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Government The Courts Power United States Hardware Science

11 States Sue Trump Administration's Energy Department After Weeks of No Movement On Efficiency Standards (go.com) 219

Posted by BeauHD from the legally-enforceable dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: New York, California and nine other states sued the Trump administration Tuesday over its failure to finalize energy-use limits for portable air conditioners and other products. The new standards would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save businesses and consumers billions of dollars, and conserve enough energy to power more than 19 million households for a year, but the U.S. Department of Energy has not met a requirement to publish them by now, according to attorneys general who filed the lawsuit (PDF) against the DOE in federal court in San Francisco. That means the standards are not legally enforceable. The other states in the lawsuit are: Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Vermont, Washington, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Maryland. The City of New York is also a plaintiff. The energy efficiency standards at issue in the lawsuit also cover walk-in coolers and freezers, air compressors, commercial packaged boilers and uninterruptible power supplies. There is currently no federal energy standard for air compressors, uninterruptible power supplies or portable air conditioners, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring the DOE to publish the new standards as final rules.
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11 States Sue Trump Administration's Energy Department After Weeks of No Movement On Efficiency Standards More

11 States Sue Trump Administration's Energy Department After Weeks of No Movement On Efficiency Standards

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  • Useless (Score:3, Insightful)

    by _Sharp'r_ ( 649297 ) <sharper AT booksunderreview DOT com> on Tuesday June 13, 2017 @07:54PM (#54613681) Homepage Journal

    Good. The existing program is useless [slashdot.org]. Maybe they can do something more useful with the money, time and effort than try and have the Federal government dictate what energy use standards should be.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Exactly. Why don't the manufactures set their own standards? Even the states suing the federal government have the power to set the standards for any units sold in their state.

      These lawsuits are nothing more than politically motivated attack on the current administration. And like all the other politically driven attacks aimed at the current administration they are willing to harm anyone or anything they have to in order to win their political power. If they succeed in getting rid of Trump they best be read

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Pseudonym ( 62607 )

        Why don't the manufactures set their own standards?

        Yeah, because that's worked so well for the software industry.

      • Re:Useless (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gravewax ( 4772409 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2017 @08:55PM (#54614047)
        because efficiency is more expensive. Why make something more efficient when it is more profitable to be able to undercut the competition with less efficient systems. Many people that buy and install those systems are also only caring about their profit margin as they don't intend to be the long term user of the system.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by ChrisMaple ( 607946 )

          This is more a matter of whether the companies making the buying decisions are exercising good judgement. Some brands (like Trane) typically last a lot longer than others, and cost more. Many companies also offer a variety of different efficiencies on similar models, and the more efficient ones cost more. You don't see Trane going out of business because they offer a superior but more expensive product.

          Government forcing the purchase of a particular type of product is just usurpation, and the moral philosop

      • I suppose they could whip out a standards document immediately, just one page that says:

        "You're free to do what you want."

  • So it saves enough energy to run 19 million households for a year... And then what happens? These fucking reporters don't know the difference between power and energy. This is fucking high school physics...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by skids ( 119237 )

      Yeah bad journalism. Journalists should stick to "households powered per year". FWIW this is over a 30 year product lifecycle, so it's 600kish households baseline, or about 0.5% of households in the country. That's actually fairly significant.

      Of course relying on "households powered per year" means eventually we'll have powered more households than we have, since the majority of energy consumption is transportation and industrial.

  • Consider the Sec't of Energy (Score:4, Informative)

    by beep54 ( 1844432 ) <b54oramasterNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday June 13, 2017 @08:17PM (#54613845)
    Since this is Rick Perry, well known here in Texas for basically doing nothing, this is no surprise. Perry also could not remember that this was a dep't he wanted to get rid. He later demonstrated that in fact, he had no idea what the thing did.

    • Because Texas has its own power grid and does not sell energy on the open market which would require federal regulation. So yea, from this states perspective, what does the DoE do?

