If you want to understand the impact this kind of energy rule had while in effect, read up on the Rosenfeld Effect[0].
Arthur Rosenfeld was the driving force behind California and US energy conservation regulations in the 1970's and early 1980's. His direct personal impact on energy cost savings in the US is unbelievable, even before you inflation convert it to modern dollars.
Disassembling an old refrigerator from before the days of those yellow stickers is a mind blowing experience. Refrigerators commonly had heater wires attached to their outer panels. Why? It was cheaper to manufacture refrigerators that had heaters on their outer panels than refrigerators that had adequate insulation (the heaters prevented the outside of the refrigerator from getting cold enough to cause water to condense on the outside of the refrigerator). It was cheaper to make them with heater wires, but unbelievably more expensive to run them that way. Consumers paid a huge price for that tiny reduction in manufacturing cost, and had no way of knowing that was happening. Those yellow stickers changed that.
Cutting waste, fraud, and abuse? Show me another individual who has come anywhere close to the direct financial savings that Rosenfeld, a PhD Physicist, delivered.
The article below primarily talks about his impact on reducing California's spending on energy, in large part because it's easier to quantify, but his impact nationally is undoubtedly much higher.
I’ve never read a press release by a US government agency before, so it may be the standard, but the language in it strikes me as petty and childish, especially the last piece; “sprinkler nozzles that just don’t work well”.
“The people, not the government, should be choosing the home appliances and products they want at prices they can afford.” - you still get to choose which appliance you have in your home, but the government is there to help ensure that appliance is reliable and efficient.
>you still get to choose which appliance you have in your home, but the government is there to help ensure that appliance is reliable and efficient.
I suspect that many people have the opposite experience and blame the government for inefficient and unreliable products. I most often experience and hear others complain about water efficient washing machines.
I hope this means a move away from standards that result in serious usability impacts for moderate improvements.
Examples I've personally experienced is that many/most driers now available require multiple attempts to get clothes actually try. Then there was the debacle of fedora enabling aggressive power saving in a difficult to disable way in updates, claiming it was mandated-- resulting in nonsense like remote hands incidents to unsuspend servers and users using TV as monitors perpetually needing to turn the TV on and off every use because TV's won't wake and the power saving functionality wasn't disclosed (if you could even figure out that this was WHY the screen kept failing-- and did so without sending a display to the landfill first).
Energy efficiency when it comes at no impact to functionality is good (at least if it pays for its own landfill burden-- many home devices have more embodied energy in their manufacture than they'll ever use) but when it has a usability impact it really ought to have a good justification or even just not happen at all because people are capable of choosing more efficient devices when it actually makes sense to do so.
(like the efficiency impact of a device run for 10 minutes a month is very very different from something that runs 24/7 and usually only the owner of the device knows the usage).
Intrusive requirements also set back environmental causes by enlisting opposition by members of the public that are harmed by them-- which could easily have a greater long term impact than the benefit of the standard. (and if it's argued that these changes have gone too far, then I'd say it's likely an example of exactly that).
This is a common problem with regulatory agencies. They're created to address some real problem, but then they address it, and they still exist, so what are they supposed to do now?
Meanwhile the original rules were the low-hanging fruit. Originally some products were only 50% efficient, but the modern products are 90% efficient. Energy consumption fell from 300 W to 167 W. If you ask them to trim off another 133 watts, that's a violation of the laws of physics. If you ask them for the last 17 watts that are theoretically physically possible, that's not really a thing either. At best you can trim off another 5 W by making some onerous design trade offs that aren't worth five watts.
But what are they going to do if their job is to make new rules?
> Examples I've personally experienced is that many/most driers now available require multiple attempts to get clothes actually try.
You used so many heat pump dryers? They are fairly new. It sounds like you're generalising. A Indesit we had was crappy, our current Bosch 6 is fine but harder to clean the heat exchanger which had been improved in newer versions.
My home appliances meet a number of international energy efficiency standards including those set by the EU. If the US wants that to be somebody else's responsibility that's ok; but China et el aren't going to invest in separate production lines without it just for the US.
"Someone" has a serious phobia regarding shower heads and gas stoves. My house came with a gas stove with three pilots that heat up the house on those 110 degree days and I can't find the shutoff (it's behind the stove somewhere) to shut the damn thing off without killing the furnace and water heater.
