Fifteen AGs Challenged Energy Department’s Efficiency Carve-Out for Fast-Cycle Clothes Washers and Dryers

JANUARY 19, 2021

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra led a coalition of 15 attorneys general in filing a petition for review of the Department of Energy’s decision to create of a new product class for fast-cycle clothes washers and dryers without promulgating efficiency standards for such appliances. In comments filed in October 2020, a coalition of state AGs led by Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum warned that the carve-out violates the Energy Policy and Conservation Act’s (EPCA) anti-backsliding provision, and decried the department’s failure to analyze the environmental impacts of its decision, noting that “[i]t is self-evident that if adopting a standard has environmental benefits, carving out exemptions to that standard — which is what establishing these ‘new product classes’ would do — will result in detrimental environmental impacts.”