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EPA Plans to Shut Down the Energy Star Program

247 points by danso 1y ago

out-of-ideas 1y ago
https://archive.ph/1zSnR https://archive.ph/1zSnR
hristov 1y ago
Very disappointing, although not unexpected. The energy star program was a very useful. It is very easy for a manufacturer to save a couple of bucks on some voltage converter circuits and saddle the customer with hundreds of dollars of electricity bills. And it was very difficult for the average consumer to weight what the energy efficiency of their appliances is. Energy star kept everyone honest and provided an accurate and comparable metric as to electricity usage.
bcoates 1y ago
Serious question: has anyone here ever based a purchasing decision on energy star labelling? (As opposed to efficiency/power cost/TCO in general, specifically refusing to buy non-logoed goods)
- riffraff 1y ago
  Forgive my ignorance as a EU customer, but how would you trust the power/efficiency claims without independent certification? (I suppose that's what the energystar is supposed to provide)
- hristov 1y ago
  The data you need for power cost calculations was also collected by the energy star program.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  I just received a $350 rebate on a variable speed pool pump I had installed, because of energy star. https://www.tampaelectric.com/residential/saveenergy/energystarpoolpump/ https://www.tampaelectric.com/residential/saveenergy/energys...
  - bcoates 1y ago
    Oof. My pool pump uses 0 watts, do I qualify? Not sure actively subsidizing recreational novelty uses of electricity is doing anything to save the planet
    - toomuchtodo 1y ago
      My old pool pump used more energy than my new pool pump and it’s cheaper to pay me to replace it versus future generation and emissions by continuing to use a less efficient applicance. I paid $2000 for the new pump, and the utility only offset $350 of that. Energy efficiency is why US electric consumption has been flat for so long (since 2008). Besides lighting, most residential load are appliances (refrigerator, washer, dryer, stove, microwave, pool pumps, TVs, water heater) or HVAC. So, those are the efficiency targets. The cheapest kWh is the one you didn’t have to generate and deliver. Very similar to demand response, where you pay consumers to shed non essential electrical loads (nest thermostat rush house rewards is an example of this) when the grid is at capacity. Similar incentives exist for heat pumps, water heaters, and dryers, as well as for disposing of an old inefficient fridge you might be hanging on to in your garage as a second unit. https://www.gdsassociates.com/electricity-use-flatline/ https://www.gdsassociates.com/electricity-use-flatline/
    - Larrikin 1y ago
      Do you support any government programs that don't directly benefit you?
      - mitthrowaway2 1y ago
        Presumably they do. GP is questioning if it even benefits the environment. (Edit: for reasons specifically related to it being rebates for a pool pump. In most parts of the world a private pool is a symbol of excess and waste, and the GP remarked on how they use less energy by not having one at all).
        toomuchtodo 1y ago
        It’s fairly straightforward to understand that energy efficiency programs offset combustion generation emissions through avoided energy use. It would’ve taken GP one glance at Wikipedia, if questioning the environment benefits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Star > More than 75 product categories are eligible for the ENERGY STAR label, including appliances, electronics, lighting, heating and cooling systems, and commercial equipment such as food service products. In the United States, the ENERGY STAR label often appears with the EnergyGuide label of eligible appliances to highlight energy-efficient products and compare energy use and operating costs. > One of the most successful voluntary initiatives introduced by the U.S. government, the program has saved 5 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity, more than US$500 billion in energy costs, and prevented 4 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Elements of the ENERGY STAR program are implemented in Canada, Japan, and Switzerland.
- Retric 1y ago
  Yea, in the early days you’d see huge variability in how much energy similar products used. Because of Energy Star that gap has generally shrunk, but that just means it’s working well.
  - SchemaLoad 1y ago
    Largely it's just worked. Products on the market are almost all efficient now because it's blatantly displayed on the front. The most obvious difference left is on fridges. The amount of power consumed varies quite a lot and in ways that are not obvious. Small fridges use a shocking amount of power because they use less efficient coolers without compressors.
    - potato3732842 1y ago
      > Small fridges use a shocking amount of power because they use less efficient coolers without compressors. This is only true of the tiniest fridges, the peltier effect ones that are about the size of a milk crate. Your typical mini fridge has a compressor.
- vampiresdoexist 1y ago
  Yes. My dehumidifier.
  - kcb 1y ago
    Same
- yodon 1y ago
  Yes. 100%. Before energy star, refrigerators were made with heating coils glued to the outer panels because it was cheaper to warm the outside of the fridge to avoid condensation than it was to install adequate insulation inside the fridge. The operating cost of those lightly insulated fridges was much higher, but the parts cost was a few dollars lower. Energy star and those yellow power consumption stickers changed that.
  - timewizard 1y ago
    > Before energy star, refrigerators were made with heating coils glued to the outer panels Do you have any examples of such products? I don't believe I've ever seen one. > it was cheaper to warm the outside of the fridge to avoid condensation A refrigerator has an evaporator inside the fridge to get cold but it must have a condenser on the outside to discharge heat. The outside of the fridge is going to get warm no matter what you do. The only time I've seen an actual heater used is when a fridge is placed outside where temperatures go below freezing. > but the parts cost was a few dollars lower. The labor cost was also significantly lower and the rate of production was higher. > than it was to install adequate insulation inside the fridge They used to be insulated with cork and then fiberglass which were the common technologies for their time. As soon as foam became more prevalent they switched to that. > Energy star and those yellow power consumption stickers changed that. It normalized the patchwork system that existed before it. California, as always, experienced the initial problem and created it's own standards on refrigerators sold in the state. Other states followed, the federal government picked at it slightly, and finally Energy Star came into existence mostly by industry demand.
    - HPsquared 1y ago
      Thinner walls on the fridge would mean greater internal volume. If volume is the only performance metric available, designs would tend towards something like that to maximise sales. That's all in theory though. I wonder if this could be a confusion arising from the use of heating coils to defrost the evaporator coil (auto-defrost). that's a different thing though.
- ocdtrekkie 1y ago
  I will be honest, I have long assumed everything in the store has Energy Star on it, and I am sorta doubtful companies will deliberately make less efficient appliances if it goes away. But it also seems like one of those things that surely doesn't cost much to keep around either. Getting rid of it is just virtue signaling to anti-climate people.
  - atonse 1y ago
    Yep, even if the EnergyStar label goes away, I'm going to want this data when making a purchase to get an idea of long term costs.
    - Spooky23 1y ago
      You’re not going to get it, as the regulation is gone.
      - tomnipotent 1y ago
        It's not a regulation, but an opt-in voluntary program.
    - Muromec 1y ago
      That reminds me of a moment in maybe 90ies when somebody in the local government over here was advocating to close the weather institute because you can just get weather news from TV anyway. That at least had a clear motive -- institute in question was located in a very nice location with a view and there was a line of developers forming to bribe said official and his colleges to get it for pennies and sell some nice apartments there. Institutional collapse is a thing.
  - vineyardmike 1y ago
    Article claims it costs $32M a year, which is effectively free relative to the cost of the remaining government.
  - DavidPeiffer 1y ago
    >...I am sorta doubtful companies will deliberately make less efficient appliances if it goes away. Working in the manufacturing space, I have no doubt designs will change and energy consumption will go up. They will be able to remove sensors, heat water hotter in dishwashers and clothes washers, run cycles more aggressively, and use cheaper motors (such as HVAC fans). Any item you can remove from the bill of materials adds to the profit directly. Capital expenditure versus operating expenditure is a common tradeoff discussed in a business sense, and the Energy Star gave a pretty darn good comparison for opex for consumers. Taking that away (even with some of the games that have been played over the years) is a huge loss for consumers.
