In an unexpected turn of events, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has decided to cancel a vote that was scheduled to advance President Biden’s nominee responsible for overseeing energy efficiency regulations, a report noted on Wednesday.
Fox News Digital reported that Committee Chairman Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) made the decision to remove the consideration of Jeff Marootian’s nomination to lead the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) from the agenda. The move means that the committee will not proceed with advancing Marootian’s nomination to a full floor vote and will focus instead on the remaining 21 items on the agenda.
“While I supported Mr. Marootian’s nomination in December, since then the office he’s been nominated to lead has proposed stove efficiency rules that I’ve raised concerns about,” Manchin told the outlet in a statement.
“While I appreciate that these rules would only apply to new stoves, my view is that it’s part of a broader, administration-wide effort to eliminate fossil fuels,” the West Virginia senator continued. “For that reason, I’m not comfortable moving forward with Mr. Marootian at this time.”
Marootian was initially nominated to lead the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) in July 2022. Before his nomination, Marootian held the position of special assistant to President Joe Biden and previously served as the director of the Washington, D.C., Department of Transportation.
The role Marootian is nominated for has been unoccupied since the departure of Daniel Simmons, who led the EERE office during the Trump administration in early 2021.
Fox News Digital added:
“DOE Secretary Jennifer Granholm then hired Marootian as her senior adviser for energy efficiency and renewable energy in September. His confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee took place in November and he was reported out of committee in December, but his nomination stalled at the end of session, forcing Biden to renominate him in January.”
Granholm said at the time that Marootian would be a “natural fit to lead the Department’s largest applied energy office” and help the current administration meet its “bold clean energy goals.”
The EERE office is tasked with decarbonizing the U.S. economy mostly through the regulation of commonly used consumer appliances.
“It’s just spreading to more and more appliances. It seems that almost everything that plugs in or fires up around the house is either subject to a pending regulation or soon will be,” Ben Lieberman, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Fox News Digital last week.
“Consumers aren’t going to like any of it,” he noted further. “These rules are almost always bad for consumers for the simple reason that they restrict consumer choice.”
