[mindslight]

The problem was that at least for some categories, the regulations weren't making appliances actually more efficient any longer, but rather just gaming the numbers by skimping on their primary functionality. For example clothes washers that don't use enough water to get clothes clean (hot water is directly counted as energy use), or dishwashers that skip having a heating element for the dry cycle, and then substitute some combo of dodgy "rinse aid", humidity-absorbing crystals that regenerate by using heat from the water, and drip drying.

Don't get me wrong, being an electrical engineer, doing a lot of DIY repair, and taking note of what goes into appliances I've got zero faith in manufacturers to come up with more efficient solutions on their own. But at a certain point the ever-advancing regulations stopped being productive as well. You can only switch to ECM/brushless motors one time.

(Also a meta issue - if the actions of the Trump administration were limited to only executive branch domestic policies like this, we could at least readjust in four years)

[insane_dreamer]

Fair point. But gaming the regulations is a different problem, one that lies not with the regulations but with enforcement of standards. Taking away these new regulations doesn’t mean that some companies won’t still try to game other remaining regulations in order to cut corners and eke out more profits or for planned obsolescence.

[mindslight]

I think the term "gaming" was overstating the point relative to my argument. What I see is that the previous regulations got a lot of the low hanging fruit, and now there aren't really big gains to be had like that.

I actually don't think companies will go backwards on improvements they've already adopted. The mechanism I see is a reluctance to spend design time on changing things (ie keep selling the same old shit), rather than pure cost optimization with newer technologies costing more.

I'd say a big cause of the problem here is the handwavey nature of regulations focusing on "high level" goals like efficiency and expecting that engineers can magically find it somewhere [0], rather than more direct things like "all appliance motors that consume more than 5% of the energy used by the appliance must be brushless ECM"

[0] similarly, see the repeated calls for magical encryption backdoors that don't weaken security