https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-cracks-down-on-gas-stoves-furnaces-light-bulbs-dishwasher-energy-342b6514?mod=opinion_lead_pos6
Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. fired a shot heard ’round America in January when he informed the public of his agency’s plans for natural-gas stoves. “This is a hidden hazard,” Mr. Trumka said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”
The comment sparked a strong consumer backlash, forcing the Biden administration to deny that its regulators were doing such a thing. But they most certainly were and still are. The gas-stove kerfuffle is merely one piece in a larger campaign against consumer appliances, all in the service of President Biden’s climate-change agenda. Let’s review the items under federal scrutiny:
• Lighting. Beginning in July, commercial retailers will no longer be able to sell incandescent light bulbs without incurring a significant penalty, thanks to an onerous Energy Department efficiency regulation. Last summer the Biden administration reversed a Trump-era reprieve for the old-fashioned bulbs, adjusting the appliance’s lumens-per-watt threshold beyond what the incandescent technology can meet. As a result, newer LED bulbs will soon be the only game in town. While LEDs are improving, they cost more than incandescent bulbs, don’t work well with most dimmers, and cast a light that some consumers consider unpleasant.
• Furnaces. Like stoves, furnaces commit the sin of sometimes running on natural gas. Though ostensibly a fuel-neutral efficiency standard, the Energy Department’s furnace regulation disproportionately burdens gas models relative to electric ones. “The proposed furnace rule has at least as much to do with the Biden administration’s war on natural gas [as] it does with saving energy,” says Mark Krebs, a natural-gas industry consultant, in an interview. The agency is moving ahead with this proposal despite its own analysis that natural gas is less than one-third as expensive as electricity on a per unit energy basis. The final rule could be out soon, and the only gas furnaces likely to survive will be more expensive and harder to install in millions of homes, especially older and space-constrained ones.