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.
timr · 3h 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.
roxolotl · 3h ago
The problem is manufacturers also have no incentives to display the information EnergyStar provides if not forced to do so.
And sure Americans care about energy costs but looking at the car market you can see Americans don’t actually care to make choices that save them money in the long run. Ford doesn’t even produce sedans anymore.
haswell · 2h ago
You made the same comment 5 hours ago [0] in the same thread. Accidental duplication?
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.
malfist · 2h ago
Your whole premise is wrong. Energy star doesn't make a company do anything besides disclosure.
> manufacturers don't have any incentive to start producing power-guzzling appliances when power costs are increasing
That's only true if customers can know how much energy their devices are going to use. Energy star forces that disclosure and that's it. Market forces are done everything else. Consumers prefer lower energy costs and devices that voluntarily achieve an energy star certification
Also, "takes like 4 hours to finish a load", I have a new dishwasher, there is no combination of settings (except adding a delay) that will make a load take four hours. Max I can get is 2:36
timr · 1h ago
> Energy star forces that disclosure and that's it.
Incorrect. The far bigger part of the program is certification:
(There's also the scoring system, though I don't know if that falls under certification.)
This is how the efficiency requirements become de facto mandates. Federal procurement, among other things, requires energy star certification. There are even mortgage discounts for energy star certified buildings.
malfist · 1h ago
You do know that energy star certification is voluntary, right?
Nobody forces manufacturers to get certified, they do it because the market prefers it.
Energy star does not force manufacturers to be certified. I can walk into my local appliance store and walk out with a whole kitchen full of uncertified products if I wanted too.
snkzxbs · 4m ago
If the market prefers dishwashers that are slower then you don’t need the government creating that certification.
mitthrowaway2 · 1m ago
How do you propose to solve the information asymmetry where customers in an appliance store can't tell how much it will cost them on their energy bill to operate each appliance?
sillyfluke · 2h ago
Yes, and I'm not sure what the parent refers to when they say "non-bureaucratic mode", but if they mean literally turning the dial to another wash setting and this is supposed to be evidence of the outrageous inconvenience this program presents to the American consumer, well then they should not take offense if one considers their views to be the comical indignations of a "libertarian snowflake". And this is from someone who constantly switches the machine to non-default subhour wash programs 90% of the time (clothes not dishes).
pmontra · 8h ago
New dishwashers take a long time because they can be more energy and water efficient if they leave more time for detergents to degrade grease and the other stuff on dishes. If you don't have the time to wait for a slow cycle you use a fast one with the usual tradeoff of time vs money.
timr · 7h ago
> New dishwashers take a long time because they can be more energy and water efficient if they leave more time for detergents to degrade grease and the other stuff on dishes.
Yes, I know the reason, but now say it in a way that doesn't make the assumption that the rule is rational: EnergyStar continued to increase the efficiency requirements to the point where the only option manufacturers had was to make the default cycles much longer in order to get the same performance [1]. Every dishwasher therefore has a button that reverts to the pre-regulation mode, but it's usually named in doublespeak.
Somehow I doubt that dishwashers are driving the power consumption curve in the US in 2025. But this is what bureaucracies do, unless given a self-destruct date.
[1] for example, what's preventing EnergyStar from requiring that the water be cold? That would use way less energy!
542354234235 · 2h ago
So dishwashers can get the same performance for less water and energy usage, and you easily can push a button to trade energy and water efficiency for speed, and your problem is what?
The idea that manufacturers wouldn’t just make energy and water hogging dishwashers now is naive at best. Making something run well using less resources costs more money up front, even though the total cost of ownership is lower. If you don’t have to make them efficient and you don’t have to display how much energy or water they use and how much that would cost, then you can massively undercut anyone that does those things, even though the consumer would end up paying more over time.
> Somehow I doubt that dishwashers are driving the power consumption curve in the US in 2025.
But of course it isn’t just dishwashers, it is practically every home appliance. If every house was using 10% more energy, that adds up to a lot. It doesn’t mean that data centers aren’t also a problem, but abandoning a program that saves energy doesn’t fix either problem.
>for example, what's preventing EnergyStar from requiring that the water be cold? That would use way less energy!
Is that something you are worried about or was discussed? Or is that just a ridiculous made-up scenario trying to paint a reasonable regulation for nonsense?
jimmydddd · 1h ago
Re: Cold water requirement.
It's not as ridiculous as it may seem.
