President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly considering executive action to protect gas furnaces from regulatory overreach, Reuters reported on Tuesday. [emphasis, links added]
According to Reuters, the executive order under consideration would also cover other gas appliances, including heaters, after Democrats and the Biden administration spent years advancing regulations limiting their use.
Details of the action being considered are unclear, but The policy may be consistent with a push by Congress to cut funding to prevent state and local governments from pursuing gas appliance phase-out policies.
“It makes sense when it takes a White House order to stop our government from banning natural gas furnaces and water heaters,” Karen Harbert, president of the American Gas Association, told Reuters in a statement.
As of 2020, approximately 75 million U.S. households use natural gas to power at least one applianceAccording to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Approximately 47 million U.S. households used natural gas for cooking in 2020, up from 39 million households in 2015.
During his term of office, The Biden administration has rolled out energy efficiency rules for stoves, portable generators, pool pump motors, water heaters and more, many of which will gradually steer the market toward electric or energy-efficient models and away from gas-powered versions.
Consumer Product Safety Commission Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. suggested in 2023 that gas stoves could be banned after studies linked them to asthma cases in children, although the Energy Department in May 2023 announced in March that the federal government’s ideas on gas stoves were “misinformation.”
Additionally, the Biden administration is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to help state and local governments develop building codes that effectively amount to a backdoor effort to phase out gas appliances. Energy policy experts explained to the Daily Caller News Foundation in December 2023.
Read the break from The Daily Caller
