Consumers outraged about slow dishwashers are staunchly backing an Energy Department move, over industry objections, to create a new category of products that feature a one-hour washing cycle.
Individual consumers have flooded the public comment docket in support of the Energy Department proposal, which grants a petition made by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank. The agency proposal would establish a separate product class for dishwashers that clean and dry dishes within one hour, an action that would exclude those appliances from current energy and water conservation standards until separate rules are crafted.
The Energy Department could finalize the proposal as soon as next year.
“A First World country deserves a dishwasher that can actually clean soiled dishes in an hour – as it used to have before this regulation was enacted to ‘save’ us energy and money. It doesn’t,” one individual consumer, Chad Anderson, wrote in a comment submitted this week.
“We bought a top of the line, KitchenAid, dishwasher three years ago. It takes most of the day to clean and dry the dishes. I rinse the food and scrub the plates with a brush before putting them into the dishwasher,” another commenter wrote. “It is inconvenient to say the least.”
“We know the struggle that consumers go through and how long it takes for dishwashers to run these days,” said Devin Watkins, an attorney with the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Watkins said the Energy Department’s tightening conservation standards have limited the performance of residential dishwashers.
While the agency’s proposal for allowing old-school appliances has the support of people frustrated with newer machines, appliance makers and energy efficiency advocates warned that it actually costs consumers more money in the long run. The additional costs to manufacturers of introducing new lines of dishwashers could trickle down to product prices, and consumers could see their energy and water bills spike with any new, quicker washers, they said.
Opponents, including a coalition of 13 state attorneys general led by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, are also linking the Energy Department’s proposal with broader efforts by the agency to undo Obama administration conservation limits for other products and change the way the agency sets efficiency limits.
Dishwashers with shorter cycles are widely available today, said Joanna Mauer, technical advocacy manager at the Appliance Standards Awareness Project. “It just doesn’t seem like there’s any reason why this type of product class is warranted.”
And creating the new product class puts at risk “the huge efficiency gains that we’ve seen in dishwashers over time,” Mauer added. She said the Energy Department wouldn’t yet be setting standards for the new product class and hasn’t provided a timeline for doing so.
The Energy Department, though, in its proposal said data and customer complaints show many consumers would value “shorter cycle times to clean a normally-soiled load of dishes.” Watkins argued that no dishwasher models currently exist on the market that have a normal one-hour cycle for washing and drying.
Mauer said a number of factors, including consumer preferences for more efficient and quieter dishwashers, have affected the cycle times.
And she said the lack of standards for the new product class also means the Energy Department’s move likely violates a provision in the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which prohibits the agency from loosening the efficiency standards.
Appliance makers also say the product class isn’t necessary, and they say the Energy Department action creates new regulatory burdens that will cost manufacturers.
Creating a new product class would lead to stranded investments for companies, “as manufacturers would essentially be required to abandon” innovations in efficiency they’d made to comply with the previous standards, the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers wrote in comments.
The group, which represents more than 150 companies, wrote it has raised concerns about dishwasher cycle times previously but stressed this wasn’t the venue to address them.
Watkins of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, however, argued appliance makers don’t want the Energy Department to change the current limits because it would open up the market to new companies that haven’t spent the money to comply with conservation limits.
“They now view the regulations in some way as a barrier to entry” into the market, Watkins said. He also suggested that creating a new product class could relieve some of the pressure manufacturers face from ever-tightening standards due to the law’s “one-way ratchet.”
Plus, it’s hard to argue with the overwhelming consumer support, Watkins said, pointing to a recent survey the group conducted of more than 1,000 customers showing a majority prefer dishwasher cycles of one hour or less.
“Where can I get a MDGA* hat? (*Make Dishwashers Great Again),” one consumer wrote in the comments.
