The new rule issued Wednesday overturns changes that had established new “normal cycle” product classes for residential washers and dryers, making existing federal energy and water conservation regulations irrelevant to those appliances. The reversal was touted by environmentalists but is possible to dishearten users with long washing and drying cycles.
The DOE concluded the previous rules fell short of meeting conditions of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. The final rule returns residential dishwasher types either to "standard" or "compact."
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Product categories for clothes washers and dryers were also returned to their classifications before the Trump-era rules, which are based on clothes container capacity and whether the appliance is front-loading or top-loading.
The Appliance Standards Awareness Project, which supported the rollback of the Trump rules, said those rules “were unneeded because the vast majority of today’s dishwashers already offer short cycles, which in some instances consume modestly more energy than the default cycles but are used infrequently.”
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Attorney Devin Watkins of the Libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, which had petitioned for a class of dishwashers with shorter cycles, criticized the move by Biden's DOE.
“President Biden’s decision to block faster 1-hour dishwashers will waste the time of many American consumers,” Watkins said. “The Biden Energy Department says allowing these new types of dishwashers would run counter to the purpose of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, but the agency fails to consider the purpose of a dishwasher — to clean dishes effectively and quickly.”
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In 2018, CEI petitioned the Department of Energy (DOE) to allow a new, better class of dishwashers that can clean and dry dishes in under an hour. This commonsense change in regulation was needed because, due to federal regulations, the average dishwasher cycle time has more than doubled to two hours over the past 30 years.
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Based on a flood of thousands of comments in support, DOE granted CEI’s petition and established the new class of dishwashers in 2020. The Trump Administration’s DOE liked this so much that in 2021 it created, on its own, similar faster classes of clothes washers and dryers.
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However, on his first day in office, President Biden called the DOE to review these new types of dishwashers, along with clothes washers and dryers. Today, DOE finalized that process and decided to revoke these new classes of dishwashers. As Reason.com described it, “the Biden Administration has decided to take the side of big business in this conflict between industry and individuals.”
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