"Environmental and consumer advocacy groups that say the Department of Energy is backtracking on energy efficiency by allowing old-style lightbulbs to stay on the market are arguing the Trump administration is going further and readying changes to more rules that could make it harder to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Those critics say revisions in the works — touching everything from furnaces to dishwashers — would slow energy efficiency efforts as part of an anti-regulatory push by the administration that has industry support.
'Because it's arcane and technical, the general public has no reason to know it exists, but at the same time it has this massive potential impact on one of government's key tools to fight climate change,' Lauren Urbanek, a senior energy policy advocate in the Natural Resources Defense Council's climate and clean energy program, said of one of the proposed changes to the department's 'process rule' under which new standards are developed. 'It's a major tool the government has at its disposal, but they're choosing to make it more difficult and less effective.'"
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