The Energy Star Sticker May Go Away. Who Could Preserve the Program?

There is a good chanance, you are part of the almost 90 percent of American households who know the Energy Star label that appears in appliances when you buy a new dishwasher or a collecting. It is a useful approach seal, a highly huge efficiency signal and the lowest public services invoices that will pay over time.

And now it is in danger thanks to the desire of the Trump administration to make cuts in the Environmental Protection Agency and eliminate the division of the agency that stood out the Energy Star program.

When the news emerged last week, which could soon not be stickers in all types of appliances, from air conditioning units to washing machines, a solution seemed obvious: companies could establish their challenges.

Simple, right? But none of the main appliance manufacturers that I approached promised to do that. Many include Frigidaire, Samsung and Sub-Zero, did not even respond to the multiple requests I made to comment.

Energy Star is a big problem, if you believe that the compliance of the EPA in a document on its website, the program has contributed to $ 500 billion, one billion, with a “B”, in the saving of energy and commercial energy since its launch in 1992.

Appliances manufacturers do not want Energy Star, in which participation is voluntary, disappear. They said in a March letter to the EPA, when they felt that the cut could come.

But they do not see the end of government support so that the program is resolved. A spokesman for the Bosch appliance group described that events are “pending”, while an LG representative said that any discussion about how it could promote superior efficiency to consumers in the future was premature.

Even if the EPA is not invested, the Department of Energy, which establishes minimum efficiency standards for the origin apparatus industry, could intervene to supervise the energy star. The department did not respond to requests for comments on whether you were committed to doing so.

You can imagine the other conversations behind the scene in each company that is based on the Energy Star label and its blessings.

Did you create the good will of the consumer to be one of the first companies in this industry (or any of the competitive) to stand up and say that the cut in the EPA is absurd, giving which useful Energy Star Star? Sure. But consumers, who do not buy large appliances, just remember who spoke first? Probably not.

In addition, this is an environment where silence can pay real dividends. President Trump ran on a platform for the use of his office to punish the people who do not like.

Yes, any company, or all together, could promise to restart Energy Star if necessary. However, being challenging about it, only makes you vulnerable to a rate, an executive order or who knows what. And that goes double for reasonable people in the department of Energy who could otherwise announce their intention to intervene to save the program.

All that may seem cowardice, but it is probably just prudence if it is firm in your commitment to preserve the program or something.

Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy Efficiency Economy, a non -profit research group, raised its own objection to a replacement of energy energy sponsored by the industry: it may not be credible.

“One of the reasons why it is so popular is that people see the government as a source of impartial information,” he said.

But would there be at least any benefit if different commercial groups intervened in Mintain Energy Star? Almost sure, even if they have to spend some money to do it.

There is a world in which someone in the Trump administration awakens the lack of logic here. If a regulated industry wants customers to save another $ 500 billion in the coming years through the use of less energy (and that they contaminate less as a side effect), in maintaining the federal test system and rewards that facilitates it.

In one way or another, we are about to discover that White can live in that world.