--In the 70's, we were told (in the US) to not flush the toilet after peeing.
--We also were told that driving at 55mph was the optimum, most fuel efficient speed for all vehicles under all circumstances.
--In the 2000's, my kids were urged to watchdog our family so that we didn't leave the tap on for more than 10 seconds while brushing our teeth.
--In the 2010's, light bulbs that emit warm tones of light were apparently outlawed to save energy.
I could see cold water becoming a thing.
timr · 1h ago
> The idea that manufacturers wouldn’t just make energy and water hogging dishwashers now is naive at best. Making something run well using less resources costs more money up front, even though the total cost of ownership is lower.
Really? You sound like someone who would pay for such a thing. I bet there are more of you!
> If you don’t have to make them efficient and you don’t have to display how much energy or water they use and how much that would cost, then you can massively undercut anyone that does those things, even though the consumer would end up paying more over time.
Nobody said anything about getting rid of the stickers. We can still require stickers, just like we require food has labels on it. We don't need a sprawling certification system encompassing everything from telephones (sigh) to roofing materials and the government bureaucracy that defines it.
LeafItAlone · 3h ago
I’m completely missing your point. Your original comment has been flagged so I don’t see it, so I’m missing context.
I, and I would guess most consumers, are perfectly fine with the trade off of taking longer at lower cost (energy and water). I run mine overnight so it doesn’t matter. This is what I want as the default.
On the few occasions I need it to run faster and am fine with the trade off of higher cost, I press a button and it’s there.
What’s the problem?
timr · 3h ago
It was flagged? Ridiculous. Abuse of the flagging system.
My argument, in a nutshell, is that we don't need a government agency mandating energy consumption limits for home appliances, and moreover, getting rid of government agencies that do X rarely means that we get less X.
The fact that you would be perfectly happy choosing a more annoying appliance for lower overall energy consumption is merely validation of my belief that, when it comes to this kind of thing, the market is better than a government bureaucracy.
LeafItAlone · 3h ago
> getting rid of government agencies that do X rarely means that we get less X.
Do you have any examples where that has been the case?
>The fact that you would be perfectly happy choosing a more annoying appliance for lower overall energy consumption is merely validation of my belief that
I have re-read my own comment multiple times and I am not seeing where I said that I would be an annoying appliance at all. In fact, I say the exact opposite that the appliance is doing exactly what I would want it to do for trade offs. Are you replying to the wrong comment?
timr · 1h ago
> Do you have any examples where that has been the case?
I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but the department of education comes to mind as a bureaucracy that has no net influence on the amount of education occurring.
(not totally fair, since the department of education is little more than an inefficient way of allocating block grants, but it's a particularly amusing example.)
malfist · 2h ago
Where do you see energy star mandating anything besides disclosure?
If you want to be certified, sure, but that's voluntary.
The only thing energy star is going is mandating companies inform their customer so the customer can decide and compare products. The free market is making you dishwashers use less energy, not energy star
timr · 1h ago
> If you want to be certified, sure, but that's voluntary.
Sure, it's "voluntary" in the sense that if you don't do it, you won't be picked up by any major distributors. How many non-Energy-Star appliances do you see at Home Depot and Wal Mart?
(Edit: also, federal procurement requires certification. So you know...if you don't ever want to sell to the government, go ahead and ignore the certification.)
merrywhether · 1h ago
That sounds like the market at work? Government doesn’t control what private companies stock, so it seems they’ve gotten some signal that the majority of their customers prefer energy-efficient products. If you’re a non-mainstream consumer, things are always going to be harder for you.
sokoloff · 40m ago
> How many non-Energy-Star appliances do you see at Home Depot and Wal Mart?
I just did a search for dishwashers on Home Depot's site.
166 dishwashers are Energy Star certified out of 310.
Of standard-size only dishwashers, 136 out of 241 carry the Energy Star certification.
That's a not insignificant portion of the dishwasher market that has not done this thing that you put in scare-quotes as "voluntary" and are still carried at the number two reseller of major appliances in the US.
haswell · 1h ago
> Sure, it's "voluntary" in the sense that if you don't do it, you won't be picked up by any major distributors.
But now you’re describing market forces.
Muromec · 3h ago
It's not either or. The market being comptutational device needs information inputs to run, which government mandates are very helpful for.
This coming from the administration that uses tariffs to force production to be happening in one place over another doesn't seem to be motivated by free market absolutist position either.