- wmf 1y ago
  I think Energy Star (and similar state programs) has driven companies to increase efficiency in many products even if you don't care. (Unfortunately some of the "improvements" have been fake, like dishwashers that don't wash, and this has justifiably turned some people against the program.)
  - kiwijamo 1y ago
    Citation for dishwashers that don't wash. After switching back to dishwash powders (away from tablets -- which I learnt through a Technology Connections video basically don't work since it gets dissolved in the 10mins rinse cycle of most dishwashers) I've yet to have a bad dishwasher experience using powders which gets inserted into the wash cycle (and not the rinse cycle). Even the dirt cheap dishwasher I got as a package with my new house has no issues cleaning close to 100% of dishes on the first try, every single run. Everyone I know that complaints are tablet users and every time I point this out, I get a shrugs "too hard to use powder -- easy to just load a tablet and run it again a second time if I have to". Energy Star has been great on improving the energy efficiency of dishwashes -- we now need the same standard for the chemicals we put into the dishwashers! Banning tablets would be a great improvement IMHO but don't think we'll see that happening.
    - jemmyw 1y ago
      I've never had a problem with the tablets. The ones I use look like the powder is just compressed into tablet form. I do have a more expensive model, the only reason I go for the pricier ones is the noise level - don't really care for any of the other "features".
      - mcny 1y ago
        You should watch the whole video. It is not that long and definitely worth a watch.
        justapassenger 1y ago
        [dead]
- eclipticplane 1y ago
  Without Energy Star or regulations, what incentive do manufacturers have to display this information, and display it accurately? Consumers cannot hold manufacturers accountable. Even boycotts are under legal scrutiny. Our only option are class action lawsuits, which take years or longer and can be considered a cost of doing business, and have been stymied by binding arbitration contracts.
  - smitty1e 1y ago
    Your point is still largely true, but it is worth noting that, in the age of social media, the customer tail can wag the corporate dog. See: Bud Light.
    - pixl97 1y ago
      I mean not really. You'll end up with boycotts around potential political reasons but almost no effective ones around technical reasons.
      - fngjdflmdflg 1y ago
        Agreed that technical specs cannot easily be crowdsourced. And even comprehensive reviews quickly get outdated when new products release. I remember there used to be a Google engineer who would review USB-C cables on Amazon for compliance.[0] After looking at this again Amazon apparently ended up banning the sale of out of spec cables altogether. That kind of thing is the only real way to protect consumers. We can't rely on Google engineers to leave reviews for our products on Amazon. I do think products with clearly defined technical specs should in general be reported to the consumer. Same thing with nutrition labels. The lower the skill needed to evaluate something and the more well defined the problem space is, the easier it is to crowd source. For example Open Street Map works because the barrier to entry is relatively low and new cities aren't coming out every day. Similarly IMDB has a section that allows users to give their own parental rating to movies with their own explanation. That can compete with MPA film ratings because again the barrier to entry is low and movies don't change after they are released (in general). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benson_Leung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benson_Leung
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Rarely. But sometimes I will buy a lower-rated model because they are cheaper, simpler and more reliable.
- technofiend 1y ago
  Absolutely! I plan to buy a mini split, and efficiency is the biggest driver after properly sizing the unit for my space. Energy costs add up when you live where your air conditioner can run non-stop for months at a time.
  - bushbaba 1y ago
    generally its not energy star, but online reviews/audits of efficiency under various scenarios. Just like how for EVs we don't generally use MPGe but the range tests from YouTube & Blog reviewers.
    - foogazi 1y ago
      For gas powered cars I did look at mpg
  - happyopossum 1y ago
    Let’s be honest - you’re going to buy a mini split based on its capacity and SEER rating, not an energy star label.
    - OneDeuxTriSeiGo 1y ago
      Isn't the yellow energy star label what generally gets the SEER rating put front and center on a product instead of hidden on whatever page of the spec sheet/manual?
      - sokoloff 1y ago
        The yellow Energy Guide sticker is not part of Energy Star. The former is managed by the FTC and is required on all products in some categories. Energy Star is the blue and white label stickers granted to products meeting some energy efficiency levels and is managed by the EPA.
    - metaphor 1y ago
      Bad faith argument, and certainly not the case for homeowners intending to leverage certain tax incentives[1]. When I tapped this two years ago, it was for a ducted heat pump system replacement where the only immutable requirement was that the system had to have earned the ENERGY STAR label. SEER2 rating was a mere secondary consideration that had no impact on credit qualification; 14.8 was my saddle point. At the time, ductless mini-splits had to be ENERGY STAR certified and SEER2 > 16 to qualify. [1] https://www.energystar.gov/about/federal-tax-credits/air-source-heat-pumps https://www.energystar.gov/about/federal-tax-credits/air-sou...
- Someone1234 1y ago
  I'll filter appliances at big box stores by Energy Star, and then will side by side the run cost per year estimates. Do people NOT utilize Energy Star when making purchasing decisions?
  - zdragnar 1y ago
    I don't think I ever have. I've gone by customer and professional reviews, physical size, presence of features and anti-features (I won't get anything IoT-ified), but the energy star rating hasn't ever been a factor. I honestly don't remember for sure, but I have a vague impression of "significant difference in energy star rating is outweighed by significant difference in purchase price". Could be that was just the particular type of appliance years ago, though.
    - ab5tract 1y ago
      That sounds like a classic upfront cost fallacy, especially if you haven’t revisited it with actual calculations and for other appliance types.
      - zdragnar 1y ago
        Just for kicks I thought I'd look around to see how my memory was, and I realized I was thinking of the yellow energy guide numbers. Since there's no numbers attached to the energy star certification itself, it's a meaningless label that doesn't really tell what the difference is. With the energy guide labels, at least there's a point of comparison. Even then, the difference between models of a few types of appliances I checked were typically in the 1-3% of the product cost range. The single biggest I could find online happened to be in TVs, where one brand's 65" was half the estimated annual electric cost of another- a savings of $20 per year! It'd pay for the difference in price between the models in 3 years, and pay for itself in 25! Granted, I didn't see numbers for the likely worst offenders: central air conditioning and electric ovens.
        relaxing 1y ago
- foogazi 1y ago
  Yes, I used it when picking out a refrigerator and TV
- Spivak 1y ago
  Literally the "Energy Star" logo, no. But the big yellow datasheet sticker which has its power usage and other info, yes.
- metaphor 1y ago
  Yes[1]. This includes every major appliance in my primary home...and HEPA air cleaners too. [1] https://www.energystar.gov/about/federal-tax-credits/air-source-heat-pumps https://www.energystar.gov/about/federal-tax-credits/air-sou...
- freen 1y ago
  100% Energy costs over the lifetime of many appliances types are many multiples of initial purchase price.
- koliber 1y ago
  Absolutely. Sometimes I do a TCO analysis by subtracting the energy savings over 7 years (or 5, or 10 or whatever I estimate the useful life to be) from the more expensive price of the more energy efficient product. Occasionally it comes out less than the cheaper product.
- sokoloff 1y ago
  I’ve made purchasing decisions based on TCO projections from the yellow Energy Guide stickers (managed by the FTC). I’ve never knowingly made one based on the blue Energy Star stickers. (However if some kickback or tax credit scheme depended on those stickers, then I may have made a decision influenced by the kickback and therefore by the Energy Star sticker.) One particular example was a tradeoff calculation for water heaters. I forget what the exact TCO tradeoff point was but it was ridiculously short (between 1-2 years). I was replacing a leaking/failed heater and expected it to be shortly thereafter replaced due to a basement remodel we had planned. I bought the best insulated one as it saved money if we used it for just 2 years. 16 years later, that unit failed (we didn’t do the planned remodel). That was based on the FTC sticker only (plus my actual gas rates). Edit to add: we then replaced that water heater with an electric heat pump water heater (which is eligible for the IRS tax credit scheme, which requires they "must meet or exceed the highest efficiency tier (not including any advanced tier) established by the Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE)") and all of the EPA Energy Star rated heat pump ones do, but I'd argue that the heater would still carry the highest CEE rating with or without the Energy Star program, so I still didn't purchase based solely or primarily on any factor that the star under-pinned, but if there was a heat pump water heater that didn't have the sticker, I'd have had to look to be sure it was still eligible for the rebate.
