Principal Dan Eisenberg (Washington, DC) recently spoke with Reuters about the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) strategy in defending Biden-era energy efficiency standards for stoves set by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
The article, “What DOJ’s defense of energy standards for stoves says about Trump’s view of executive power,” examines the interplay between the Trump administration’s interest in defending the use of direct final rules and its broader deregulatory agenda. In this instance, the Administration is moving to preserve presidential authority to expedite rulemakings at its own discretion, even though it means defending an environmental regulation that it would not have promulgated itself.
Earlier this year, the Trump DOE announced 47 regulatory changes affecting fossil fuels, renewables, and efficiency in response to executive orders calling for the rollback of existing water and energy efficiency standards. Those rollbacks notably excluded an efficiency standard for stoves that the Biden administration finalized. Not only has DOE elected to maintain the more stringent efficiency standard, but it has gone to court to defend the standard from a challenge by a coalition of Republican state Attorneys General.
Dan explained why the Trump administration might have chosen to defend its direct final rule process, which “gives (the administration) a lot of discretion,” that it could use going forward to pursue deregulation over the objection of environmental and consumer groups.
Dan counsels a wide range of manufacturing and retail industry clients on compliance with state and federal appliance efficiency programs and defends enforcement actions brought under those programs.