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Jennifer Granholm, US Secretary of EnergyBrook Mitchell/Getty Images

WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — President Joe Biden has set his eyes on another appliance in your kitchen — the dishwasher.

Months after an official in his administration floated the idea of banning gas stoves, the Department of Energy (DOE) has now set its sights on limiting access to dishwashers if they use too much water, as determined by the bureaucracy. Meanwhile, his administration continues to look to limit access to gas stoves.

The DOE’s proposed rule would require that all dishwashers sold use around three gallons of water. The agency predicts the change would cost manufacturers $125 million to convert and lead to a negative net present value of somewhere around $100 million.

The administration said there would be benefits to the climate, such as reduced carbon dioxide limits. While it predicts an estimated cost of “$8.6 million per year in increased product costs” the “estimated annual benefits are $125.8 million in reduced product operating costs, $34.6 million in climate benefits, and $37.0 million in health benefits.”

The proposed regulations were packaged with the announcement of other proposed restrictions on beverage vending machines and electric motors. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm claimed the changes would save money for Americans while fighting climate change.

“This Administration is using all of the tools at our disposal to save Americans money while promoting innovations that will reduce carbon pollution and combat the climate crisis,” Granholm stated in a Friday news release.

However commentators have pointed out some of the problems in the DOE’s logic.

“The department estimates that consumers will save $3 billion over the next 30 years, or $100 million per year, on their utility bills thanks to the rougher rules,” Christian Britschgi wrote at Reason. “That’s a pretty small per capita savings when spread across the 89 million dishwasher-owning households.”

The new regulations might lead to more water usage as individuals switch to washing dishes by hand, Britschgi pointed out, citing research from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

The think tank’s proposal led President Donald Trump’s administration to approve a new class of dishwashers that clean dishes in one hour, though Biden’s team repealed the pro-consumer regulatory agenda of his predecessor.

CEI added further criticism on Monday.

“For every one of these rulemakings, the agency’s asserted ‘need to confront the global climate crisis,’ is a major part of the rationale, replete with lengthy calculations of the claimed greenhouse gas emissions reductions attributable to each,” environmental policy expert Ben Lieberman wrote.

“But consumers aren’t likely to like any of it, as these standards often raise the up-front cost of appliances more than is likely to be earned back in the form of lower utility bills,” the former senior counsel to the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce explained. “They also have a track record for diminishing appliance quality and choice.”

“The dishwasher proposal may be the most anti-consumer of them all. As a result of the existing efficiency requirements, it now takes more than two hours to clean a load of dishes, up from only one hour for most pre-standards models,” Lieberman wrote in his analysis. “Not only is this bad policy for consumers, it also violates the statute under which DOE derives its appliance standard-setting authority, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 (EPCA). EPCA explicitly forbids the agency from pursuing efficiency at the expense of appliance performance, choice, and features.”

“In other words, consumers come first,” he wrote.

Individuals wishing to comment on the proposed regulations can submit feedback hereComments can also be emailed to [email protected]. Make sure to put “EERE–2019–BT–STD-0039” in the subject line.

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