The filed comments exceeded expectations. The free-market commenters were especially prevalent and displayed great content. Some trade associations also deserve special recognition.

Biden’s “whole of government” Department of Justice is becoming far less likely to challenge DOE on matters of fuel neutrality.

Good news! Filed comments opposing the U.S. Department of Energy’s “Energy Conservation Standards for Residential Conventional Cooking Products (Ovens)” beat the other side in quantity, quality and range. The sheer volume of opposition comments makes a summary difficult, as does the new format of the regulations.gov website (requiring each numbered comment be opened one-by-one to identify the sender’s identity). There are 2,650 comments in this docket, dating back to Feb 24, 2014. [1]

The following table is provided to give examples of some of the more thorough yet diverse comments opposing adoption filed in the last few days before the comment period closed on April 17th:

Review of Comments

The filed comments exceeded expectations. The…

“Forcibly moving the market via equipment costs is a typical DOE strategy. And then they say, ‘let the market decide’.”

On January 30, 2023, National Public Radio (NPR)  published an episode, How Worried Should You Be About Your Gas Stove?  On February 4, NPR released a follow up: Gas stove makers have a pollution solution. They’re just not using it. Listen to both audio clips.

NPR’s advocates are part of a choir trying to justify ending natural gas combustion, starting with gas stoves. They are just as purposefully misleading as the rest of the choir.

Policy Concern

The concern should not be about gas stove usage but the public policy of The Biden Administrative State to wean consumers off the direct use of natural gas and propane and on to electric appliances, ASAP. …

“What we have is one-way bureaucratic command-and-control making poor decisions with funding derived from captive consumers and one-sided radical agendas. Accordingly, the environmental zealots demonize fossil fuels, while maintaining that only wind and solar are ‘green’ enough to ‘save the planet.’ This itself is greenwashing.”

Like Rob Bradley’s “Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’” (see Part I), my colleague Tom Tanton wrote a major piece about the over-regulation of the rare-earth extraction industry in the U.S.: “Dig it!  If you want more information on the importance of rare earths within the U.S economy, this would be a good place to start.

The long-term feasibility of this transition to renewables simply assumes sufficient raw materials exist for it at all. Professor Michaux of the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK) has studied these issues, probably more extensively than anyone else and thinks not. Professor…

“My major argument: any planned transition to an all-electric renewable energy monoculture is likely to fail, at least in America. That is mainly because peak winter heating requirements can greatly exceed peak summer cooling requirements by as much as 400 to 500 percent in cold climates and because the required minerals are severely limited.”

On August 27, 1997, the Cato Institute published “Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’,” written by Robert L. Bradley Jr. (A 58-page PDF of the study is available here and a 25^th anniversary review here.)  Bradley’s piece focused on the many stark ecological tradeoffs of politically favored renewables, as well as the high cost/low value associated of dilute, intermittent sourcing. This post extends that thinking to the deep decarbonization/all-electrification government program.

Rare earth minerals, on which the forced transition to “clean energy” depends, are critically constrained by many of the same factors as fossil fuels.…