Biden Admin Doubles Down on Gas Stove Restrictions

Biden administration officials are again moving forward with new regulations to broadly restrict the usage of gas stoves.

The Biden Department of Energy (DOE) last week proposed new regulations creating stricter efficiency standards for gas stoves, a move that some industry players say could block 95 percent of appliances currently on the market. DOE itself says that over half of gas stove models on the market today would not comply with the new standards, which they admit would raise the upfront cost of the products by $32.5 million per year.

“This approach by DOE could effectively ban gas appliances,” Jill Notini, vice president at the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, told Bloomberg News. “We are concerned this approach could eliminate fully featured gas products.”

The announcement of proposed regulations came just weeks after Richard Trumka Jr., a Biden appointee to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), told Bloomberg that a national ban on gas stoves is “on the table” this year. The White House walked back Trumka’s comments after mass backlash, claiming that the administration never supported a ban on gas stoves––a claim which was backed by several media outlets who said conservatives themselves had invented a new “culture war.”

A leaked internal memo, however, showed that this insistence by Biden administration officials and the media was mere gaslighting. In the memo, which was titled “NPR Proposing Ban on Gas Stoves (Indoor Air Quality),” Trumka wrote that “[t]here is sufficient information available for CPSC to issue an NPR in FY 2023 proposing to ban gas stoves in homes.” With the new DOE rules, it appears the Biden administration has taken the issue off the back burner once again.

Fortunately, some lawmakers have already begun to push back on the regulators’ executive overreach.

Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) have introduced bipartisan legislation which would prohibit the federal government from using any public funding to restrict the usage of gas stoves. The legislation, if passed, would prevent the CPSC from using federal dollars to enforce any rule which would “result in a prohibition on the use or sale of gas stoves in the United States or would otherwise substantially increase the average price of gas stoves in the United States.”

A coalition of ten senators led by Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) also sent a letter to CPSC Chairman Alexander Hoehn-Saric expressing “strong opposition” to any efforts to ban gas stoves. On the state level, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Thursday announced a permanent sales tax holiday for gas stoves along with several other products.

Interested parties can submit public comment on the proposed DOE rules through April 3rd, 2023.