Trump Officials Move to Ease Energy Standards on Home Appliances

President Donald Trump’s administration is moving to ease energy efficiency standards for many household appliances and fixtures, targeting environmental rules embraced by his predecessor Joe Biden.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Friday said his department is postponing the implementation of seven mandates on home appliances from the Biden administration, casting it as an action that will help lower prices and improve consumer choice.

The move was accompanied by a similar step at the Environmental Protection Agency, where Administrator Lee Zeldin ordered regulators to overhaul federal water specifications governing kitchen faucets and other household equipment.

The announced actions will postpone efficiency standards for central air conditioners, washers and dryers, light bulbs, walk-in coolers and freezers, gas instantaneous water heaters, commercial refrigeration equipment, and air compressors, according to Wright.

Wright said the Department of Energy is also creating a new energy efficiency category for natural gas tankless water heaters, exempting those products from Biden-era rules. 

Trump earlier Friday also called for easing water efficiency standards as well for household appliances and fixtures like dishwashers and sinks. 

“We’re going to get rid of those restrictions,” he told reporters in the Oval Office as he signed an executive action tied to energy policy. “People buy a house, they turn on the sink and water barely comes out, they take a shower and water barely comes out, and it’s an unnecessary restriction.”

The issue of environmental standards is a personal one for Trump, who has long complained about fixtures such as low-flow shower heads that he says merely drip water, making it hard for him to wash his hair, and toilets that he says force people to flush “10 times, 15 times as opposed to once,” wasting time and frustrating consumers.

Trump and his allies say the restrictions leave products performing below what Americans have come to expect and restrict consumer choices. 

“The people, not the government, should be choosing the home appliances and products they want at prices they can afford,” Wright said in a statement Friday.

Environmental groups that backed the rules said they would save consumers billions of dollars in energy costs and avoid millions of tons in carbon dioxide emissions.

In a recent social-media post, Trump said he was directing Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency “to immediately go back to my Environmental Orders” that pertained to “sinks, showers, toilets, washing machines, dishwashers, etc., and to likewise go back to the common sense standards on lightbulbs.”

Trump is undertaking a broad assault on federal regulations in his second term, including many of Biden’s environmental policies. On Monday, he signed an executive action that moved to undo his predecessor’s efforts to phase out the use of plastic straws by the federal government.

With assistance from Jennifer A. Dlouhy.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.