Energy Department issues five new regulations that Trump could try to cancel

It’s not over yet for Obama era rules, regulations, and other consequential decisions — which in recent days have included protecting much of the Arctic and Atlantic from offshore drilling and designating new national monuments.

The Department of Energy also has been busy finishing a sweeping Obama era program of energy-efficiency standards touching on everything from electric motors to commercial air conditioners. And on Wednesday, it unveiled five more of these standards, or regulations, affecting the following products: portable air conditioners, swimming pool pumps, walk-in coolers and freezers, commercial boilers, and — perhaps most obscure of all — uninterruptable power supplies, which keep devices like computers running during power failures.

But as Andrew DeLaski, head of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, notes, there’s a catch — there’s a 45-day waiting period before these standards can be published in the Federal Register. That means that it will be the Trump administration following through on that process.

‘‘We’re in uncharted territory,’’ DeLaski said. ‘‘I don’t think there’s ever been a situation where an administration has issued a standard, but then not have it published in the Federal Register.”

Read more (The Boston Globe)