Given the aging of the American population and the likely relocation of the elderly to vacation regions, an examination of this possible impact of the proposed regulation is specifically relevant. As suggested above, this description would seem to apply to the elderly living alone, as well as single persons, and couples without children in the home. These groups are hardly negligible. Indeed, with the aging of the baby-boomers, these categories of consumers are likely to dominate in America's future. Thus, it is incumbent upon DOE to assess the demographics of the consumer marketplace in relation to the introduction of new energy efficient standards for clothes washers and the extent to which certain groups of consumers would be adversely affected by those new standards.
People living alone generally have considerably fewer clothes to wash.
Thus, the projections of the savings over the product's lifetime through reduced use of energy would be greatly out of sync with those consumers' usage. The increased costs to such consumers from the higher price of the machine should be considered. The DOE is assuming a discount rate of about 7 percent. Consumer Alert would offer that this rate does not reflect the true cost to consumers of higher prices due to energy efficient standards for new clothes washers. The discount rate used by DOE does not reflect consumers' opportunity costs, that is, the products and services consumers would have to forego in order to purchase a higher priced clothes washer.