- LeafItAlone 1y ago
  A few years ago I needed a fridge for my hobby space. One where I could store various substances that I didn’t want stored by my food. I was originally looking for a mini fridge like what you’d think of belonging in an American dorm room. In the store, I noticed the medium sized fridges (more akin to what one might think of in a European studio apartment) actually used less energy according to the yellow sticker, so I went with that. This was a case where I wasn’t really looking for anything very specific, though, so it’s not like I was already limited in options and limited more by that sticker.
9283409232 1y ago
[flagged]
- delfinom 1y ago
  [flagged]
spamizbad 1y ago
It seems like everything this administration thinks will make America better somehow also involves making everything I buy and use more expensive. Except maybe gasoline, although not as much as one would think.
- olalonde 1y ago
  There's no doubts tariffs will make everything more expensive but I don't see how shutting down this program would affect costs. Plus, a private certification program could easily fill in the void.
  - hristov 1y ago
    Not sure about that. Industry created, private energy efficiency programs have often been nothing more than industry cheerleaders.
  - TylerE 1y ago
    Is there a single rocket certification program in any industry that is actually pro-consumer? I’m failing to think of an example. Private industry cannot be trusted to act in any interest but their own bottom line.
    - olalonde 1y ago
      Energy Star, as a matter of fact, is almost entirely privately run. Certification is voluntary and testing/verification is done by private labs. Replace government by some industry consortium or non-profit and not much as changed.
  - ncr100 1y ago
    Appliances can use less energy of the mfrs are encouraged to design that. Energy Star was that encouragement.
  - hotpotatoe 1y ago
    Here is a bright idea, keep the existing program that works and therefore we wouldn’t need some mythical private certification program that doesn’t exist and probably be a scam if it did.
standardUser 1y ago
When it comes to reducing emissions, increased efficiency has been a bigger factor than green energy production, at least historically. Perhaps that's changed by now with the rapid growth of wind and solar in recent years. But energy efficiency technology isn't performative or "woke", it equates to power plants that didn't have to be built and money you and me saved on our electric bills every month our whole lives. But to be honest, I'm not even sure how efficient Energy Star is these days. It feels like the US is behind Europe and East Asia by a decade, at least from a consumer perspective.
GiorgioG 1y ago
[flagged]
- fnordpiglet 1y ago
  Not even when buying a high power usage appliance with a large range of efficiency like a fridge, water heater, etc? That’s awfully odd - because the spread on efficiency for such items can be huge. Before energy Star it was even worse with just crazy bad efficiencies and no transparency.
  - GiorgioG 1y ago
    My home has a tankless water heater, which I appreciate for the unlimited hot water supply…and it’s probably saving me money too. Americans (myself included) have enormous refrigerators compared to Europeans…if we really gave a shit, we’d have fridges half the size we have today. We’d also hang our clothes to dry and might not even have a dryer at all. Way better for the environment…
    - fnordpiglet 1y ago
      I’m not even making an environmental statement. The spread in dollar cost per year in operating an efficiently cooled and insulated fridge and one that is neither is enormous. Obviously the size of the enclosed space matters as the heat gain is proportional to the surface area. But for the same volume you can spend 2x per year depending on the model. Before energy star there was no way to know which was relatively more efficient. This led to people buying appliances that were extraordinarily and unreasonably inefficient, costing way more than necessary. This is a return to the “bad old days.”
- subsection1h 1y ago
  "I'm a climate-change not-care-er." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35659006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35659006
  - GiorgioG 1y ago
phendrenad2 1y ago
The purpose of this is obviously to end tax breaks for businesses that meet energy star certification.
- kristopolous 1y ago
  It's a right wing grievance attack on the environment. Just like there was a right-wing grievance attack on education, science, water quality, air quality, due process, food inspections, being bound by the constitution ... Basically anything that seeks to make things better. They feel oppressed by all of it. But don't worry. When your food is full of mercury and you're breathing in lead in a few years, the right wing will be there to blame DEI and wokeism for it because that's how they operate: destroy things, blame scapegoats, win elections, repeat. There's people like Chris Rufo that openly state it's their strategy. None of this is speculative.
  - wombatpm 1y ago
    Now is a good time to read The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner.
  - Spivak 1y ago
    Yeah, it's a weird situation with the current administration because they're clearly on a revenge tour and it will be hard to predict what their actual government will look like once they cool off. They're still acting like the opposition party and if they keep this up for all four years they might remain as such.
SoftTalker 1y ago
[flagged]
withinrafael 1y ago
The GAO wrote a report on fraud, waste, and abuse potential of Energy Star in 2010. They were able to get a gas-powered alarm clock (and 14 other fake products) marked as Energy Star compliant. Worth a read/laugh. https://www.gao.gov/assets/files.gao.gov/assets/gao-10-470.pdf https://www.gao.gov/assets/files.gao.gov/assets/gao-10-470.p...
- defrost 1y ago
  It's a trite trueism that all systems are vulnerable to fraud and abuse and it's no suprise the GAO was able to demonstrate the potential for abuse fourteen years ago. What would be more interesting would be a historic examination on the amount of fraud and abuse that actually takes place in the Energy Star program and whether the various decade plus old recommendations: We briefed program officials with the Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and EPA OIG as well as attorneys with the Consumer Protection division of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on the results of our work, and incorporated their comments concerning controls in place to protect the Energy Star label from fraud and abuse. proved useful in finding such fraud or in decreasing any occurance.
  - cjpearson 1y ago
    Every couple days I get a pretty blatant spam email in my inbox. It's frustrating that gmail's spam filter doesn't catch these, especially since I recall it working better in the past. But I'm not going to turn off the filter because it still catches dozens of spam emails a day. Showing that a system has flaws doesn't necessarily prove that a system is useless. You have to look at the overall impact. In cases where you have an imperfect but useful system (such as most government regulation and enforcement) finding vulnerabilities is an important part of improving the system. A police department which only catches some murderers should work on catching more criminals rather than deciding it's hopeless and we might as well make homicide legal.
  - mike_hearn 1y ago
    Overall levels of fraud are almost by definition hard to measure precisely. Demanding precision is simply a way to duck the issue. It's easier to precisely measure red teaming efforts, because then you know the denominator. There is no incentive to run these programmes well and no downside to failing so you should assume fraud is rampant. When the GAO got a gas-powered alarm clock approved, who in the department lost their jobs? Did the head of the EPA get fired? Did they all lose their bonuses? No, they held a meeting where they claimed it didn't matter because the industry self-polices.
adzm 1y ago
The best part about energy star I think was that it allows me to clearly see the energy consumption of the product. Without that it might not be as straightforward to find, and I'd probably be more skeptical of its accuracy
- yborg 1y ago
  That's probably the main reason they want to do away with it. Eliminating any semblance of independent factual information across the board means that the truth becomes whatever the best bankrolled says it is. I could see them eliminating the MPG/eMPG ratings on vehicles next.
  - mike_hearn 1y ago
