Biden Deadline Slips for Undoing Trump-Era Efficiency Standards

The Biden administration has missed year-end deadlines to completely roll back Trump-era energy efficiency standards, highlighting the volume of work challenging the Energy Department’s staff as it confronts a backlog of appliance reviews.

Final actions will now fall to 2022 for undoing Trump-era standards for light bulbs, clothes washers and dryers, and dishwashers—standards that some industry groups have welcomed, but that efficiency advocates have criticized as too lax.

And the DOE still has to finalize the second part of the Process Rule, a 40-year-old set of regulations that underpin the agency’s decision-making on appliance standards. The department finalized ...