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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 app

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.
- HillRat 1y ago
  Flip side of this is that every one of these regulatory rollbacks will get challenged in court as arbitrary and capricious (after all, no more Chevron), reinstated by the next Democratic administration anyway, and possibly not even be functionally repealed (creating potential liability down the road), so at least for a while manufacturers will probably continue to act as if the standards are still in effect. This, of course, is exactly the kind of chaos and uncertainty that the APA and all those agency processes are supposed to prevent, but it’s a roller coaster for the next few years at least.
- ocdtrekkie 1y ago
  Isn't it a huge selling point though that new appliances are more efficient? Like... a lot of people have old appliances that... basically work, and the fact that you might make a lot of that cost back in efficiency savings is one of the heavy incentives behind sales. I'd agree Energy Star requires presenting that, but I feel like a lot of manufacturers would want to.

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.

HillRat 1y ago
Flip side of this is that every one of these regulatory rollbacks will get challenged in court as arbitrary and capricious (after all, no more Chevron), reinstated by the next Democratic administration anyway, and possibly not even be functionally repealed (creating potential liability down the road), so at least for a while manufacturers will probably continue to act as if the standards are still in effect. This, of course, is exactly the kind of chaos and uncertainty that the APA and all those agency processes are supposed to prevent, but it’s a roller coaster for the next few years at least.
ocdtrekkie 1y ago
Isn't it a huge selling point though that new appliances are more efficient? Like... a lot of people have old appliances that... basically work, and the fact that you might make a lot of that cost back in efficiency savings is one of the heavy incentives behind sales. I'd agree Energy Star requires presenting that, but I feel like a lot of manufacturers would want to.