    It's easy and more direct for Consumer Reports style companies to measure energy consumption themselves, instead of assuming that the producer's self-reports are fully accurate because there's a regulator who may or may not be paying attention.
    - eesmith 1y ago
      CR only reviews products after they are available on the market, it does not review all products on the market, and access to the reviews require a subscription. How do you compare three hot water heaters when all three brands are "refreshed" each year, so the specific models aren't listed on CR? It's easier for consumer groups like CR to back-stop the regulatory agencies by identifying and reporting fraudulent self-reports.
      - mike_hearn 1y ago
        Access to the Energy Star reviews requires a 'subscription' too, in the form of a tax. The difference is that people who aren't in the market and don't want to buy it are forced to, for which there is no moral basis. If there are products that don't have reviews at all, just don't buy them in favor of those that do. In markets where consumers are choosy (e.g. films) companies often ensure reviewers have early access to products to ensure reviews are plentiful.
cantrecallmypwd 1y ago
Hide the ability of consumers to make informed choices. Meanwhile, logging old growth forests, drilling more oil, scoffing at renewables and EVs, and building power-hungry data centers for marginal-utility AI owned by a handful of billionaires. Flu vaccines are in doubt, the chaos and riots will begin around June/July when the shelves are empty and prices double.
- Hilift 1y ago
  This isn't about consumers or decisions. Rick Perry stated in the 2012 election that he would eliminate several departments, including Energy, Education, and Interior. The Republicans don't want life centralized around a federal government. The current state of the debt will also make it very easy to jettison Medicaid. Nearly all state and local governments today are incentivized to solicit federal aid for education/medicare for ~30% of their budgets, which is a curiously fragile design.
modeless 1y ago
[flagged]
- reseasonable 1y ago
  Not one of my last five dishwashers (Bosch / Samsung) have had any problem with drying dishes. I have had three in my current house (two kitchens) and they work just fine. One will even auto-open the door to dry faster. Is this really a problem of energy star?
- sokoloff 1y ago
  My dishwasher (an 11 year old Bosch, which was Energy Star rated) is by far the best dishwasher I've owned at cleaning items and dries them perfectly well also on its default settings. It won't dry a bowl or ladle that's been turned to fill up with water, but anything that's oriented to shed water comes out bone dry.
- justinrubek 1y ago
  I have a brand new dishwasher from last year. It dries just fine.
- mrguyorama 1y ago
  I've never used heated dry in any dishwasher in my entire life. It's a massive waste of power for no gain, and will destroy things like plastic food containers and utensils. Your dishes dry just fine through normal air. The dirt cheap dishwasher my family had in the 90s even had a little flap to let out the steam and let in cool air after the cycle was done. I can't understand how people are so insistent this is even a mild annoyance, let alone something worth destroying our government over. I think some of you guys are buying "high end" appliances on this mistaken belief of "it's so much more expensive, surely something about it is better right?" and just get taken for a ride. Nothing in those super "smart" dishwashers has any value.
raverbashing 1y ago
Unacceptable I need that Energy Star logo showing up while my PC bios is doing a memory test
wombatpm 1y ago
Can we get rid of LEED Certification levels next?
timoth3y 1y ago
This is so frustrating. Energy Star has been a huge success over the past 30 years. It's (now) widely supported by industry, has reduced the TCO to consumers for most household appliances, and results in hundreds of billions of kWh of electricity saved every year. Energy Star is not some tree-hugging, drum-circle, feel-good program. The US urgently needs to expand and modernize our grid. Every GW of power saved, is GW of generation and transmission capacity that we don't have to build and maintain.
- jstanley 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - bravetraveler 1y ago
    Doubtful, of my four displays only one behaves this way
  - SECProto 1y ago
    No. I have several monitors of similar age, and their startup times vary significantly. It's a result of manufacturer choices, but not some nefarious impact of labels that tell you how much power a thing uses.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    How many various inputs does the display on your phone need to scan and handshake?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- timr 1y ago
  EnergyStar has nothing to do with "modernizing the grid". It is, however, why any new dishwasher in the US takes like 4 hours to finish a load, unless you put it into non-bureaucratic mode. Meanwhile, we're driving energy consumption into the stratosphere with datacenters full of completely unregulated [1] GPUs that are mining scamcoins and generating incorrect search results. The usual libertarian point applies here: just because the government stops doing X doesn't mean that you automatically get less X. Particularly in the case of EnergyStar, I think it's well into the tail of diminishing returns on investment -- manufacturers don't have any incentive to start producing power-guzzling appliances when power costs are increasing. Its the sort of program that sounds good in theory, and maybe made sense at one point, but doesn't hold up to scrutiny. [1] I'm not arguing for regulation on GPUs...just pointing out that EnergyStar isn't touching the currently important part of the problem.
dyauspitr 1y ago
A general war on anything that improves the quality of living.
- Muromec 1y ago
  Not in anything-anything, but quality of living for people not rich enough to have their own space program.
sokoloff 1y ago
NB: the yellow Energy Guide stickers are managed/required by the FTC. This article is about the blue Energy Star sticker program, which is managed by the EPA. FTC - Federal Trade Commission EPA - Environmental Protection Agency
- credit_guy 1y ago
  I had no idea. I googled, and you are right. Here's the description of Energy Star from the EPA website [1] > The ENERGY STAR label saves you the effort needed to process all the information on the EnergyGuide sticker by simply designating the products that are highly efficient. When you see a product that has earned the ENERGY STAR, it means it meets strict guidelines for energy savings set by the EPA. Only manufacturers that independently certify their product’s performance are allowed to use it. (And when they do, you’ll find that manufacturers sometimes incorporate the ENERGY STAR label right into the EnergyGuide label, giving you the best of both worlds). [1] https://www.energystar.gov/products/ask-the-experts/whats-difference-between-energy-guide-and-energy-star https://www.energystar.gov/products/ask-the-experts/whats-di...
pfoof 1y ago
As a European this thing brings more nostalgia than practicality. However, isn't it better to implement this A -> G scale we have in the EU? It's easier to read than EnergyGuide.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
It's good thing Trump wasn't president after the Montreal Protocol or he would have pulled out of that (FAKE SCIENCE!!!) and let US companies continue to produce CFCs. Think how depleted the ozone layer would be by now.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
Besides information to consumers, the biggest benefit of programs like this is the pressure that they put on manufacturers to make their appliances more energy efficient. This drives innovation. Will some manufacturers obfuscate and lie? Sure, but overall it's effective in pushing industry in a certain direction that is important for the country and consumers. As with gutting the EPA in general, dropping this is another step towards trying to remove any regulatory pressure on companies so they can focus on maximizing profits for shareholders. Idiots.
wink 1y ago
My first reaction was "huh?" - I very much remember this logo as a thing of the 90s, apparently I didn't pay attention since it vanished from the BIOS screens. Am I just personally oblivious or is it more prominent in the US?
reverendsteveii 1y ago
I can understand, I guess, preferring fossil fuel energy to renewable. There is an argument to be made about the economic impact of depending on one thing for a long time and then switching over to the other. But shutting down a thing whose job is to promote efficient use of energy regardless of the source is just making things worse because you can.
xnx 1y ago
A carbon tax has its problems, but it is very attractive in how many incentives it would automatically align without explicit bureaucracy.
sschueller 1y ago
RIP the Energy Star logo in some bioses.
- zozbot234 1y ago
  That logo went away when they stopped supporting proper S3 sleep.
EasyMark 1y ago
This is so fkn stupid. None of the energystar items I've looked at have suffered from any issues over the years and no doubt have saved me a lot of money. Now things will just be even more opaque and the environment will be made all the worse for it. I can't wait until this clown circus is out of office. Sure the midterms will overturn most of the clown show or at least put a wall around it to stop the damage.

