ultra-efficient models "left our stain-soaked swatches nearly as dirty as they were before washing" and that "for best results, you'll have to spend $900 or more." The Obama rules will probably mean even worse news.

Any air-conditioned room: Both central air conditioners and window units are scheduled for new regulations. When the Energy Department rolled out its last round of central-AC rules back in January 2001 (one of those last-minute Clinton administration "midnight" regulations), it admitted that many homeowners would never recoup the added up-front costs. The new standards will follow the same "logic" — and thus should make for another lousy deal.

The Obama regulations come on top of all the past ones, including the worst one of all — the Bush-era requirement that will effectively ban incandescent light bulbs starting in 2012.

In nearly every case, consumers who want more efficient appliances — or those compact fluorescent light bulbs — are free to buy them. Energy-use labels tell you everything you need to know to make comparisons. All the federal rules do is is to force the government's preferred choice on everyone.

Government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" is busy enacting a bunch of things the people don't want, including these appliance regulations. Add them to the growing list of Obama (and Bush) measures ripe for repeal.

Energy Department Says It Has ‘Mandate’ to Force ‘Market Transformation’ for Household Appliances

Penny Starr
CNS News
September 17, 2010

Washington (CNSNews.com) - Assistant Energy Secretary Cathy Zoi said Thursday that the U.S. Department of Energy has a “mandate” to issue regulations to determine what household appliances are available to Americans in the future.

Speaking at the inaugural meeting of the recently reestablished Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB), Zoi pointed to four tactics the Obama administration intends to use to advance the “deployment of clean energy.”

The first three include government subsidies for private-sector green energy projects; special tax incentives for green energy projects; and low-interest government-backed loans for green energy projects.

“The fourth one, which the secretary and I love,” said Zoi, “is where we have a mandate. Where we can actually just issue regulations and do market transformation.”

Zoi was referring to authority the department has under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, as amended by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. That law gives the DOE the power to set efficiency standards for energy-consuming products.

“That’s an existing statute that this Department of Energy is going to make work really hard,” Zoi said. “We’ve already issued appliance standards that are going to save the American public somewhere between $250 billion and $300 billion over the next 20 years, just by getting the crummy stuff off the market.”

Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who also spoke at the meeting, announced in April that the department had finalized five new “higher energy efficiency standards” for commercial clothes washers, small electric motors, water heaters, direct heating equipment and pool heaters.

Standards for 10 additional categories of products are expected to be finalized by the end of next year, according to a DOE spokeswoman. These will include new standards for refrigerators, microwave ovens, residential and mobile home furnaces, fluorescent light ballasts, residential clothes washers and dryers, room and central air conditioners, and battery chargers.

“We’re going to update [the standards] more frequently” said Zoi. “We have the power to do that in the statute.”

Before becoming President Barack Obama’s assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy, Zoi served as environmental adviser to President Bill Clinton and the founding CEO of former Vice President Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection.

Zoi said that stricter federal energy efficiency standards will “drive innovation” and are “cost effective.”

“As the secretary [Chu] says, ‘We’re going to make people save money for themselves,’” Zoi said. “They haven’t dumped the dollar bills on the ground yet.”

The SEAB was first chartered in the George H. W. Bush administration, but it was disbanded by President George W. Bush’s Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. Chu reestablished the advisory board in August.

Jen Stutsman, an Energy Department spokeswoman, told CNSNews.com that energy efficiency regulations issued by the department are designed to help consumers and manufacturers.

“Our goal is to develop standards that are both technically feasible and economically justified and that maximize the benefits to consumers while minimizing any negative impacts on manufacturers or others,” Stutsman said.

At the first meeting of the reestablished board on Thursday, Chu said energy and science are vital to the country’s future, as is the work of the DOE.

“We feel that beyond just energy, science is at the heart of what will keep America prosperous in the coming years,” Chu said.

The 12-member board includes former government officials and corporate executives, including Clinton Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch; Clinton Defense Secretary William Perry and former Clinton Labor Secretary Alexis Herman; and former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine.

Do you have an actual point to make here cable, or are you just out to incite a flame war as is your usual practice?

cable2 wrote:*DELETED*

What was the point of that cable?

What's your point? An energy dept. official said the price of a water heater will go up as stated in your quote.

Discuss the article, please.

cable2 wrote:*DELETED*

What was the point of that cable?

TexasBlue wrote:What's your point? An energy dept. official said the price of a water heater will go up as stated in your quote.

Discuss the article, please.

that's what I was doing.. please re-read the article.. it's one long anti-Obama / pro-Republican propaganda rant masquerading as informing the reader on the up-coming changes in the regulations of their future purchases.

cable2 wrote:

cable2 wrote:*DELETED*

What was the point of that cable?

TexasBlue wrote:What's your point? An energy dept. official said the price of a water heater will go up as stated in your quote.

Discuss the article, please.

that's what I was doing.. please re-read the article.. it's one long anti-Obama / pro-Republican propaganda rant masquerading as informing the reader on the up-coming changes in the regulations of their future purchases.

That is most certainly NOT what you were doing. Everyone of those regulations are quite real, and they carry a very real price to the consumer. This is our imperial federal government reaching right into our homes and FORCING us buy products we would not choose on our own, and are not being demanded by a free market.

What you call "propaganda" is in fact the cold hard truth. If you can't handle the truth, then perhaps you should return to your echo chamber next door.

cable2 wrote:that's what I was doing.. please re-read the article.. it's one long anti-Obama / pro-Republican propaganda rant masquerading as informing the reader on the up-coming changes in the regulations of their future purchases.

I don't need to reread the article. I read it when i was eating breakfast this morning. I read it again when posted it.

It's not propaganda. You may think it is. If the gov't is going to force things upon people in the name of the environment, then at least make it so that people can afford it. In the cases above, they were forced upon us via legislation and the end result has those products costing the consumer more than what it's supposedly supposed to save. The writer of the article only points out what an Energy Dept official has pointed out. It's fact, not fiction. And since that department is run by the Obama Administration, it can't be "propaganda."

Now.... if you care to debate the actual content of the article, then fine.