Almost immediately after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani offered some anodyne thermostat advice during a heat wave last week, a variety of Republicans expressed outrage that didn’t make a lot of sense. The underlying fight, however, offered a timely reminder about an important issue: Energy efficiency matters.

Or at least, it should. The Washington Post reported:

As punishing heat sends the U.S. power grid to the brink and Americans reel from rising electricity costs, the Trump administration is moving to weaken efficiency standards for home appliances proven to cut power demand and lower utility bills.

The Energy Department on Thursday said the proposal would “Permanently End Green New Scam Appliance Mandates.” It takes aim at energy conservation standards for a host of appliances, including air conditioners, refrigerators and washing machines.

It wasn’t that long ago when energy efficiency standards were a bipartisan issue. In fact, it’s a priority with a Republican pedigree: It was George H.W. Bush who approved breakthrough policies on the issue nearly four decades ago.

Those efforts have endured for all the right reasons: Improved energy efficiency standards haven’t just helped to reduce carbon emissions, they’ve also saved American consumers hundreds of billions of dollars on their electric bills. Common sense suggests U.S. officials would want to stay the course for as long as possible.

Team Trump has come to the opposite conclusion.

If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because the Republican president and his administration took similar steps in 2020, only to have the Biden administration stick with success. Now, the fight is unfolding anew.

Appliance Standards Awareness Project, a nonprofit that advocates for energy efficiency rules, told Bloomberg News in a written statement, “Major energy savings could be at stake. Thanks to technological advances, the next round of strengthened standards could reduce a typical household’s utility bills by an average of about $160 annually and collectively save businesses almost $15 billion in annual operating costs over two decades.”

Then again, helping Americans afford their bills hasn’t been much of a White House priority of late, so perhaps these latest moves shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise.

With the Mandani flap in mind, it’s also worth emphasizing that improved energy efficiency improves electrical capacity that we clearly need.

The shift is not, however, a done deal: The administration’s proposed rule still needs to go through a public comment period before being approved. Watch this space.

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