The culture wars are heating up yet again after the Department of Energy issued new proposed efficiency standards at the same time Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a plan to subsidize gas stoves.
The sweeping new efficiency standards were given formal notice Wednesday in the Federal Register, sets new performance standards in Kilowatts per hour, and apply to both electric and gas stoves.
The procedural notice appeared in print on the same day that Florida Gov Ron DeSantis unveiled a new $115 billion state budget that includes a permanent end to state taxes on gas stoves.
‘They want your gas stove and we’re not going to let that happen,’ DeSantis said in Tallahassee. ‘No tax permanently on gas stoves… it’s just the principle of – this is ridiculous,’ he said
The new standards ‘would save a significant amount of energy… and a lifetime energy savings for consumer conventional cooking products purchased,’ according to the proposed rule.
DeSantis was using the budget to drive home a political point, after conservative outrage boiled over after a study linked indoor gas stoves to health problems – prompting some to propose an indoor ban.
A move earlier this month by the Consumer Product Safety Commission to consider a ban on gas stoves prompted conservative commentator Matt Walsh to say: ‘You will have to pry my gas stove from my cold dead hands.’
New York progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who got in a Twitter spat over the stoves, defended her own use of a gas stove in her rental unit. ‘I do think it’s funny the absolute, utter Republican meltdown where they’re like ‘you can take my gas stove from my cold dead hands,’ or, ‘how dare you talk about gas stoves, you have a gas stove” she said.
According to the government’s analysis, the proposed rule would have a total consumer benefit of ‘$0.65 billion to $1.71 billion – as well as yielding ‘significant environmental benefits,’ with reduction in carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides, as well as methane and nitrous oxide and mercury. (SOURCE)
