Sponsors
The bill prioritizes near-term consumer price protections, regulatory predictability, and avoiding immediate industry disruption over the ability of regulators to adopt stricter, longer-term efficiency standards—potentially protecting upfront costs while delaying some lifetime energy savings and emissions reductions.
Homeowners and consumers: the bill limits new efficiency standards to those that do not increase net consumer costs and requires a 3-year payback test, helping prevent higher upfront appliance prices and preserving product utility and performance.
Homeowners and renters: the bill (in relevant provisions) allows for new clothes washer and dishwasher design/performance standards that could reduce household energy and water use and lower utility bills while improving durability.
Consumers and industry: the bill imposes faster, more predictable rulemaking deadlines and requires quantitative economic analyses with public comment, improving regulatory predictability and transparency for manufacturers, retailers, and consumers.
Homeowners, renters, taxpayers and the public: stricter payback/no-net-cost tests and bans on considering social costs of greenhouse gases make it harder to adopt standards that produce larger lifetime energy bill savings and long-term climate and public-health benefits, likely delaying those savings.
Consumers and utilities: blocking future federal efficiency updates for distribution transformers will likely keep higher electricity losses in the grid, raising electricity costs over time and increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
Manufacturers, importers, and small businesses: new required economic analyses, Attorney General competition reviews, disclosure/testing requirements, and other procedural steps increase compliance costs and administrative burdens, which can raise product prices and disadvantage smaller firms.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Introduced July 23, 2025 by Rick W. Allen · Last progress February 25, 2026
Rewrites how the Department of Energy sets and reviews energy and water conservation standards for appliances. It adds firm deadlines for rulemakings, raises the burden of proof to change or revoke standards, requires economic and competition analyses, and blocks any new or amended federal standard for distribution transformers. It also explicitly allows the Secretary to use either design requirements or performance standards for clothes washers and dishwashers. The bill emphasizes avoiding net increased consumer costs and requires quantified near-term savings tests and other numeric thresholds before new standards can take effect. It limits consideration of broader social benefits (including the social cost of greenhouse gases), adds disclosure and review steps, and changes when regional standards apply to products.