UncleMeat · 46m ago
Good news. EnergyStar isn't a mandate.
silverlake · 2h ago
You’re getting downvoted because you’re making a few mistakes. 1) Energy Star is not a mandate, it’s a certificate if you want it. 25% of dishwashers are not ES at Home Depot. 2) Dishwashers are slow for a few reasons, a big one is gov’t stopped use of strong detergents. The new one needs time to dissolve foods. 3) “why solve X when Y is still a problem” is always a weak argument. 4) “markets will solve it” doesn’t always work because the individual cost of an energy guzzling appliance is a few extra dollars, but the collective cost is high.
The difference between appliances in 1970 vs now is immense. My dishwasher is so quiet we double check if it’s on. It uses less water than handwashing. Even the Chamber of Commerce (big business lobby) asked them to keep Energy Star.
singleshot_ · 1h ago
False; my brand new dishwasher from Bosch takes approximately two hours and ten minutes to complete a load of dishes on the standard mode.
jiehong · 1h ago
EnergyStar on GPUs wouldn’t be that bad nowadays!
timr · 1h ago
I actually sort of agree. If you're going to put the regulations in place, at least do it where it matters!
stonogo · 8h ago
I think you'll find this is a result of the phosphate ban in the 90s. Detergent got less effective, so cycle times got longer to compensate. Same problem with clothes washers. A spoonfull of trisodium phosphate goes a long way, as long as you're ok with algae blooms downstream.
timr · 8h ago
The content of detergent doesn't affect the cycle times programmed into the electronics.
If you press the "non-bureaucracy" button that's on every modern dishwasher (usually labeled "quick wash" or a similar euphemism), you get a 'normal' cycle time (which works just fine, regardless of detergent), but at the cost of not being EnergyStar compliant. This is a product design that is entirely the result of government regulation.
TheOtherHobbes · 7h ago
I'm not seeing your point. Are you arguing that giving consumers a choice between a slow cheap cycle and an expensive fast cycle is somehow a bad thing?
timr · 7h ago
> Are you arguing that giving consumers a choice between a slow cheap cycle and an expensive fast cycle is somehow a bad thing?
No. I'm saying that you don't need a government bureaucracy mandating it. Moreover, you definitely don't need one mandating ever-more-strict energy consumption limits on energy uses that are not driving the consumption problem, which inevitably run up against hard physical limits (e.g. warm water works better for washing dishes).
Take the argument to the point of absurdity: should we have an EnergyStar rule on doorbell efficiency? The same line of reasoning applies, but by golly...if we had one, I'm sure we'd be sitting here arguing about why doorbells have to be barely audible in order to save the planet.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 4h ago
> Take the argument to the point of absurdity: should we have an EnergyStar rule on doorbell efficiency? The same line of reasoning applies
Except it doesn't really, because doorbells use very little current in pretty much any configuration. Appliances use a lot of current in most configurations, hence why many of them require a 240V/20A circuit versus the standard US 120V/15A circuit. Hence why the Energy Star program focuses on appliances.
This is a real stretch as slippery slope arguments go. Pick something better.
timr · 3h ago
The point of the doorbell metaphor was to illustrate that we're (over-)regulating a tiny sliver of the problem, and ignoring the big issues.
To this point, you're making a big leap, going from "current consumption while running", to "overall energy usage". How many times a day are you running your dishwasher? I guarantee mine isn't in the top items in my life that consume electricity, in aggregate.
While EnergyStar may have been a good idea when it was created (when energy prices were lower), it's no longer necessary in a world where cost of use significantly exceeds the cost of the appliance itself during its own lifetime. And if that isn't true, then you really have to ask what you're doing in the first place, regulating the energy use of an appliance that doesn't use much energy?
I think there are certain aspects of EnergyStar that make sense -- the little label that tells me how many watt-hours an AC uses helps me compare products, so fine. Keep the little sticker. But it doesn't require an agency making silly rules about how much energy any dishwasher, doorbell or dongle can use. Let the market decide.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 3h ago
> How many times a day are you running your dishwasher?
At least once, sometimes twice, very rarely 3 times when my wife is doing a lot of baking or making candy.
Google says dishwashers can draw between 1200W and 2400W. Asking the same source puts a doorbell at 10W to 40W. 2 orders of magnitude less. The dishwasher consumes massively more power than a doorbell.