      • Manages the entire US nuclear weapons stockpile. Which doesn't seem like something you just want to get rid of on a whim without bothering to check first.

        • I thought Hillary did that for us with the Russian Uranium sale.

    • I can't help thinking this is some kind of strategy. Hire people who are so bad at their jobs, that when you eventually fire them you look like a hero.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Cowards (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Atryn ( 528846 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2017 @08:58PM (#54614065) Homepage
      Wow, that reflects a terrible understanding of Game Theory... Player A and Player B (or in this case Players 1-50) know that if they both act the outcome is better for both of them, but if either of them acts first, they lose and the other wins.

      Combine this problem with the dilemma to business of 50 different state standards across countless different product characteristics and the damage that does to economies of scale...

      There are good reasons for product standards. The commercial sector tends to address the ones that collectively are good for profits (often via operational efficiencies of standardization, mass production and compatibility). They don't tend to address the ones that are collectively good for purely social reasons, like the environment, product safety, public health, etc. - especially when any subset acting alone lose the market... That's where government plays a good role!

  • Ok, I see "save businesses and consumers billions of dollars", so everybody wins, nobody loses, right? So why exactly does this need to be legislated? If the business making the product saves billions, the consumers save billions, why do you have to enforce this profit making by all with laws? Even if the manufacturer doesn't save billions, why wouldn't consumers choose to buy the product that will net cost less? Or is it "it will save consumers billions, but cost them few more billions?".

    • Re:Profit for everyone, why legislate? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2017 @09:57PM (#54614319) Homepage

      Answers to your questions:

      1) To prevent Fraud. It's a regulation on what you have to do to say "Energy Efficient". If you don't regulate, than some businesses will reduce power by 1% and say "Buy our 'Green' product." and paint their 1% lower item greeen. The reason to legislate is to stop businesses from lying and claiming things like "No reasonable person would think VitaminWater TM had vitamins in it."

      2) To ensure uniformity. Don't want 5 different businesses using made up terms like "Green", "Lite", "Low Power", "Energy GOOD", and what not, forcing the consumer to research what each thing does.

      3) Because despite what libertarians think, the government has a better success rate than business. The problem is that governments failures are public and stick around way too long (Afghanistan, Vietnam, Veterans Healthcare - note all three are MILITARY failures),, while the business failures tend to fade away like New Coke, Colgate TV dinners, and the Delorean (all of which died in less than 4 years)

      • If it really saved money to the manufacturer, why would the manufacturer cheat? You need to legislate that they have to save money? And if it saved money to the consumers, why would consumers buy a more expensive product? There are laws in place preventing false advertising, so no need for more laws there And as far as legislating the definition of terms, sure, no problem there but how far do you go? You'll tell me I cannot paint the air conditioner green and call it green because someone somewhere may thin

        • Manufacturers cheat for several reason, one of which is some are as crazy as you, so they would rather violate the spirit of regulations if they can't be punished for it, even if ti costs them money. Others are simply too stupid to do what's best, or thought they came up with a better plan. But most importantly, without a FEDERAL REGULATION, they would have to spend their own money to research what would be cheating. They don't want to do that, especially as the Fed has already done it once, no need for

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skids ( 119237 )

      Because a large cohort of "businesspeople" are complete sleazeballs.

      • Ans sleazeballs don't like saving money so you have to force them?

  • No one got hired (Score:3)

    by MoarSauce123 ( 3641185 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2017 @06:08AM (#54615813)
    To this day Trump still has to hire thousands of appointees that work in the various departments. No wonder why no work gets done when nobody is there to run the shops. Worst case is the department of finance, inept Mnuchin is the only one in the management and leadership level. It clearly showed in the various international meetings where he was unprepared and totally clueless. Given that Trump's only agenda is to destroy government, he is doing a fine job. His plan on creating an oligarchy of the top1% is on target. Thanks to all those morons who voted this idiot into office. Did you get your mining jobs back already?

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