Trump's efficiency rollback will cost Americans billions and pollute widely
In 2007, Congress passed (and President Bush signed into law) the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, with broad bipartisan support. Among other things, this federal law “required manufacturers to increase efficiency of home lighting by 27 percent within seven years.” The new efficiency standards “greatly increased the market for high-efficiency light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs and reduced sales of traditional incandescent bulbs,” resulting in substantial increases in “clean energy technologies”:
“Advanced technologies, including light-emitting diode or LED light bulbs, use far less electricity than incandescent light bulbs, which produce far more wasted heat.”
President Obama expanded these efficiency standards to cover additional types of lighting, including “three-way bulbs, candle-shaped bulbs used in chandeliers, reflector bulbs used in recessed lighting,” and others. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association was very unhappy about this, and filed a lawsuit. And then Trump took office.
NEMA “lobbied for the Trump administration to repeal the 2017 rule,” and withdrew its case when the Trump administration agreed “to review it for potential change or repeal later in 2017.” True to his policy of never allowing environmental or safety concerns to interfere with corporate profits (especially when they came from that black guy!), Trump is now rolling back the Obama expansions. The consequences, about which Trump cares not at all, include:
“$12 billion in extra power bill costs for consumers” by 2025, and
“540 million metric tons” of greenhouse gases added into the atmosphere by 2030.
