Getting zapped Industry groups are not happy about the imminent demise of Energy Star The program has saved consumers billions of dollars since its inception. Marianne Lavelle, Inside Climate News – May 10, 2025 7:07 am | 32 Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more It’s a voluntary program launched during a Republican administration, endorsed by manufacturers and well-recognized by U.S. consumers, who have saved an estimated $500 billion over the past 33 years guided by its familiar blue label. But President Donald Trump’s administration has decided the Energy Star program has got to go. CNN and The Washington Post first reported the plan to eliminate the program that certifies the most energy-efficient appliances and buildings with the Energy Star label. Knowledgeable sources have confirmed to Inside Climate News that Environmental Protection Agency staffers learned the details at an internal meeting earlier this week. The EPA press office, when asked about Energy Star, did not comment directly about the program, but noted the reorganization of the agency that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced last Friday. “With this action, EPA is delivering organizational improvements to the personnel structure that will directly benefit the American people and better advance the agency’s core mission, while Powering the Great American Comeback,” EPA’s press office said in an email. Because Energy Star has had strong support across the political spectrum and from industry as well as environmentalists, some close observers are struggling to understand the Trump administration’s motivation for eliminating it. Steven Nadel, executive director of the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, thinks Energy Star simply had the misfortune to be located inside EPA’s Climate Protection Partnership Division, and that Zeldin is eliminating offices with the word “climate” in its name. “I’m not sure they totally thought it through,” Nadel said. But Joseph Goffman, who headed up air pollution programs at EPA under President Joe Biden, thinks the decision aligns with the Trump administration’s other actions—its regulatory rollbacks, its cuts in personnel and its clawing back of clean air and water grants. “What I think we’re looking at here is an absolute distillation of the ideology of this administration, which is a thoroughgoing hostility to anything that the government does that helps people,” Goffman said. “If you want to destroy the relationship between the public and government, you’re going to target the Energy Star program.” One of Bush’s “points of light” Energy Star was first established under President George H.W. Bush’s administration in 1992, the year of the Earth Summit in Rio, where nations around the world first joined in a framework convention to address climate change. That international treaty, at Bush’s urging, relied on voluntary action rather than targets and timetables for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Back at home, the Energy Star program, too, was a way to encourage, but not force, energy savings. “It was kind of one of his thousand points of light,” Nadel said. “He didn’t want to do serious things about climate change, but a voluntary program to provide information and let consumers decide fit very nicely into his mindset.” At first focused just on personal computers, monitors and printers, Energy Star expanded over the years to cover more than 50 home appliances, from heating and air conditioning systems to refrigerators, washers and dryers and lighting. Beginning in 1995, Energy Star certification expanded to include homes and commercial buildings. A Republican-controlled Congress wrote Energy Star into law in a sprawling 2005 energy bill that President George W. Bush signed. It is not clear that the Trump administration can eliminate the Energy Star program, which is administered by both EPA and the Department of Energy, without a new act of Congress. In a report to mark the 30th anniversary of Energy Star in 2022, the Biden administration estimated the program had achieved 4 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas reductions by helping consumers make energy-efficient choices. Nadel said the impact in the marketplace is visible, as companies increase the number of product choices that meet Energy Star standards whenever a new standard is adopted by EPA through a public notice and comment process. The nonprofit Alliance to Save Energy has estimated that the Energy Star program costs the government about $32 million per year, while saving families more than $40 billion in annual energy costs. Eliminating the program, Nadel said, “is million-wise and billion foolish.” “It will not serve the American people” Word of Energy Star’s potential demise began to circulate weeks ago. On March 20, a wide array of manufacturers and industry associations signed on to a letter to Zeldin, urging him to maintain the Energy Star program. The groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the Air Conditioning, Heating, & Refrigeration Institute; and the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers released their letter publicly this week. It called Energy Star “an example of an effective non-regulatory program and partnership between the government and the private sector.” Companies that have invested in making more efficient products are faced with the loss of the Energy Star brand as a marketing tool. The Energy Star logo has helped them make the case, with the government’s support, that the initial higher cost of efficient appliances will be offset over time in reduced water and energy consumption. “Eliminating it will not serve the American people,” they wrote. “In fact, because the Energy Star brand is highly recognizable to consumers, it is likely that, should the program be eliminated, it will be supplanted by initiatives that drive results counter to the goals of this administration such as decreased features, functionality, performance, or increased costs.” The Energy Star program has weathered at least one high-profile controversy in recent years. The Biden administration briefly considered a plan to eliminate Energy Star certification for most natural gas appliances, in order to drive consumers toward greater use of electrified options. But the American Gas Association and other groups representing the natural gas industry successfully fought that proposal. Over the years, the conservative Heritage Foundation, best known for its role in organizing the Project 2025 roadmap, has called for the government to get out of public-private partnerships like Energy Star. Heritage argued the role should be taken over by a nonprofit entity outside the government. But Goffman says he never encountered any serious constituency that was opposed to the Energy Star program in his time in government, which spanned the Obama administration as well as the Biden years. “The engine of the Energy Star program is the willing participation of businesses to participate in it,” he said. “Consumers, taxpayers and businesses are what make the Energy Star program real, by using the information it provides.” Nadel said that he doubts that a non-government efficiency labeling program would have the consumer trust Energy Star has built. A 2022 survey showed the Energy Star brand is recognized and understood in 90 percent of U.S. households. This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News. Marianne Lavelle, Inside Climate News 32 Comments