247 points by danso 1y ago

https://archive.ph/1zSnR https://archive.ph/1zSnR

Very disappointing, although not unexpected. The energy star program was a very useful. It is very easy for a manufacturer to save a couple of bucks on some voltage converter circuits and saddle the customer with hundreds of dollars of electricity bills. And it was very difficult for the average consumer to weight what the energy efficiency of their appliances is. Energy star kept everyone honest and provided an accurate and comparable metric as to electricity usage.

bcoates 1y ago

Serious question: has anyone here ever based a purchasing decision on energy star labelling? (As opposed to efficiency/power cost/TCO in general, specifically refusing to buy non-logoed goods)

riffraff 1y ago
Forgive my ignorance as a EU customer, but how would you trust the power/efficiency claims without independent certification? (I suppose that's what the energystar is supposed to provide)
hristov 1y ago
The data you need for power cost calculations was also collected by the energy star program.
toomuchtodo 1y ago
I just received a $350 rebate on a variable speed pool pump I had installed, because of energy star. https://www.tampaelectric.com/residential/saveenergy/energystarpoolpump/ https://www.tampaelectric.com/residential/saveenergy/energys...
- bcoates 1y ago
  Oof. My pool pump uses 0 watts, do I qualify? Not sure actively subsidizing recreational novelty uses of electricity is doing anything to save the planet
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    My old pool pump used more energy than my new pool pump and it’s cheaper to pay me to replace it versus future generation and emissions by continuing to use a less efficient applicance. I paid $2000 for the new pump, and the utility only offset $350 of that. Energy efficiency is why US electric consumption has been flat for so long (since 2008). Besides lighting, most residential load are appliances (refrigerator, washer, dryer, stove, microwave, pool pumps, TVs, water heater) or HVAC. So, those are the efficiency targets. The cheapest kWh is the one you didn’t have to generate and deliver. Very similar to demand response, where you pay consumers to shed non essential electrical loads (nest thermostat rush house rewards is an example of this) when the grid is at capacity. Similar incentives exist for heat pumps, water heaters, and dryers, as well as for disposing of an old inefficient fridge you might be hanging on to in your garage as a second unit. https://www.gdsassociates.com/electricity-use-flatline/ https://www.gdsassociates.com/electricity-use-flatline/
  - Larrikin 1y ago
    Do you support any government programs that don't directly benefit you?
    - mitthrowaway2 1y ago
      Presumably they do. GP is questioning if it even benefits the environment. (Edit: for reasons specifically related to it being rebates for a pool pump. In most parts of the world a private pool is a symbol of excess and waste, and the GP remarked on how they use less energy by not having one at all).
      - toomuchtodo 1y ago
        It’s fairly straightforward to understand that energy efficiency programs offset combustion generation emissions through avoided energy use. It would’ve taken GP one glance at Wikipedia, if questioning the environment benefits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Star > More than 75 product categories are eligible for the ENERGY STAR label, including appliances, electronics, lighting, heating and cooling systems, and commercial equipment such as food service products. In the United States, the ENERGY STAR label often appears with the EnergyGuide label of eligible appliances to highlight energy-efficient products and compare energy use and operating costs. > One of the most successful voluntary initiatives introduced by the U.S. government, the program has saved 5 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity, more than US$500 billion in energy costs, and prevented 4 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Elements of the ENERGY STAR program are implemented in Canada, Japan, and Switzerland.
Retric 1y ago
Yea, in the early days you’d see huge variability in how much energy similar products used. Because of Energy Star that gap has generally shrunk, but that just means it’s working well.
- SchemaLoad 1y ago
  Largely it's just worked. Products on the market are almost all efficient now because it's blatantly displayed on the front. The most obvious difference left is on fridges. The amount of power consumed varies quite a lot and in ways that are not obvious. Small fridges use a shocking amount of power because they use less efficient coolers without compressors.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    > Small fridges use a shocking amount of power because they use less efficient coolers without compressors. This is only true of the tiniest fridges, the peltier effect ones that are about the size of a milk crate. Your typical mini fridge has a compressor.
vampiresdoexist 1y ago
Yes. My dehumidifier.
- kcb 1y ago
  Same
yodon 1y ago
Yes. 100%. Before energy star, refrigerators were made with heating coils glued to the outer panels because it was cheaper to warm the outside of the fridge to avoid condensation than it was to install adequate insulation inside the fridge. The operating cost of those lightly insulated fridges was much higher, but the parts cost was a few dollars lower. Energy star and those yellow power consumption stickers changed that.
- timewizard 1y ago
  > Before energy star, refrigerators were made with heating coils glued to the outer panels Do you have any examples of such products? I don't believe I've ever seen one. > it was cheaper to warm the outside of the fridge to avoid condensation A refrigerator has an evaporator inside the fridge to get cold but it must have a condenser on the outside to discharge heat. The outside of the fridge is going to get warm no matter what you do. The only time I've seen an actual heater used is when a fridge is placed outside where temperatures go below freezing. > but the parts cost was a few dollars lower. The labor cost was also significantly lower and the rate of production was higher. > than it was to install adequate insulation inside the fridge They used to be insulated with cork and then fiberglass which were the common technologies for their time. As soon as foam became more prevalent they switched to that. > Energy star and those yellow power consumption stickers changed that. It normalized the patchwork system that existed before it. California, as always, experienced the initial problem and created it's own standards on refrigerators sold in the state. Other states followed, the federal government picked at it slightly, and finally Energy Star came into existence mostly by industry demand.
  - HPsquared 1y ago
    Thinner walls on the fridge would mean greater internal volume. If volume is the only performance metric available, designs would tend towards something like that to maximise sales. That's all in theory though. I wonder if this could be a confusion arising from the use of heating coils to defrost the evaporator coil (auto-defrost). that's a different thing though.
ocdtrekkie 1y ago
I will be honest, I have long assumed everything in the store has Energy Star on it, and I am sorta doubtful companies will deliberately make less efficient appliances if it goes away. But it also seems like one of those things that surely doesn't cost much to keep around either. Getting rid of it is just virtue signaling to anti-climate people.
- atonse 1y ago
  Yep, even if the EnergyStar label goes away, I'm going to want this data when making a purchase to get an idea of long term costs.
  - Spooky23 1y ago
    You’re not going to get it, as the regulation is gone.
    - tomnipotent 1y ago
      It's not a regulation, but an opt-in voluntary program.
  - Muromec 1y ago
    That reminds me of a moment in maybe 90ies when somebody in the local government over here was advocating to close the weather institute because you can just get weather news from TV anyway. That at least had a clear motive -- institute in question was located in a very nice location with a view and there was a line of developers forming to bribe said official and his colleges to get it for pennies and sell some nice apartments there. Institutional collapse is a thing.
- vineyardmike 1y ago
  Article claims it costs $32M a year, which is effectively free relative to the cost of the remaining government.
- DavidPeiffer 1y ago
  >...I am sorta doubtful companies will deliberately make less efficient appliances if it goes away. Working in the manufacturing space, I have no doubt designs will change and energy consumption will go up. They will be able to remove sensors, heat water hotter in dishwashers and clothes washers, run cycles more aggressively, and use cheaper motors (such as HVAC fans). Any item you can remove from the bill of materials adds to the profit directly. Capital expenditure versus operating expenditure is a common tradeoff discussed in a business sense, and the Energy Star gave a pretty darn good comparison for opex for consumers. Taking that away (even with some of the games that have been played over the years) is a huge loss for consumers.
wmf 1y ago
I think Energy Star (and similar state programs) has driven companies to increase efficiency in many products even if you don't care. (Unfortunately some of the "improvements" have been fake, like dishwashers that don't wash, and this has justifiably turned some people against the program.)
- kiwijamo 1y ago
