Trump’s Reversing Biden’s Appliance Energy Regs Will Lower Housing Costs, Experts Say

President Donald Trump’s plan to reverse his predecessor’s energy regulations could lower the costs of housing, which reached record highs last summer. 

The administration of President Joe Biden issued strict climate standards for household appliances, including gas stoves, washing machines, and dishwashers. While the regulations allowed Americans to keep their current appliances, the standards raised the price of appliances on the market.

That in turn increased the cost of housing, as new homes and apartments are required to have the more expensive appliances, according to Heritage Foundation energy expert Diana Furchtgott-Roth. 

“It requires people to buy more expensive stoves, and stoves that they don’t want,” she said. “Many of the stoves are more expensive, so it would have raised the price of housing.” 

Biden’s gas stove rule would eliminate anywhere between 50% to 95% of today’s gas appliances, according to Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., who has fought tooth and nail against Biden’s mandate. 

“Delivering on President Trump’s promise to lower costs for American families, the Department of Energy is executing a bold, pro-growth agenda to lower costs, strengthen energy security, expand domestic production, and unleash American innovation,” a Department of Energy spokesperson told The Daily Signal.

“By lifting the harmful Biden-Harris [liquefied natural gas] export freeze and eliminating burdensome regulations—including appliance standards and permitting delays—the department is removing barriers to investment and helping reduce energy prices,” the spokesperson continued. “We are committed to continuing to slash the needless red tape and regulations that reduce customer choice and raise prices.”

LNG export facilities receive natural gas by pipeline and liquefy the gas for transport on special oceangoing LNG ships, or tankers.

Trump on Feb. 11 directed Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin to undo Biden’s climate mandates and return to “common sense standards.”

On Feb. 14, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced the Department of Energy will postpone the implementation of seven of the Biden-Harris administration’s mandates on home appliances.

Overturning the Biden administration’s push to ban gas stoves marks a win for consumer freedom, former EPA chief of staff Mandy Gunasekara told The Daily Signal.

“The Trump administration’s recent moves spare Americans from shelling out $500 to thousands of dollars to replace perfectly good gas stoves with electric ones they didn’t ask for. It also encourages continued innovation, which will drive competition and ultimately lower costs,” Gunasekara said.

Environmentalist organization the Sierra Club criticized the Trump administration’s moves, saying “electric appliances, like induction stoves, are really easy to use, lower utility bills, and are safe and healthy unlike gas stoves that cause asthma and other health problems.”

“Rather than ‘protecting’ costly and harmful gas stoves, the incoming administration should focus on bringing down costs for average people, including supporting home electrification,” the Sierra Club said in a statement.

The Trump administration has two options to reverse the mandate, according to Furchtgott-Roth.

The Department of Energy could propose a new regulation, which would require 60 days to take comments and then time to analyze them. 

Trump is expected to sign an executive order directing the Department of Energy to start the rulemaking process. That process would take up to a year, so if the Trump administration wants to reverse the rule faster, the Department of Justice could accept and rule on one of the lawsuits against the gas stove mandate. 

The gas stove mandate would have required a redesign of more than 90% of gas cooktops by 2027, giving the industry less than four years to reconfigure, test, manufacture, and distribute products in order to comply and remain competitive.

The Biden Department of Energy estimated that manufacturers would spend more than $183 million over the next three years to meet the standard, causing consumers to pay more than $32 million annually in increased costs.

The department also estimated that over the course of 14.5 year, the average life expectancy for gas cooktops, its standards would save consumers just about $1.50 per year in operating costs. 

The proposed rule was estimated to reduce site energy use—the energy directly consumed by a product at the location where it is used—by 3.4% over the next 30 years. 

The rule’s estimated reduction of 19.6 million metric tons of CO2 emissions would result in a global temperature mitigation of only 0.0009 degrees Celsius over the next century, according to The Heritage Foundation’s calculations using a federal climate simulator model.

Trump energy policies during his first term saved the average American family about $10,000, Carla Sands, vice chair of the Center for Energy and Environment at the America First Policy Institute, told The Daily Signal.

“With inflation, you can assume it’s going to be more than $2,500 a year people will save, but it’s going to significantly lower the cost of new homes, because all the inputs are going to go down,” she said. “This is not just the stove, it’s the washing machine, it’s the dryer. The costs are going to go down because the government’s going to be doing less regulation. And all those regulations cost money, and the manufacturers pass it on to the consumers.”

Many household appliances will get less expensive and more reliable because of Trump’s efforts, said Sands, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Denmark, Greenland, and the Faeroe Islands in his first term.

“The department will continue working closely with the White House to advance President Trump’s agenda and secure America’s energy future,” an Energy Department spokesperson told The Daily Signal.

Alexander Stevens of the American Energy Association said the number of inconvenient regulations imposed by the Biden administration sparked immense public pushback.

“When we’ve layered so many of these things on top of each other, for the average person, they’re starting to recognize, each one of these things just makes my life a little bit more inconvenient,” Stevens said. “It’s taking options away from me. The public pushback on these things is really a more broad reaction to just the fact that the rules and regulations are emanating from Washington, D, C., are having sort of a compounding effect that’s making life for everybody, just like a little bit more difficult.”

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