Once Congress passed the nation's landmark energy-saving law, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, federal regulators routinely tightened the screws on how much electricity, heat, and water appliances could use. Modern air conditioners use about half the amount of power that room units did in the '80s. The latest washing machines require roughly 75 percent less water than their forebears. The refrigerator keeping your ever more costly eggs from spoiling now runs on one-fifth the electricity of models from the '70s. But as energy standards began to eat into machines' functionality and were drafted into the cause of limiting climate change, Americans' thinking about energy efficiency jumped to a different, more political plane. The Biden administration floated a first-of-its-kind standard for gas stoves that would have effectively banned sales of roughly half the models on the market. Its proposed guidelines for microwaves were so strict, manufacturers complained they might...
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