House Energy Committee Republicans Blast Biden Administration for Floating ‘Nanny State’ Gas-Stove Ban

Republicans on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent President Biden a letter on Friday expressing “strong opposition” to any potential ban on gas stoves.

The letter, obtained by Fox News, comes in response to comments by U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. to Bloomberg News suggesting the commission was set to open public comment on the dangers of gas stoves sometime this winter. He said the commission could set standards on emissions from the gas stoves, or even look to ban the manufacture or import of the appliances over health concerns. However, the commission’s chairman later disputed these claims.

Nonetheless, the Republicans on the House committee issued a strong rebuke of any such proposals in their letter on Friday.

“This kind of intrusion into the homes of Americans by the federal government as a way of forcing rush-to-green, liberal policies is the ‘nanny state’ at its worst,” the letter reads. “Banning natural gas stoves is not about public safety – it is another example of government control; like other policies we have seen from your administration, to tell Americans what kinds of cars they can drive, how they heat their homes, and how to live their lives.”

The letter went on to accuse the Biden administration of “prioritizing the environmental agenda of the Left, and ignoring science, over sound energy and economic policies.”

The lawmakers said gas stoves are “critical during emergency situations where electric stoves are useless, such as during power outages, which have been more frequent as unreliable ‘rush to green’ energy policies have destabilized our grid across the country.” 

“We call upon your administration to cease all efforts at the CPSC, and any other federal agency, to ban natural gas stoves and other home appliances reliant on natural gas, and to affirm the importance of natural gas as an affordable and reliable energy and heat source for American homes, from our stoves to our furnaces,” the letter says. “This country has led the way in reducing emissions in the world, and it has done so in part because of natural gas. It is a key energy source for America’s energy, environmental, and national security, and preserving American families’ way of life.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Wednesday that President Biden “does not support banning gas stoves.” She cited CPSC chairman Alexander D. Hoehn-Saric’s statement and said the commission, “which is independent, is not banning gas stoves” and said the White House is “not in touch with them on this particular issue.”

“Over the past several days, there has been a lot of attention paid to gas stove emissions and to the Consumer Product Safety Commission,” Hoehn-Saric wrote in an official statement released Wednesday. “To be clear, I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.”

An academic journal article published last month found that 12.7 percent of childhood asthma cases were linked to its usage in households. However, the study was funded by RMI, an environmental group that aims to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 50 percent within the next seven years, and the study’s lead author is part of RMI’s Carbon-Free Buildings initiative.

The study was not based on actual scientific research but was instead based on a mathematical formula that used information from previous studies in North America and Europe, and data about the number of children living in homes with gas stoves from the American Housing Survey.

Meanwhile, New York governor Kathy Hochul on Tuesday called to ban natural gas heating and appliances in the state’s new buildings in an effort to fight climate change.

While other discussion over a ban on gas stoves centered on alleged health risks, Hochul’s focus was on climate change when she proposed a ban on the use of fossil fuels by 2025 for newly built smaller structures and 2028 for larger ones. The proposal would also see the state ban the sale of new fossil-fuel heating systems beginning in 2030.