Sponsor
Mike Lee
Senator · R-UT
Senator · R-UT
The bill trades stronger, locally tailored and potentially faster efficiency and environmental protections for nationwide regulatory predictability and lower compliance/reporting burdens for manufacturers, concentrating benefits for industry while limiting states' flexibility to push faster or stricter standards.
Manufacturers, utilities, and small businesses face a single, nationwide regulatory baseline and fewer frequent standard changes, reducing compliance costs and regulatory uncertainty across States.
Homeowners, utilities, and consumers avoid regulatory gaps because existing federal efficiency and water standards are preserved even when state actions or agency changes occur, maintaining current performance expectations in the marketplace.
Manufacturers, consumers, and stakeholders gain clearer, time‑bound DOE procedures (binding Process Rule, minimum comment periods, defined lead times, and deadlines for preliminary rulemaking) that improve predictability for planning and compliance.
State and local governments, and the communities they serve, lose authority to ban or restrict products by fuel source or emissions, limiting local environmental and public‑health protections.
Consumers, taxpayers, and the environment may see slower adoption of more stringent efficiency standards and newer technologies because the bill raises evidentiary bars, lengthens intervals between petitions, bans some combined rulemakings, and adds procedural hurdles.
Middle‑class families, businesses, and the climate face higher long‑term energy costs and greater greenhouse gas emissions if voided rules (e.g., for furnaces, water heaters, or transformers) or blocked updates prevent efficiency gains.
Based on analysis of 11 sections of legislative text.
Narrows DOE authority and preempts state/local fuel- and emissions-based rules for covered products, adds process and evidentiary hurdles for changing efficiency standards, and mandates interagency reporting coordination.
Official title: Amend the Energy Policy and Conservation Act to prohibit the Secretary of Energy from prescribing any new or amended energy conservation standards for a product that is not technologically feasible and economically justified, and for other purposes.
Introduced August 6, 2026 by Mike Lee · Last progress August 6, 2026
Rewrites federal appliance- and equipment-efficiency law to restrict when and how the Department of Energy (DOE) can set or change energy and water conservation standards, to preempt state and local rules based on fuel source or certain emissions, and to add new procedural tests and timelines for DOE rulemaking. It preserves existing federal standards in many cases, narrows opportunities to relax or expand standards, lengthens petition timelines, creates new definitions for ‘‘significant energy savings,’’ and requires interagency reporting coordination among DOE, FERC, and EPA. The bill also mandates DOE to finalize a specified Process Rule within 270 days (with fallback effects if DOE misses that deadline), voids two recent DOE rules on furnaces and commercial water heaters, transfers certain regulatory text locations, and shifts some manufacturer reporting responsibilities to component makers while limiting reporting to new/changed models covered by DOE rules.