Source: (The Department of energy (DOE) under Chris Wright is proposing to get rid of energy efficiency standards that have saved consumers over 1.5 trillion dollars (CFA 2017).
The average American home saves $321 a year on energy bills due to appliance and equipment energy efficiency regulations. Since 1990: Clothes washers use 70% less energy, dishwashers 40%, air conditioners 50%, furnaces 10%, and water heater standards have saved $124 billion in energy and $1800 over the life of the water heater per household (USDOE 2017).
Biden’s DOE launched a weatherization and appliance efficiency program in 2024 that would have saved nearly $1 trillion over the next 30 years and another $67 to $285 a year per household in utility bills, depending on the state, as well as cut emissions by 2.5 billion metric tons over 30 years (ASAP 2024, PIRG 2024, Walton 2024).
The U.S. DOE under Secretary of Energy Chris Wright has “withdrawn four conservation standards, including standards on electric motors, ceiling fans, dehumidifiers, and external power supplies. This continued commitment to the American people will slash unnecessary red tape and regulations that raise prices, reduce consumer choice, and frustrate the American people. By removing burdensome regulations put in place by the Biden administration, we are returning freedom of choice to the American people, ensuring consumers can choose the home appliances that work best for their lives and budgets. This power should not belong to the federal government (Walton 2025).”
As you can see from the Project 2025 tracker ( https://www.project2025.observer/ ) this is part of the Project 2025 platform which calls for eliminating appliance standards completely. Project 2025 was created by the Heritage Foundation and many previous and current Trump administration officials.
Who started energy efficiency standards? My hero, Art Rosenfeld, who must be rolling in his grave. Here are just a few of Art Rosenfeld’s accomplishments:
- California saves approximately $42 billion a year from just four of Rosenfeld’s initiatives (Rosenfeld Effect).
- It was estimated that by 2030, energy standards would have saved a total of $1.8 trillion. By 2030, energy standards were estimated to save 7 billion tons of CO2 emissions, equivalent to the annual emissions of 1.5 billion cars (Tang prize).
- Per capita electricity use in California has remained relatively flat since 1973, while it nearly doubled in the rest of the country. Modern refrigerators consume half or less the energy consumed by fridges in the 1970s (Kanellos 2010).
Art even convinced utility companies that they would save more money by NOT building new power plants than what they would earn by selling electricity. I had two close friends who were power engineers at Pacific Gas & Electric who visited corporations to help them save money on their electricity usage to lower their bills, and lower the need of PG&E to build an expensive power plant.
Which is a Win Win for everyone. Except for Trump & Project 2025. It appears to me that their goal is to hasten energy decline to return to the 14th century as soon as possible, as well as with maximum pollution and emissions so that the lives of the desperate impoverished peasants will be as unpleasant as possible. But meanwhile, in the NOW, it means more money for champagne and caviar, private jets, and golfing (Trump Golf Tracker). Grandchildren be damned.
Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Women in ecology Podcasts: WGBH, Financial Sense, UCSC, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity, Index of best energyskeptic posts
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Excerpt from Wiki on Arthur H Rosenfeld
Under his leadership a number of energy efficiency technologies were developed, including heat trapping window coating and compact fluorescent lights. Rosenfeld helped develop computer models used to understand and calculate the energy use of buildings. Those computer models were later adopted as national standards for building energy analysis by the Department of Energy.
Rosenfeld’s attention to energy conservation inspired thousands of energy researchers during his career. “He truly shaped the way an entire generation of researchers and policymakers worked together to conserve resources,” said Berkeley Lab director Mike Witherell. Engineers, beginning with those in his lab, now began to analyze the energy efficiency of everyday things. That led to breakthroughs in not only low-energy lights, but also windows, refrigerators, air conditioners, and other appliances, along with the design of entire buildings. It led to California becoming a model of energy conservation for the nation, and in 1978 it was the first state to approve a strong energy-efficiency building code, called Title 24.
He developed DOE-2, a computer program for building energy analysis and design that was incorporated into the new code. The codes themselves became models for other states, copied by Florida and Massachusetts, among them. DOE-2 is used to calculate codes and guidelines for energy efficient new buildings by various countries, including China.
Other states and countries became aware that although homes in California were loaded with new energy-consuming appliances, such as computers, large-screen TVs, iPods, PlayStations, central air conditioners, hot tubs and swimming pools, their per person energy use had remained the same as it was 30 years earlier. Much of the savings was attributed to Rosenfeld’s “passion to wring the most out of every kilowatt.” He gave energy regulators the data they needed to enact some of the strongest efficiency standards in the world.
Those standards impacted various industries: New homes and buildings were required to have better insulation and to be fitted with energy-saving lights; heating and cooling systems had to be more efficient; appliances were redesigned to use less power; and utilities were told to motivate their customers to use less electricity. Rosenfeld acted on his basic principle: “Conserving energy is cheaper and smarter than building power plants.”
While the pressure to build nuclear facilities was growing as the population grew, utilities and policymakers began to agree that new power plants were not always needed. In 1976, for instance, after he explained to California governor Jerry Brown that a proposed nuclear power plant would not be needed if there were better efficiency standards for refrigerators, the proposed plant was not built. And the following year, standards for new refrigerators and freezers went into effect.
Appliance manufacturers also complained about the new requirements, although they innovated to meet them. The resistance from utilities and manufacturers was eventually overcome when it was calculated that those new standards had yielded billions annually in energy savings for California consumers.
“The first time we put standards on a product, we tend to get objections that this will be the ruin of civilization as we know it,” Rosenfeld said. “But then people get used to it.” In 1999, he estimated that the changes the commission mandated were saving the nation $10 billion a year.
The new standards also reduced California’s air pollution, equivalent to taking millions of cars off the road. Appliances such as the refrigerator later used only 25% of the energy as older models, despite often being larger. Large-screen TVs, which were estimated to previously use up to 10% of an average home’s electricity, were also included in the standards. In 2009, California approved the nation’s first efficiency requirement for televisions. It was estimated that they alone would save Californian’s $8 billion over the following decade.
Since 1973 per capita electricity use in California has remained flat, while for the rest of the nation it increased nearly 50% That trend was attributed in part to the energy conservation efforts led by Rosenfeld. Energy scientists credited Rosenfeld for those savings, dubbing the term “Rosenfeld Effect” as a way to explain how the cost reductions were achieved. He became a “rock star” in energy efficiency circles. James Sweeney, an energy scientist at Stanford, says Rosenfeld is “absolutely the most fundamental person in causing the California government to start paying attention fully to the opportunities for energy efficiency.”