Telegraph Piece: Biden’s eco crusade against gas stoves is even madder than you thought

[Note: This story is also published at The Telegraph, the UK’s News Website of the Year]

resident Joe Biden traveled to Utah and New Mexico last week to boast about the impacts his energy and climate agenda is having in the US economy and society today. The President did his best to focus on the positives, making some interesting claims in the process. 

But one policy he did not focus on was his Department of Energy’s (DOE) efforts to regulate at least half of all gas cooking stoves off the market through increased efficiency standards and force a costly redesign of up to 90 per cent of new gas cooktop models by 2027. In proposing the new standards, DOE officials released estimates of cost savings for consumers of “$650 million to $1.71 billion,” adding that “net societal benefits (including pollution reduction and health savings) would be even higher.”

These savings estimates seem absurd on their face, given that electric induction stoves preferred by Biden’s regulators are priced far higher than comparable gas stove models, rising electricity costs and DOE’s admission that its forced redesign of gas models would raise manufacturing costs by at least $183 million. The regulators cite an incentive contained in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act that would reimburse consumers for up to $840 when they swap their gas stove for electric induction models, but that would only cover a fraction of the price differential. Worse, DOE’s own estimate is that the new efficiency standards would save consumers a rounding-error $22 over 14.5 years in operating costs. At $1.50 per year, consumers would be unable to recoup the higher retail price of the electric replacement over an entire lifetime.