  Citation for dishwashers that don't wash. After switching back to dishwash powders (away from tablets -- which I learnt through a Technology Connections video basically don't work since it gets dissolved in the 10mins rinse cycle of most dishwashers) I've yet to have a bad dishwasher experience using powders which gets inserted into the wash cycle (and not the rinse cycle). Even the dirt cheap dishwasher I got as a package with my new house has no issues cleaning close to 100% of dishes on the first try, every single run. Everyone I know that complaints are tablet users and every time I point this out, I get a shrugs "too hard to use powder -- easy to just load a tablet and run it again a second time if I have to". Energy Star has been great on improving the energy efficiency of dishwashes -- we now need the same standard for the chemicals we put into the dishwashers! Banning tablets would be a great improvement IMHO but don't think we'll see that happening.
  - jemmyw 1y ago
    I've never had a problem with the tablets. The ones I use look like the powder is just compressed into tablet form. I do have a more expensive model, the only reason I go for the pricier ones is the noise level - don't really care for any of the other "features".
    - mcny 1y ago
      You should watch the whole video. It is not that long and definitely worth a watch.
      - justapassenger 1y ago
        [dead]
eclipticplane 1y ago
Without Energy Star or regulations, what incentive do manufacturers have to display this information, and display it accurately? Consumers cannot hold manufacturers accountable. Even boycotts are under legal scrutiny. Our only option are class action lawsuits, which take years or longer and can be considered a cost of doing business, and have been stymied by binding arbitration contracts.
- smitty1e 1y ago
  Your point is still largely true, but it is worth noting that, in the age of social media, the customer tail can wag the corporate dog. See: Bud Light.
  - pixl97 1y ago
    I mean not really. You'll end up with boycotts around potential political reasons but almost no effective ones around technical reasons.
    - fngjdflmdflg 1y ago
      Agreed that technical specs cannot easily be crowdsourced. And even comprehensive reviews quickly get outdated when new products release. I remember there used to be a Google engineer who would review USB-C cables on Amazon for compliance.[0] After looking at this again Amazon apparently ended up banning the sale of out of spec cables altogether. That kind of thing is the only real way to protect consumers. We can't rely on Google engineers to leave reviews for our products on Amazon. I do think products with clearly defined technical specs should in general be reported to the consumer. Same thing with nutrition labels. The lower the skill needed to evaluate something and the more well defined the problem space is, the easier it is to crowd source. For example Open Street Map works because the barrier to entry is relatively low and new cities aren't coming out every day. Similarly IMDB has a section that allows users to give their own parental rating to movies with their own explanation. That can compete with MPA film ratings because again the barrier to entry is low and movies don't change after they are released (in general). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benson_Leung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benson_Leung
SoftTalker 1y ago
Rarely. But sometimes I will buy a lower-rated model because they are cheaper, simpler and more reliable.
technofiend 1y ago
Absolutely! I plan to buy a mini split, and efficiency is the biggest driver after properly sizing the unit for my space. Energy costs add up when you live where your air conditioner can run non-stop for months at a time.
- bushbaba 1y ago
  generally its not energy star, but online reviews/audits of efficiency under various scenarios. Just like how for EVs we don't generally use MPGe but the range tests from YouTube & Blog reviewers.
  - foogazi 1y ago
    For gas powered cars I did look at mpg
- happyopossum 1y ago
  Let’s be honest - you’re going to buy a mini split based on its capacity and SEER rating, not an energy star label.
  - OneDeuxTriSeiGo 1y ago
    Isn't the yellow energy star label what generally gets the SEER rating put front and center on a product instead of hidden on whatever page of the spec sheet/manual?
    - sokoloff 1y ago
      The yellow Energy Guide sticker is not part of Energy Star. The former is managed by the FTC and is required on all products in some categories. Energy Star is the blue and white label stickers granted to products meeting some energy efficiency levels and is managed by the EPA.
  - metaphor 1y ago
    Bad faith argument, and certainly not the case for homeowners intending to leverage certain tax incentives[1]. When I tapped this two years ago, it was for a ducted heat pump system replacement where the only immutable requirement was that the system had to have earned the ENERGY STAR label. SEER2 rating was a mere secondary consideration that had no impact on credit qualification; 14.8 was my saddle point. At the time, ductless mini-splits had to be ENERGY STAR certified and SEER2 > 16 to qualify. [1] https://www.energystar.gov/about/federal-tax-credits/air-source-heat-pumps https://www.energystar.gov/about/federal-tax-credits/air-sou...
Someone1234 1y ago
I'll filter appliances at big box stores by Energy Star, and then will side by side the run cost per year estimates. Do people NOT utilize Energy Star when making purchasing decisions?
- zdragnar 1y ago
  I don't think I ever have. I've gone by customer and professional reviews, physical size, presence of features and anti-features (I won't get anything IoT-ified), but the energy star rating hasn't ever been a factor. I honestly don't remember for sure, but I have a vague impression of "significant difference in energy star rating is outweighed by significant difference in purchase price". Could be that was just the particular type of appliance years ago, though.
  - ab5tract 1y ago
    That sounds like a classic upfront cost fallacy, especially if you haven’t revisited it with actual calculations and for other appliance types.
    - zdragnar 1y ago
      Just for kicks I thought I'd look around to see how my memory was, and I realized I was thinking of the yellow energy guide numbers. Since there's no numbers attached to the energy star certification itself, it's a meaningless label that doesn't really tell what the difference is. With the energy guide labels, at least there's a point of comparison. Even then, the difference between models of a few types of appliances I checked were typically in the 1-3% of the product cost range. The single biggest I could find online happened to be in TVs, where one brand's 65" was half the estimated annual electric cost of another- a savings of $20 per year! It'd pay for the difference in price between the models in 3 years, and pay for itself in 25! Granted, I didn't see numbers for the likely worst offenders: central air conditioning and electric ovens.
      - relaxing 1y ago
foogazi 1y ago
Yes, I used it when picking out a refrigerator and TV
Spivak 1y ago
Literally the "Energy Star" logo, no. But the big yellow datasheet sticker which has its power usage and other info, yes.
metaphor 1y ago
Yes[1]. This includes every major appliance in my primary home...and HEPA air cleaners too. [1] https://www.energystar.gov/about/federal-tax-credits/air-source-heat-pumps https://www.energystar.gov/about/federal-tax-credits/air-sou...
freen 1y ago
100% Energy costs over the lifetime of many appliances types are many multiples of initial purchase price.
koliber 1y ago
Absolutely. Sometimes I do a TCO analysis by subtracting the energy savings over 7 years (or 5, or 10 or whatever I estimate the useful life to be) from the more expensive price of the more energy efficient product. Occasionally it comes out less than the cheaper product.
sokoloff 1y ago
I’ve made purchasing decisions based on TCO projections from the yellow Energy Guide stickers (managed by the FTC). I’ve never knowingly made one based on the blue Energy Star stickers. (However if some kickback or tax credit scheme depended on those stickers, then I may have made a decision influenced by the kickback and therefore by the Energy Star sticker.) One particular example was a tradeoff calculation for water heaters. I forget what the exact TCO tradeoff point was but it was ridiculously short (between 1-2 years). I was replacing a leaking/failed heater and expected it to be shortly thereafter replaced due to a basement remodel we had planned. I bought the best insulated one as it saved money if we used it for just 2 years. 16 years later, that unit failed (we didn’t do the planned remodel). That was based on the FTC sticker only (plus my actual gas rates). Edit to add: we then replaced that water heater with an electric heat pump water heater (which is eligible for the IRS tax credit scheme, which requires they "must meet or exceed the highest efficiency tier (not including any advanced tier) established by the Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE)") and all of the EPA Energy Star rated heat pump ones do, but I'd argue that the heater would still carry the highest CEE rating with or without the Energy Star program, so I still didn't purchase based solely or primarily on any factor that the star under-pinned, but if there was a heat pump water heater that didn't have the sticker, I'd have had to look to be sure it was still eligible for the rebate.
LeafItAlone 1y ago
A few years ago I needed a fridge for my hobby space. One where I could store various substances that I didn’t want stored by my food. I was originally looking for a mini fridge like what you’d think of belonging in an American dorm room. In the store, I noticed the medium sized fridges (more akin to what one might think of in a European studio apartment) actually used less energy according to the yellow sticker, so I went with that. This was a case where I wasn’t really looking for anything very specific, though, so it’s not like I was already limited in options and limited more by that sticker.

