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US Energy Department ending appliance efficiency standards

energy.gov

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Re: US Energy Department ending appliance efficiency standards

#41

Post by sister_shotgun »

rurp wrote: post #27

This announcement is written so poorly that it might be one of the rare cases where linking to the primary article is suboptimal. > 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 fu…

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.

Re: US Energy Department ending appliance efficiency standards

#42

Post by sister_shotgun »

rurp wrote: post #28
kyrra wrote: post #3

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 e…

The article is internally inconsistent and I'm not sure what it actually means. "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.

>That sure sounds like they are suspending all standards,

No it doesn't. 'Postpone' and 'suspend' are two entirely different things.

Re: US Energy Department ending appliance efficiency standards

#43

Post by nullc »

userbinator wrote: post #32
nullc wrote: post #15

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 han…

No kidding. This stupid "climate change" BS is finally getting the cut it deserves.

Well I think you might kind of be making my point-- not because I agree with you: I don't, I think man's ongoing impact on the atmosphere and climate is an important issue. And collectivist humanity is smart enough and wealthy enough to spare some resources on protecting our own future. But it's not an issue we're going to move the needle on with any amount of mandatory no-flow showerheads.

Intrusive regulation makes environmental concerns into people's enemy.

Because stuff costs money everyone already has an incentive to conserve. We can enhance that though lower impact methods like disclosure, monitoring, optional eco modes that can easily be disabled.

I suspect that considering the long term impact if there is virtually any public backlash these efforts are ultimately net negative.

Re: US Energy Department ending appliance efficiency standards

#45

Post by s1artibartfast »

ides_dev wrote: post #36

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…

>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.

Re: US Energy Department ending appliance efficiency standards

#47

Post by insane_dreamer »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #21
insane_dreamer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Trump wants to gut anything related to climate change initiatives because they were enacted by the previous administration. It has nothing to do with quality tradeoff curves. You don't even have to do a lot of critical thinking to get this; Trump has made it pretty clear.

> It has nothing to do with quality tradeoff curves. So do you think the claim that it's cheaper to build to looser standards is a lie, or do you think cheaper appliances did not play any role in motivating this order and only came up after the fact? I'm pretty sure at least one of those has to be true for your claim to be true, and I'm quite skeptical of both. (If you said it was mostly about climate change spite I'…

It _may_ be cheaper to build to lower energy efficiency depending on the product and the supply chain. This _may_ result in lower prices.

I do think the promise of cheaper appliances in indeed a cover for the primary target: rolling back climate change related regulation. Remember Trump’s first term? He spent a lot of effort trying to undo whatever Obama had done , not because of the benefits but just because. You cannot underestimate how retaliatory Trump is.

But more specifically Trump has repeatedly made clear his disdain for climate change measures and climate science. What do you think “drill baby drill” is all about? Cheaper gas? Petroleum (coming out of the ground) is already about as cheap as it can get to profitable pump.

Check this out from today’s NYT:

> One discipline that has been targeted more specifically is climate science. President Trump has long downplayed the threats from human-caused global warming. At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, staff members have been ordered to comb their research awards for terms including “climate science,” “climate crisis,” “clean energy” and “pollution.”

Re: US Energy Department ending appliance efficiency standards

#48

Post by insane_dreamer »

mindslight wrote: post #18
insane_dreamer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about quality, it's about reducing energy consumption, which is critical because ... climate change (among other things). Come on, I shouldn't need to explain this. Trump wants to bring back incandescent lightbulbs. And burn more coal.

The problem was that at least for some categories, the regulations weren't making appliances actually more efficient any longer, but rather just gaming the numbers by skimping on their primary functionality. For example clothes washers that don't use enough water to get clothes clean (hot water is directly counted as energy use), or dishwashers that skip having a heating element for the dry cycle, and then substitute…

Fair point. But gaming the regulations is a different problem, one that lies not with the regulations but with enforcement of standards. Taking away these new regulations doesn’t mean that some companies won’t still try to game other remaining regulations in order to cut corners and eke out more profits or for planned obsolescence.

Re: US Energy Department ending appliance efficiency standards

#49

Post by mindslight »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #48
mindslight wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem was that at least for some categories, the regulations weren't making appliances actually more efficient any longer, but rather just gaming the numbers by skimping on their primary functionality. For example clothes washers that don't use enough water to get clothes clean (hot water is directly counted as energy use), or dishwashers that skip having a heating element for the dry cycle, and then substitute…

Fair point. But gaming the regulations is a different problem, one that lies not with the regulations but with enforcement of standards. Taking away these new regulations doesn’t mean that some companies won’t still try to game other remaining regulations in order to cut corners and eke out more profits or for planned obsolescence.

I think the term "gaming" was overstating the point relative to my argument. What I see is that the previous regulations got a lot of the low hanging fruit, and now there aren't really big gains to be had like that.

I actually don't think companies will go backwards on improvements they've already adopted. The mechanism I see is a reluctance to spend design time on changing things (ie keep selling the same old shit), rather than pure cost optimization with newer technologies costing more.

I'd say a big cause of the problem here is the handwavey nature of regulations focusing on "high level" goals like efficiency and expecting that engineers can magically find it somewhere [0], rather than more direct things like "all appliance motors that consume more than 5% of the energy used by the appliance must be brushless ECM"

[0] similarly, see the repeated calls for magical encryption backdoors that don't weaken security

Re: US Energy Department ending appliance efficiency standards

#50

Post by userbinator »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #35
userbinator wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backwards to no more cheap Chinese crap!

These are the groups that insured that whatever we got was at least somewhat decent. Standards are amazing. Blowing them up merely creates permission for bad.

Companies can always compete, and now they'll be free to compete on dimensions that previously would've been restricted by regulations.
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