H.R. 4626, Don’t Mess With My Home Appliances Act

H.R. 4626 would amend the Energy Policy and Conservation Act to change the procedures for the Department of Energy (DOE) to issue or revise its energy and water conservation standards for various appliances and equipment.

Primarily, the bill would:

• Eliminate DOE’s requirement to periodically update energy conservation standards and instead authorize DOE to amend those standards on an as needed basis;
• Establish a new process for the public to petition that specific energy conservation standards should be revoked or revised, under conditions specified in the bill;
• Amend the criteria for determining whether an energy conservation standard is economically justified; and
• Prohibit DOE from updating energy conservation standards for distribution transformers.

Federal Costs

Implementing H.R. 4626 could affect DOE’s spending on activities related to regulating energy conservation standards, which is subject to the availability of appropriated funds.

Implementing the bill could increase such costs by requiring DOE to review petitions to revoke standards and regularly evaluate whether those standards are economically justified.

DOE’s costs to regulate the affected products also could decrease if the department chooses to update energy conservation standards less often than under current law. Accordingly, CBO estimates that implementing H.R. 4626 would change spending subject to appropriation on net by less than $500,000 over the 2026-2030 period. In 2024, DOE allocated $60 million to regulate standards for appliances and equipment.

CBO cannot predict how proposed or existing regulations would be affected by H.R. 4626; however, if the bill’s requirements change how DOE implements those rules, that could slow demand for the Home Electrification and Appliance Rebates program. (That program is classified as direct spending in the budget.) CBO expects that any slowdown in demand for the rebates would not change the total amount of rebates taken over the life of the program. On that basis, CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 4626 would reduce direct spending by less than $500,000 over the 2026-2030 period but would not affect total direct spending over the 2026-2035 period.

Mandates

H.R. 4626 would impose an intergovernmental mandate as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) by prohibiting state and local governments from enforcing their own energy and water conservation standards on manufacturers of appliances previously regulated by DOE. CBO estimates that the mandate would not result in additional expenditures or losses in revenue, and therefore, the cost would not exceed the annual threshold established in UMRA for intergovernmental mandates ($107 million in 2026, adjusted annually for inflation).

The bill would not impose private-sector mandates as defined in UMRA.

The CBO staff contacts for this estimate are Aaron Krupkin (for federal costs) and Brandon Lever (for mandates). The estimate was reviewed by H. Samuel Papenfuss, Deputy Director of Budget Analysis.