Consolation might be if I sell the abomination, some deranged (pun unintended) person may overpay for the nostalgia.
As for the alternative, PG&E more than doubled my electric rates, though I did get a stovetop Wolf oven, never having had an oven that was accurate. My former Breville quit one day after the warranty expired. I believe the cause was a 29 cent inline fuse buried between panels past about 30 screws holding the back on. I never found the fuse.
IMHO this is a good thing if it ends the now-common practice of chasing after tiny gains in efficiency at the cost of shortened lifespans and more difficult repair.
The list of specifications developed during the last administration have encouraged the sale of bathroom and kitchen faucets, residential toilets and sprinkler nozzles that just don’t work well.
I think that's been a problem since before the last administration...
These press releases chill me to the bone with how 1984 speak they are. I’ve never seen whole agencies just completely gutted and replaced with nonsense like this before. The executive branch of the government was never meant to have this much power. We didn’t fight a war against a king so that we could just devolve to that again.
They aren't suspending anything. They're postponing. Your second quoted sentence is consistent with your first unless you change the word "postpone" to "suspend" in your mind while you're reading it.
I'd be all in favor of removing thousands of individual regulations if they were replaced by a single rational carbon/pollution tax, but that is wishful thinking.
The title of the submission is nowhere in line with what the linked page even talks about. Flagging for out right lying.
Titled when I wrote this comment is: "US Energy Department ending appliance efficiency standards"
All the press release mentions is that they are not moving forward on new standards that Biden was pushing for while he was in office. Existing energy efficiency standards for appliances are still in effect.
From the link: "will postpone the implementation of seven of the Biden-Harris administration’s restrictive mandates on home appliances.'
"Today’s actions postpone the efficiency standards for the following home appliance rules." Seems substantially correct. Although I agree it doesn't meet the usual standards for just copying the article's headline.
> The title of the submission is nowhere in line with what the linked page even talks about. Flagging for our right lying. All the press release mentions is that they are not moving forward on new standards that Biden was pushing for while he was in office. Existing energy efficiency standards for appliances are still in effect.
This is a very odd take. The title is based on the only part of the article that isn't PR fluff and describes what was done:
> Today’s actions postpone the efficiency standards for the following home appliance rules:
Central Air Conditioners
Clothes Washers and Dryers
General Service Lamps
Walk-In Coolers and Freezers
Gas Instantaneous Water Heaters
Commercial Refrigeration Equipment
Air Compressors
yodon|1 year ago
Arthur Rosenfeld was the driving force behind California and US energy conservation regulations in the 1970's and early 1980's. His direct personal impact on energy cost savings in the US is unbelievable, even before you inflation convert it to modern dollars.
Disassembling an old refrigerator from before the days of those yellow stickers is a mind blowing experience. Refrigerators commonly had heater wires attached to their outer panels. Why? It was cheaper to manufacture refrigerators that had heaters on their outer panels than refrigerators that had adequate insulation (the heaters prevented the outside of the refrigerator from getting cold enough to cause water to condense on the outside of the refrigerator). It was cheaper to make them with heater wires, but unbelievably more expensive to run them that way. Consumers paid a huge price for that tiny reduction in manufacturing cost, and had no way of knowing that was happening. Those yellow stickers changed that.
Cutting waste, fraud, and abuse? Show me another individual who has come anywhere close to the direct financial savings that Rosenfeld, a PhD Physicist, delivered.
The article below primarily talks about his impact on reducing California's spending on energy, in large part because it's easier to quantify, but his impact nationally is undoubtedly much higher.
[0]https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/01/27/art-rosenfeld-californ...
zegerjan|1 year ago
insane_dreamer|1 year ago
China cannot believe its good fortune.
insane_dreamer|1 year ago
You can be sure China is strategizing on how to fill the leadership vacuum the US is leaving in its wake -- this just being one of many.
littlestymaar|1 year ago
userbinator|1 year ago
ides_dev|1 year ago
“The people, not the government, should be choosing the home appliances and products they want at prices they can afford.” - you still get to choose which appliance you have in your home, but the government is there to help ensure that appliance is reliable and efficient.
s1artibartfast|1 year ago
I suspect that many people have the opposite experience and blame the government for inefficient and unreliable products. I most often experience and hear others complain about water efficient washing machines.
nullc|1 year ago
Examples I've personally experienced is that many/most driers now available require multiple attempts to get clothes actually try. Then there was the debacle of fedora enabling aggressive power saving in a difficult to disable way in updates, claiming it was mandated-- resulting in nonsense like remote hands incidents to unsuspend servers and users using TV as monitors perpetually needing to turn the TV on and off every use because TV's won't wake and the power saving functionality wasn't disclosed (if you could even figure out that this was WHY the screen kept failing-- and did so without sending a display to the landfill first).