9283409232 1y ago

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delfinom 1y ago
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spamizbad 1y ago

It seems like everything this administration thinks will make America better somehow also involves making everything I buy and use more expensive. Except maybe gasoline, although not as much as one would think.

olalonde 1y ago
There's no doubts tariffs will make everything more expensive but I don't see how shutting down this program would affect costs. Plus, a private certification program could easily fill in the void.
- hristov 1y ago
  Not sure about that. Industry created, private energy efficiency programs have often been nothing more than industry cheerleaders.
- TylerE 1y ago
  Is there a single rocket certification program in any industry that is actually pro-consumer? I’m failing to think of an example. Private industry cannot be trusted to act in any interest but their own bottom line.
  - olalonde 1y ago
    Energy Star, as a matter of fact, is almost entirely privately run. Certification is voluntary and testing/verification is done by private labs. Replace government by some industry consortium or non-profit and not much as changed.
- ncr100 1y ago
  Appliances can use less energy of the mfrs are encouraged to design that. Energy Star was that encouragement.
- hotpotatoe 1y ago
  Here is a bright idea, keep the existing program that works and therefore we wouldn’t need some mythical private certification program that doesn’t exist and probably be a scam if it did.

standardUser 1y ago

When it comes to reducing emissions, increased efficiency has been a bigger factor than green energy production, at least historically. Perhaps that's changed by now with the rapid growth of wind and solar in recent years. But energy efficiency technology isn't performative or "woke", it equates to power plants that didn't have to be built and money you and me saved on our electric bills every month our whole lives. But to be honest, I'm not even sure how efficient Energy Star is these days. It feels like the US is behind Europe and East Asia by a decade, at least from a consumer perspective.

GiorgioG 1y ago

[flagged]

fnordpiglet 1y ago
Not even when buying a high power usage appliance with a large range of efficiency like a fridge, water heater, etc? That’s awfully odd - because the spread on efficiency for such items can be huge. Before energy Star it was even worse with just crazy bad efficiencies and no transparency.
- GiorgioG 1y ago
  My home has a tankless water heater, which I appreciate for the unlimited hot water supply…and it’s probably saving me money too. Americans (myself included) have enormous refrigerators compared to Europeans…if we really gave a shit, we’d have fridges half the size we have today. We’d also hang our clothes to dry and might not even have a dryer at all. Way better for the environment…
  - fnordpiglet 1y ago
    I’m not even making an environmental statement. The spread in dollar cost per year in operating an efficiently cooled and insulated fridge and one that is neither is enormous. Obviously the size of the enclosed space matters as the heat gain is proportional to the surface area. But for the same volume you can spend 2x per year depending on the model. Before energy star there was no way to know which was relatively more efficient. This led to people buying appliances that were extraordinarily and unreasonably inefficient, costing way more than necessary. This is a return to the “bad old days.”
subsection1h 1y ago
"I'm a climate-change not-care-er." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35659006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35659006
- GiorgioG 1y ago

phendrenad2 1y ago

The purpose of this is obviously to end tax breaks for businesses that meet energy star certification.

kristopolous 1y ago
It's a right wing grievance attack on the environment. Just like there was a right-wing grievance attack on education, science, water quality, air quality, due process, food inspections, being bound by the constitution ... Basically anything that seeks to make things better. They feel oppressed by all of it. But don't worry. When your food is full of mercury and you're breathing in lead in a few years, the right wing will be there to blame DEI and wokeism for it because that's how they operate: destroy things, blame scapegoats, win elections, repeat. There's people like Chris Rufo that openly state it's their strategy. None of this is speculative.
- wombatpm 1y ago
  Now is a good time to read The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner.
- Spivak 1y ago
  Yeah, it's a weird situation with the current administration because they're clearly on a revenge tour and it will be hard to predict what their actual government will look like once they cool off. They're still acting like the opposition party and if they keep this up for all four years they might remain as such.

SoftTalker 1y ago

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withinrafael 1y ago

The GAO wrote a report on fraud, waste, and abuse potential of Energy Star in 2010. They were able to get a gas-powered alarm clock (and 14 other fake products) marked as Energy Star compliant. Worth a read/laugh. https://www.gao.gov/assets/files.gao.gov/assets/gao-10-470.pdf https://www.gao.gov/assets/files.gao.gov/assets/gao-10-470.p...

defrost 1y ago
It's a trite trueism that all systems are vulnerable to fraud and abuse and it's no suprise the GAO was able to demonstrate the potential for abuse fourteen years ago. What would be more interesting would be a historic examination on the amount of fraud and abuse that actually takes place in the Energy Star program and whether the various decade plus old recommendations: We briefed program officials with the Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and EPA OIG as well as attorneys with the Consumer Protection division of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on the results of our work, and incorporated their comments concerning controls in place to protect the Energy Star label from fraud and abuse. proved useful in finding such fraud or in decreasing any occurance.
- cjpearson 1y ago
  Every couple days I get a pretty blatant spam email in my inbox. It's frustrating that gmail's spam filter doesn't catch these, especially since I recall it working better in the past. But I'm not going to turn off the filter because it still catches dozens of spam emails a day. Showing that a system has flaws doesn't necessarily prove that a system is useless. You have to look at the overall impact. In cases where you have an imperfect but useful system (such as most government regulation and enforcement) finding vulnerabilities is an important part of improving the system. A police department which only catches some murderers should work on catching more criminals rather than deciding it's hopeless and we might as well make homicide legal.
- mike_hearn 1y ago
  Overall levels of fraud are almost by definition hard to measure precisely. Demanding precision is simply a way to duck the issue. It's easier to precisely measure red teaming efforts, because then you know the denominator. There is no incentive to run these programmes well and no downside to failing so you should assume fraud is rampant. When the GAO got a gas-powered alarm clock approved, who in the department lost their jobs? Did the head of the EPA get fired? Did they all lose their bonuses? No, they held a meeting where they claimed it didn't matter because the industry self-polices.

adzm 1y ago

The best part about energy star I think was that it allows me to clearly see the energy consumption of the product. Without that it might not be as straightforward to find, and I'd probably be more skeptical of its accuracy

yborg 1y ago
That's probably the main reason they want to do away with it. Eliminating any semblance of independent factual information across the board means that the truth becomes whatever the best bankrolled says it is. I could see them eliminating the MPG/eMPG ratings on vehicles next.
- mike_hearn 1y ago
  It's easy and more direct for Consumer Reports style companies to measure energy consumption themselves, instead of assuming that the producer's self-reports are fully accurate because there's a regulator who may or may not be paying attention.
  - eesmith 1y ago
    CR only reviews products after they are available on the market, it does not review all products on the market, and access to the reviews require a subscription. How do you compare three hot water heaters when all three brands are "refreshed" each year, so the specific models aren't listed on CR? It's easier for consumer groups like CR to back-stop the regulatory agencies by identifying and reporting fraudulent self-reports.
    - mike_hearn 1y ago
      Access to the Energy Star reviews requires a 'subscription' too, in the form of a tax. The difference is that people who aren't in the market and don't want to buy it are forced to, for which there is no moral basis. If there are products that don't have reviews at all, just don't buy them in favor of those that do. In markets where consumers are choosy (e.g. films) companies often ensure reviewers have early access to products to ensure reviews are plentiful.

cantrecallmypwd 1y ago

Hide the ability of consumers to make informed choices. Meanwhile, logging old growth forests, drilling more oil, scoffing at renewables and EVs, and building power-hungry data centers for marginal-utility AI owned by a handful of billionaires. Flu vaccines are in doubt, the chaos and riots will begin around June/July when the shelves are empty and prices double.

