Biden’s Energy Department Introduces New Standards for Your OVENS and Cooktops to Ensure They’re ‘Efficient’ – As Ron DeSantis Eliminates All Gas Stove Taxes in Florida
- The proposed new rule would boost the efficiency of gas and electric stoves
- It follows a political standoff after the agency proposed a safety ban
- DeSantis of Florida announced no taxes on gas stoves in his latest budget
The political showdown over gas stoves is jumping out of the frying pan into the deep fryer — with the Department of Energy issuing new proposed efficiency standards at the same time Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a plan to subsidize gas stoves.
The sweeping new efficiency standards, officially filed Wednesday in the Federal Register, set new efficiency standards in kilowatt hours and apply to both electric and gas stoves.
The new standards “will save a significant amount of energy,” according to the proposed rule.
“Lifetime energy savings for purchased consumer conventional cooking products” over a 30-year period “were found to be 0.46 quadrillion British thermal units (“Btu”), or quadrillion. This represents a saving of 3.4 percent compared to the energy consumption of these products in the case of no amended standards.
“They want to go after gas stoves,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said as he laid out his new budget, which calls for no taxes on gas stoves
The rulemaking step, the product of a long process, happened to appear in print Wednesday, the same day Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis unveiled a new $115 billion state budget that includes a permanent end to state taxes on gas stoves.
DeSantis used the budget to score political points after conservative outrage boiled over after a study linked indoor gas stoves to health problems — prompting some to propose an indoor ban.
“We just added it because I think it needs to be done — no tax on gas stoves permanently,” DeSantis said in Tallahassee. “They want your gas stove and we’re not going to let that happen.”
“It’s just the principle of — it’s ridiculous,” he said.
“They want to go after the gas stoves,” he said.
A move earlier this month by the Consumer Product Safety Commission to consider banning gas stoves prompted conservative commentator Matt Walsh to say: “You’re going to have to pry my gas stove out of my cold, dead hands.”
New Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Will Tighten Efficiency Standards for Gas and Electric Stoves and Cooktops
The feds say the standards will bring savings to consumers and reduce pollution. It comes after DeSantis called for eliminating taxes on gas stoves amid a culture clash over regulation
Progressive New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted about the stoves, defended her own use of a gas stove in her rental apartment. “I really think it’s funny the absolute, total breakdown of the Republicans, where they’re like, ‘you can take my gas stove from my cold, dead hands,’ or ‘how dare you talk about gas stoves, you have a gas stove,'” she said.
According to the government’s analysis, the proposed rule would have a total benefit to consumers of “$0.65 billion to $1.71 billion — as well as bring “significant environmental benefits” with reductions in carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, as well as methane and nitrous oxide and mercury.
The proposal would repeal a “prescriptive standard” that banned continuous-burning pilots for gas cooktops — but the rule says its stricter standards would exclude continuous-burning pilots anyway.