Energy efficiency when it comes at no impact to functionality is good (at least if it pays for its own landfill burden-- many home devices have more embodied energy in their manufacture than they'll ever use) but when it has a usability impact it really ought to have a good justification or even just not happen at all because people are capable of choosing more efficient devices when it actually makes sense to do so.
(like the efficiency impact of a device run for 10 minutes a month is very very different from something that runs 24/7 and usually only the owner of the device knows the usage).
Intrusive requirements also set back environmental causes by enlisting opposition by members of the public that are harmed by them-- which could easily have a greater long term impact than the benefit of the standard. (and if it's argued that these changes have gone too far, then I'd say it's likely an example of exactly that).
AnthonyMouse|1 year ago
Meanwhile the original rules were the low-hanging fruit. Originally some products were only 50% efficient, but the modern products are 90% efficient. Energy consumption fell from 300 W to 167 W. If you ask them to trim off another 133 watts, that's a violation of the laws of physics. If you ask them for the last 17 watts that are theoretically physically possible, that's not really a thing either. At best you can trim off another 5 W by making some onerous design trade offs that aren't worth five watts.
But what are they going to do if their job is to make new rules?
sebazzz|1 year ago
You used so many heat pump dryers? They are fairly new. It sounds like you're generalising. A Indesit we had was crappy, our current Bosch 6 is fine but harder to clean the heat exchanger which had been improved in newer versions.
userbinator|1 year ago
tjpnz|1 year ago
k310|1 year ago
Consolation might be if I sell the abomination, some deranged (pun unintended) person may overpay for the nostalgia.
As for the alternative, PG&E more than doubled my electric rates, though I did get a stovetop Wolf oven, never having had an oven that was accurate. My former Breville quit one day after the warranty expired. I believe the cause was a 29 cent inline fuse buried between panels past about 30 screws holding the back on. I never found the fuse.
Can't win.
userbinator|1 year ago
The list of specifications developed during the last administration have encouraged the sale of bathroom and kitchen faucets, residential toilets and sprinkler nozzles that just don’t work well.
I think that's been a problem since before the last administration...
Related:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20856036
http://www.freeexistence.org/highflow_toilet.html
anotherhue|1 year ago
Mistletoe|1 year ago
Dylan16807|1 year ago
There's a tradeoff here between price and quality, and the different political parties have different preferences for what should be allowed.
Obviously they're going to talk about the benefits and not the downsides of a particular choice, but that hardly strikes me as 1984.
rurp|1 year ago
> the Department of Energy will postpone the implementation of seven of the Biden-Harris administration’s restrictive mandates on home appliances.
> Today’s actions postpone the efficiency standards for the following home appliance rules:
I honestly don't know if they are suspending new fuel efficiency requirements or all requirements for the given appliances.
sister_shotgun|1 year ago
xnx|1 year ago
kyrra|1 year ago
Titled when I wrote this comment is: "US Energy Department ending appliance efficiency standards"
All the press release mentions is that they are not moving forward on new standards that Biden was pushing for while he was in office. Existing energy efficiency standards for appliances are still in effect.
From the link: "will postpone the implementation of seven of the Biden-Harris administration’s restrictive mandates on home appliances.'
rurp|1 year ago
"Today’s actions postpone the efficiency standards for the following home appliance rules:"
That sure sounds like they are suspending all standards, but it's poorly written so who knows if that's what they actually meant.
loeg|1 year ago
insane_dreamer|1 year ago
It doesn't say they're ending "all" standards, which is what you're implying.
So you can drop the "flagging for lying".
scrose|1 year ago
This is a very odd take. The title is based on the only part of the article that isn't PR fluff and describes what was done:
> Today’s actions postpone the efficiency standards for the following home appliance rules:
sister_shotgun|1 year ago