How many times a day is your doorbell ringing? Does your doorbell ring for a couple hours on each press, like the length of a dishwasher cycle?
timr · 1h ago
You're fixated on the absurdity of the doorbell example. It was intended to be absurd. That's the point: reductio ad absurdum. Government bureaucracy is squeezing efficiency out of places where it really doesn't make much difference, because that's what bureaucracies do.
Said differently: precisely how "efficient" does EnergyStar need to make dishwashers, or microwaves, or whatever else, before the gains in theoretical "efficiency" are offset by the compensating behaviors of the users working around the brokenness of the system?
I can replace your microwave with an easybake oven, powered by LED lamp, and it'll be "efficient" in terms of operating current draw, but...
justinrubek · 29m ago
I don't think the examples you are giving are taking your argument where you want it to be. Nobody has replaced a microwave with an easy bake oven. They aren't the same thing at all, and nobody is proposing such a thing nor the equivalent anywhere else.
sjsdaiuasgdia · 1h ago
You think improving efficiency of a 1000W+ appliance that runs for 2hrs at a time is not making much difference?
Don't know what to tell you on that...
mindslight · 15m ago
> should we have an EnergyStar rule on doorbell efficiency?
Probably. The traditional setup includes a 120->24 transformer sitting there burning a couple watts the entire time. A modern switch mode power can sip less, although the doorbells themselves would have to be made to work off of DC.
Ideally there would be a standard for practically wiring homes with 48VDC or 24VDC so there is only one idle power overhead, rather than making every single "smart" controls gadget need to step down on its own from 120 (170) volts. Then a standard doorbell would use no power when the button is not being pressed, as you're imagining.
Both of these things are dependent on network effects (ie markets are sticky), which is why talking in terms of standards makes sense.
waynesonfire · 7h ago
Companies arn't going to spend money to implement modes that save electricity unless they have to. The motivation can come about as a result of market competition or governance. Sometimes you need governance because of market dynamics, e.g. monopolies.
A better fix would be to expand the scope of Energy Star. I'm sure you'll still be able to find a suitable door bell just as easily as you discovered the quick wash button on your dish washer.
And, to take your argument to absurdity, we'd still have lead paint and no nutrition labels.
ethbr1 · 3h ago
Another reason the market won't fix energy consumption on its own: externalized costs (onto the consumer's power bill).
What is one of the most market-effective US regulations?
What did companies do before that? Installed the cheapest, least-efficient parts, put marketing copy on their boxes about how they were high efficiency, and then passed the costs onto unknowing consumers.
withinrafael · 11h 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.
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 · 5h 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.
AuryGlenz · 9h ago
Well, at first I thought shutting it down was a terrible idea. Now, I'm not so sure. However much the program costs, it doesn't seem like the money was well spent.
intermerda · 8h ago
If you assume nothing has changed since 2010 then, sure. In reality, the Energy Star program changed their certification process that went into effect the following year - https://www.energystar.go.jp/news/news2010/pdf/etv_faq_20110.... A subsequent GAO report commended the pace of progress in implementing these changes. There have been many several changes to the program including a certification for new homes and apartments that was launched last year.
But of course, there is always a chance that this program was sunset to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse since the current head of the executive branch is notoriously anti-fraud.
LeafItAlone · 3h ago
You read one comment on Hacker News about a potential flaw in the system and that changed your mind? It doesn’t seem like you really gave it much thought before or thought about the other effects.
Many comments on Hacker News don’t strictly adhere to the rules and aren’t removed. Should they just shut down all of the moderation?
hotpotatoe · 5h ago
You should really look up how much the program costs vs how much it saves consumers each year.
adzm · 11h 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 · 9h 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 · 5h 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.
i80and · 3h ago
Consumer Reports is great. I love them. They inherently have a limited testing capacity, and are not even able to look at a quarter of current products in the categories I'm usually looking at.
They're just no substitute for things like Energy Star
eesmith · 5h 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 · 3h 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.
ethbr1 · 3h ago
> Access to the Energy Star reviews requires a 'subscription' too, in the form of a tax.
You're failing to consider the alternative no-EnergyStar scenario -- higher aggregate electricity demand, requiring more power plants, so everyone pays more for power.
