EPA Wants Gov't To Control How Cold Your Beer Can Be

Investor's Business Daily ^ | July 5, 2013 | IBD EDITORIALS

[raptor22]

Regulation: No longer the stuff of science fiction, a little-noticed change in energy-efficiency requirements for appliances could lead to government controlling the power used in your home and how you set your thermostat.

In a seemingly innocuous revision of its Energy Star efficiency requirements announced June 27, the Environmental Protection Agency included an "optional" requirement for a "smart-grid" connection for customers to electronically connect their refrigerators or freezers with a utility provider.

The feature lets the utility provider regulate the appliances' power consumption, "including curtailing operations during more expensive peak-demand times."

So far, manufacturers are not required to include the feature, only "encouraged," and consumers must still give permission to turn it on. But with the Obama administration's renewed focus on fighting mythical climate change, we expect it to become mandatory to save the planet from the perils of keeping your beer too cold.

"Manufacturers that build in and certify optional 'connected features' will earn a credit towards meeting the Energy Star efficiency requirements," according to an EPA email to CNSNews.com.

We are both intrigued and bothered by the notion that a utility company, the regulated energy sock-puppet of government, could and probably will have the power to regulate the power we use and how we use it, as long as we're paying our electricity bills, even to the point of turning these devices and appliances off at will.

[I want the USA back]

First it’s voluntary, with solemn promises to never make it compulsory. Then a few years later it’s compulsory.

[mylife]

My Hero!! Harry Tuttle!

[mrsmel]

It is frustrating and maddening to realise all the regulations we live under in this day age of supposedly more “freedom”. Our real freedom to live our lives is being eroded, and replaced with spurious “freedoms” to be more perverted, libertine, and licentious.

[raptor22]

IBD EDITORIAL PING

[ConservativeInPA]

So which do you take out first - the wine or your daughter?

My father, the English professor, would love that one!!! Needless to say, we do not make wine without drinking wine.

Thanks for the laugh at my expense.

[mrsmel]

You're right. The are plenty on the left who want increasing and intrusive regulations, as long as it doesn't apply to their "right" to be as perverted as they want to be. That's partly because they know that these kinds of regulations effect regular people, while the "freedoms" they support, like the freedom to push theor sodomy in the faces of other people and their children, and make them pay for the outrage, only applies to a subset of sickos. They want the sickos to have the power, like the sodomite Nazis before Hitler purged them.

[mylife]

"Central Services" here, Having trouble with your refrigerator?

[Trailerpark Badass]

You need the T-shirt

[mrsmel]

I wish it was just “their” business. That’s what the sodomites said years ago, that they just wanted government out of their bedrooms. The goal posts have moved far since then-now they want their bedrooms (and toilet stalls, and bath houses, etc) in everyone elses’ faces, including other peoples’ children.

[raptor22]

IBD EDITORIAL PING

[mylife]

There is a Tee shirt?!!

[mrsmel]

If that ever happened to me, I would pizzed, pizzed, pizzed, beyond anything I would be pizzed!

[Thebaddog]

They can pry my cold beer out of my cold dead hands.

[Trailerpark Badass]

Two, apparently.

You can but them at redbubble.

[slowhandluke]

Truth be told they want to be in control of when your beer is chilling, as opposed to warming in your refrigerator.

The one will lead to the other.

And surprisingly enough, for your other worry, it tends to get hot for everybody in one region at the same freaking time. So of course they want the AC to run at that same freaking time.

And it is no big deal to plan to make it possible to all be cool together. It is not expensive to do so, as proven by 80 years of doing so. That was what the electric industry was required to do by regulation for most of the last 80 years, provide all the electricity needed at a reasonable price. Now, they are being required to use expensive and unreliable 'green' energy. Don't build any new plants, and it won't be just expensive to all be cool together, it will be impossible. (except for the rich).

Yes, there are all sorts of different price plans as the regulators try to force you to be green, and the electric industry bean counters try to get that extra bit of profit. But at one time, those plans were not seen as good public policy by the rate setters.

The plants paying reduced rates for interruptible power are likely not interrupted at all. Most likely they are high electric users who CANNOT be interrupted and so have on-site backup generation. What these supposedly interruptible users are doing is getting lower rates for running their backup power for the benefit of the electric utility on an as needed basis.

So you are comparing apples and oranges when talking about residential and commercial/industrial interrupted power. If I got a whole house backup generator, I'd be ok with interrupted power from the utility at a lower rate. But not until then.

[KingLudd]

Cold beer is not a deal breaker.

[mylife]

I bookmarked the site.
Thanks for the tip.
You're a good man in a tight corner. ☺

[Secret Agent Man]

the government doesn’t do it. your private monopoly utility company does it. they technically are the ones making the change. lots of people are investigating off-grid ways to power their houses.

[Secret Agent Man]

exactly. never volunteer in the first place either.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

ROFLMAO! Best. One. Yet.

(I’m a Monthly. Thanks for the laugh!)