Hilift 1y ago
This isn't about consumers or decisions. Rick Perry stated in the 2012 election that he would eliminate several departments, including Energy, Education, and Interior. The Republicans don't want life centralized around a federal government. The current state of the debt will also make it very easy to jettison Medicaid. Nearly all state and local governments today are incentivized to solicit federal aid for education/medicare for ~30% of their budgets, which is a curiously fragile design.

modeless 1y ago

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reseasonable 1y ago
Not one of my last five dishwashers (Bosch / Samsung) have had any problem with drying dishes. I have had three in my current house (two kitchens) and they work just fine. One will even auto-open the door to dry faster. Is this really a problem of energy star?
sokoloff 1y ago
My dishwasher (an 11 year old Bosch, which was Energy Star rated) is by far the best dishwasher I've owned at cleaning items and dries them perfectly well also on its default settings. It won't dry a bowl or ladle that's been turned to fill up with water, but anything that's oriented to shed water comes out bone dry.
justinrubek 1y ago
I have a brand new dishwasher from last year. It dries just fine.
mrguyorama 1y ago
I've never used heated dry in any dishwasher in my entire life. It's a massive waste of power for no gain, and will destroy things like plastic food containers and utensils. Your dishes dry just fine through normal air. The dirt cheap dishwasher my family had in the 90s even had a little flap to let out the steam and let in cool air after the cycle was done. I can't understand how people are so insistent this is even a mild annoyance, let alone something worth destroying our government over. I think some of you guys are buying "high end" appliances on this mistaken belief of "it's so much more expensive, surely something about it is better right?" and just get taken for a ride. Nothing in those super "smart" dishwashers has any value.

raverbashing 1y ago

Unacceptable I need that Energy Star logo showing up while my PC bios is doing a memory test

wombatpm 1y ago

Can we get rid of LEED Certification levels next?

timoth3y 1y ago

This is so frustrating. Energy Star has been a huge success over the past 30 years. It's (now) widely supported by industry, has reduced the TCO to consumers for most household appliances, and results in hundreds of billions of kWh of electricity saved every year. Energy Star is not some tree-hugging, drum-circle, feel-good program. The US urgently needs to expand and modernize our grid. Every GW of power saved, is GW of generation and transmission capacity that we don't have to build and maintain.

jstanley 1y ago
[flagged]
- bravetraveler 1y ago
  Doubtful, of my four displays only one behaves this way
- SECProto 1y ago
  No. I have several monitors of similar age, and their startup times vary significantly. It's a result of manufacturer choices, but not some nefarious impact of labels that tell you how much power a thing uses.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  How many various inputs does the display on your phone need to scan and handshake?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
timr 1y ago
EnergyStar has nothing to do with "modernizing the grid". It is, however, why any new dishwasher in the US takes like 4 hours to finish a load, unless you put it into non-bureaucratic mode. Meanwhile, we're driving energy consumption into the stratosphere with datacenters full of completely unregulated [1] GPUs that are mining scamcoins and generating incorrect search results. The usual libertarian point applies here: just because the government stops doing X doesn't mean that you automatically get less X. Particularly in the case of EnergyStar, I think it's well into the tail of diminishing returns on investment -- manufacturers don't have any incentive to start producing power-guzzling appliances when power costs are increasing. Its the sort of program that sounds good in theory, and maybe made sense at one point, but doesn't hold up to scrutiny. [1] I'm not arguing for regulation on GPUs...just pointing out that EnergyStar isn't touching the currently important part of the problem.

dyauspitr 1y ago

A general war on anything that improves the quality of living.

Muromec 1y ago
Not in anything-anything, but quality of living for people not rich enough to have their own space program.

sokoloff 1y ago

NB: the yellow Energy Guide stickers are managed/required by the FTC. This article is about the blue Energy Star sticker program, which is managed by the EPA. FTC - Federal Trade Commission EPA - Environmental Protection Agency

credit_guy 1y ago
I had no idea. I googled, and you are right. Here's the description of Energy Star from the EPA website [1] > The ENERGY STAR label saves you the effort needed to process all the information on the EnergyGuide sticker by simply designating the products that are highly efficient. When you see a product that has earned the ENERGY STAR, it means it meets strict guidelines for energy savings set by the EPA. Only manufacturers that independently certify their product’s performance are allowed to use it. (And when they do, you’ll find that manufacturers sometimes incorporate the ENERGY STAR label right into the EnergyGuide label, giving you the best of both worlds). [1] https://www.energystar.gov/products/ask-the-experts/whats-difference-between-energy-guide-and-energy-star https://www.energystar.gov/products/ask-the-experts/whats-di...

pfoof 1y ago

As a European this thing brings more nostalgia than practicality. However, isn't it better to implement this A -> G scale we have in the EU? It's easier to read than EnergyGuide.

insane_dreamer 1y ago

It's good thing Trump wasn't president after the Montreal Protocol or he would have pulled out of that (FAKE SCIENCE!!!) and let US companies continue to produce CFCs. Think how depleted the ozone layer would be by now.

insane_dreamer 1y ago

Besides information to consumers, the biggest benefit of programs like this is the pressure that they put on manufacturers to make their appliances more energy efficient. This drives innovation. Will some manufacturers obfuscate and lie? Sure, but overall it's effective in pushing industry in a certain direction that is important for the country and consumers. As with gutting the EPA in general, dropping this is another step towards trying to remove any regulatory pressure on companies so they can focus on maximizing profits for shareholders. Idiots.

wink 1y ago

My first reaction was "huh?" - I very much remember this logo as a thing of the 90s, apparently I didn't pay attention since it vanished from the BIOS screens. Am I just personally oblivious or is it more prominent in the US?

reverendsteveii 1y ago

I can understand, I guess, preferring fossil fuel energy to renewable. There is an argument to be made about the economic impact of depending on one thing for a long time and then switching over to the other. But shutting down a thing whose job is to promote efficient use of energy regardless of the source is just making things worse because you can.

xnx 1y ago

A carbon tax has its problems, but it is very attractive in how many incentives it would automatically align without explicit bureaucracy.

sschueller 1y ago

RIP the Energy Star logo in some bioses.

zozbot234 1y ago
That logo went away when they stopped supporting proper S3 sleep.

EasyMark 1y ago

This is so fkn stupid. None of the energystar items I've looked at have suffered from any issues over the years and no doubt have saved me a lot of money. Now things will just be even more opaque and the environment will be made all the worse for it. I can't wait until this clown circus is out of office. Sure the midterms will overturn most of the clown show or at least put a wall around it to stop the damage.