Either you pay pennies to promote efficiency, or you pay quarters for energy infrastructure.
snkzxbs · 2m ago
Requiring more power plants doesn’t mean that power will be more expensive. Power will only be more expensive if we get more demand and less supply. If supply (power plants) increases linearly with demand there won’t be a price difference.
mike_hearn · 1h ago
Efficiency savings make no difference to aggregated demand so that is irrelevant. See Jevon's Paradox, which absolutely applies to electricity.
eesmith · 1h ago
If you want to go that route, money is immoral because it doesn't exist unless people are threatened by force to use it.
When you need to pay the king's taxes with the king's money as otherwise the king's men will beat you up, which is why you'll give the king's soldiers food in exchange for the king's money.
> companies often ensure reviewers
LOL! Of course they do! Companies pick reviewers who give good reviews, and spurn those who are critical. You every wonder why most game reviewers are so fawning?
Consumer Reports knows this, which is why they buy their products on the market, which is why they can't have reviews with the product first comes out.
Which is why when a product is first released you'll rarely find honest negative reviews.
Who rates the reviewers? Are they shilling for the manufacturer? Are they the marketing arm of the manufacturer? How do you know?
sokoloff · 3h ago
That's almost certainly the yellow Energy Guide sticker you're praising (and I agree). That's not the subject of this article.
LUmBULtERA · 1h ago
Thanks! I read the article and a lot of these comments, and I was thinking the whole time that Energy Guide was going away. As long as Energy Guide is sticking around, I really don't care about the "Energy Star" specific item.
You are correct; I mistakenly assumed they were all administered under the same program.
SchemaLoad · 9h ago
Most other countries have their own version of this. If the product sells internationally you could use their tested values.
Muromec · 5h ago
You will most probably get a different version of the same product (cheaper and worse) compared to one sold in EU. It takes one market participant to do this and everyone else will have to follow, otherwise consumers will buy the cheapest one.
LeafItAlone · 3h ago
Yes. We already get different products based on retailer (Walmart gets different versions than direct from manufacturer or other retailers on many products).
There are even claims that Black Friday products are even special runs that are slightly different to lower cost.
hiimkeks · 7h ago
The USA are freeriding the benefits of EU's regulation, sounds like they (EU) should raise tariffs for that!
(if you can't tell whether that is sarcasm that might be because I also don't know)
TeMPOraL · 6h ago
It's called patents and now I wish EU had patented the core aspects of GDPR. Like, "Method of requesting and receiving informed consent" and, more importantly, "Method of requesting and receiving informed consent on a computer".
Muromec · 5h ago
One specific thing is maybe a patent, but the whole liberal democracy with laws and all that could be run as a franchise.
potato3732842 · 4h ago
Are you serious?
First: Those numbers are all BS and have been for decades. If you want damp clothes, dirty dishes and refrigerated to within a blond one of the legal minimum food then you can trust the numbers. If you want your appliances to do their jobs in a satisfactory manner you're going to find yourself turning them up (whatever that means will vary by appliance) and consequently using a lot more energy.
Second: Those yellow stickers are from the FTC, not the EPA.
LeafItAlone · 3h ago
>First: Those numbers are all BS and have been for decades. If you want damp clothes, dirty dishes and refrigerated to within a blond one of the legal minimum food then you can trust the numbers. If you want your appliances to do their jobs in a satisfactory manner you're going to find yourself turning them up (whatever that means will vary by appliance) and consequently using a lot more energy.
I have had zero of these issues. Can you be more specific about when you have encountered them yourself?
sokoloff · 5h 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 · 3h 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).
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 · 12h 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.
hotpotatoe · 11h 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.
hakfoo · 9h ago
I can only think of one private scheme in this space that's worked well - 80 Plus. For a voluntary program, it's been pretty broadly adopted, and it created an implicit factor of "why is it not certified" that puts pressure on the worst junk products.
Across the board though, PC PSU quality has gone up quite a bit in the last 20-25 years though.
amalcon · 1h ago
UL certification has been pretty successful in an adjacent space (fire safety, notably of electronics but it covers other things too). That has been regressing lately, though.
ndriscoll · 3h ago
80 plus doesn't cover idle efficiency though, so unless you only run your computer when compiling or gaming and then turn it back off, it probably doesn't capture the fact that modern computers are basically completely idle at all times.
mrbigbob · 3h ago
Why do we have to reinvent the wheel! We have the program and its been established for over 3 decades.
Im so tired of the arguement of its not perfect guess we should get rid of it, start from scratch, and the new system will have none of those problems.
This isnt about government excess spending either. If the government was really concerned about excess spending they would take a real deep look at DOD spending and the number of cost plus contracts
tzs · 11h ago
It won't necessarily affect purchase costs but it could affect operating costs.
