Donald Trump‘s push to gut federal energy efficiency rules may end up costing American families thousands of dollars more in utility bills. A new study finds those rules have already saved the average household about $6,000 over the past decade, and rolling them back would wipe out those gains.
According to a January 2026 report from the Appliance Standards Awareness Project (ASAP), U.S. households would have paid roughly $6,000 more in energy and water costs over the last ten years without federal efficiency standards in place. The analysis also found that businesses collectively saved $330 billion over the same period.
The Trump administration has been steadily dismantling those protections. In February 2025, the Department of Energy paused seven Biden-era appliance efficiency mandates. Then, in May 2025, Trump signed a memo directing the DOE to review and rescind standards covering dishwashers, toilets, showerheads, washing machines, and more. The DOE has since proposed rolling back rules for 17 product categories.
The cost of rolling back these rules
The administration argues that stripping these regulations will lower appliance prices and give consumers more options. Energy Secretary Chris Wright framed the February 2025 pause as a win, saying it would “foster consumer choice and lower prices.”
But efficiency advocates say the math does not add up. A separate ASAP analysis from last year found that while the DOE claimed its rollback package would save Americans $11 billion, the department’s own earlier data showed eliminating the same standards would cost households and businesses more than $54 billion in higher utility bills. The net loss: $43 billion.
“The costs of rolling these things back dwarf the benefits,” ASAP executive director Andrew deLaski said. “You’d have to be silly to completely ignore one side of the ledger, but that’s what the administration would like you to do.”
One product gives a clear picture of the gap. Rolling back air purifier efficiency rules would save buyers around $500 million upfront in lower purchase prices, but Marketplace reported that energy bill increases from that same rollback would cost those same buyers $14.1 billion over time.
What disappears if efficiency standards go away
The ASAP study put specific numbers on what disappears without these rules. In 2025 alone, U.S. electricity consumption would have been 14% higher. Summer peak electricity demand would have been 115 gigawatts greater, roughly double what all American data centers currently consume. An additional 1.5 trillion gallons of water would have been wasted.
Pollution would have increased sharply too. About 143,000 more tons of nitrogen oxides, chemicals linked to asthma attacks and cardiovascular disease, would have entered the air in 2025. That is nearly four times the annual emissions from every school bus in the country.
“These standards have kept utility bills far lower than they would have been,” said Joanna Mauer, deputy director of ASAP. “If the efforts from Congress and the administration to weaken the standards succeed, families and businesses could see significant increases in costs. Rollbacks are completely misguided, especially at a time when bills are already unaffordable for many people.”
Experts warn of a growing energy affordability crisis
The broader context makes this debate even more urgent. Residential electricity rates were already up 7.4% in late 2025 compared to the previous year. Commercial and industrial rates rose more than 6% over the same period.
Energy demand is also climbing fast. AI data centers are consuming power at a historically unprecedented pace, and experts say efficiency standards are one of the fastest tools available to keep bills from spiraling. The Trump administration has focused almost entirely on building new energy supply while dismantling the demand-side programs.
“Energy intensive industries are starting to increase energy demand in this country. Energy prices are increasing, and we’re also at a point where new supply is constrained,” said Mark Kresowik, senior policy director at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. “If the Trump administration succeeds in rolling back appliance standards and building codes and all the things it’s trying to do, costs are going to go up.”
The administration’s approach has also drawn criticism in other policy areas, where experts and courts have repeatedly pushed back on its decisions. Even some voices from outside the environmental world are raising alarms. Jennifer Schafer, a former Republican congressional staffer, told E&E News that energy efficiency should never have become a partisan issue.
“Not using megawatts of power is just as important as building new megawatts, and it’s quicker, cheaper, and easier,” she said. “This should be a bipartisan issue. It’s not something that should be politicized, and it has. That’s a problem.”
There is also a legal barrier the administration may struggle to clear. The 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act contains an explicit anti-backsliding provision that bars the DOE from setting new standards weaker than existing ones. Legal challenges from environmental groups are widely expected, though the administration has shown it is willing to test those limits. Pope Leo XIV recently pushed back against Trump on a separate front, underscoring how broadly resistance to the White House’s agenda has spread across institutions.
