Trump Moves To End Appliance Efficiency Rules, Freeing Americans To Buy A Cheaper Refrigerator And Then Pay The Difference To The Power Company Every Month For 15 Years

WASHINGTON. The Department of Energy moved Thursday to permanently end the federal efficiency standards governing the nation's air conditioners, water heaters, refrigerators, washing machines, and gas stoves, resolving a long-standing concern that American households were being quietly protected from their own utility bills without ever having asked to be.

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, announced by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, rewrites the decades-old "Process Rule" that the department has used since the Reagan administration to set minimum performance levels for household appliances. Issued in accordance with President Trump's executive order "Unleashing Prosperity through Deregulation," the plan restores the freedom of manufacturers to sell equipment that consumes as much energy as it pleases, a freedom the administration described as long overdue.

"In America, you should be able to choose a dryer that dries clothes on the first try rather than one that takes multiple cycles," Wright said, referring to standards the appliance industry itself had helped negotiate. The department did not specify which dryers require multiple cycles, nor explain why the remedy for a slow dryer was to repeal the rule that made dryers efficient in the first place.

Left unmentioned in the announcement was the record of the standards now being repealed. By the government's own accounting, existing efficiency rules saved a typical American household roughly $6,000 on its utility bills over the past decade and saved households and businesses more than $100 billion in the single year of 2024 alone. The administration characterized the elimination of these savings as a measure to lower costs.

Officials repeatedly praised the proposal for preserving "consumer choice," a phrase referring to the consumer's newly restored option to buy a less expensive refrigerator at the store and then pay the difference, plus interest, to the electric company every month for the next fifteen years. Public comments will be accepted for thirty days, after which the choice will be made for everyone.

At press time, Secretary Wright was standing proudly beside a discounted $400 refrigerator, waiting for an aide to tell him what it would cost to keep it running.