When I needed a new washing machine a year or so ago there were many machines that were very similar except for large variations in energy efficiency. If it weren't for the Energy Star labels I almost certainly would have ended up with a machine with higher operating costs.
ncr100 · 12h ago
Appliances can use less energy of the mfrs are encouraged to design that. Energy Star was that encouragement.
hristov · 12h ago
Not sure about that. Industry created, private energy efficiency programs have often been nothing more than industry cheerleaders.
lovich · 11h ago
> I don't see how shutting down this program would affect costs
> Plus, a private certification program could easily fill in the void.
Ah there’s your problem. It turns out private solutions actually cost money, and relying on a private certification program to “fill the void” as you say, is what actually changes the costs.
Alternatively if you believe that private corporate actions are always free when comparing it to government services, then this is a net zero change
mindslight · 11h ago
The Energy Star label influences the low end of the market, making it so manufacturers will spend an extra dollar or two of parts cost on baseline models rather than reserving those "innovations" for premium models selling for many hundreds of dollars more.
The recent Energy Star requirements have gone horribly wrong for some things (eg dishwashers that no longer dry dishes because they omitted a drying heating element, clothes washers that fail to clean clothes because they skimped on water too much), but the basic idea is sound.
sethherr · 10h ago
This is laughably incorrect. I have purchased multiple high end refrigerators in the past few years and used energy star to determine the opex of them - it influences the high end too.
mindslight · 10h ago
"laughably incorrect" ? Why so aggressive? For starters, I did not say it did nothing for the high end. Also I was talking about the Energy Star certification, which indicates an appliance has met some minimum efficiency requirements, while you seem to be talking about the Energy Star labeling of power consumption per some benchmark usage. I'm not sure if the pathetic dictator's shutdown is aimed at ending both or just one, but the efficiency criteria are the things people are always complaining about (just like I proceeded to do heh heh), so I assumed that was the main target.
(edit: oh, apparently the labeling is EnergyGuide, so that's not even Energy Star)
cyberax · 7h ago
> omitted a drying heating element
There is no "drying heating element" in dishwashers. Disassemble one and see for yourself. The same coil is used both for water heating and air heating during the drying cycle.
And I've so far had no problem with dishwashers drying my dishes.
mindslight · 47m ago
> The same coil is used both for water heating and air heating during the drying cycle
Sure, if it's the classic design of the heating coil sitting exposed near the bottom of the wash tub.
But most newer dishwashers tend to have a much smaller heating element as part of the sump assembly, capable of heating the water only, because they omit the heated dry cycle. From what I've seen these days, you have to buy one without the Energy Star label to get back the traditional dual-use heating element.
And I haven't researched, but I'd venture a guess that those models are just the old designs still being sold, leaving out straightforward efficiency developments like electrically commutated motors. I've fixed many appliances myself, and based on what I've seen I have got little faith in manufacturers' motivations to improve much on their own.
jeffbee · 11h ago
> dishwashers that no longer have straightforward heating elements for drying
I love how Americans just can't figure this out, as if the German brands that are all three of better, cheaper to buy, and cheaper to operate simply don't exist. The American consumer is a person who cannot comprehend thermodynamics.
ethersteeds · 6h ago
With a broad brush, German brands are more expensive to buy, as a premium for the mythical quality reputation which never seems diminished by the high failure rates and incredibly expensive repair costs.
Cutting edge technologies can eke out higher efficiencies, but at the cost of all the downsides of new tech - cost premium, unproven designs, potential evolutionary dead end.
I'm in no way in favor of ending Energy Star, but it's risible to assert that stupidity is the only the only reason a consumer would favor a straightforward, easily repaired design over an over-engineered turd stuffed with controller boards that regularly go bad and cost more than the appliance is worth to replace.
mindslight · 11h ago
Perhaps if you referenced something concrete there would be more to talk about?
I'm only aware of Bosch, which uses some type of humidity-absorbing crystals that then desiccate with the heat of the next cycle. The marketing implication that this doesn't use energy would seem to be playing on that lack of understanding of thermodynamics.
Never mind costing 2x or more for the models with this feature, still seeing complaints of people online saying they don't get the dishes dry, combined with the all-too-common refrain that you have to use "rise aid" - ie elective chemical residue.
(I edited my original comment to focus on the failure of functionality over the lack of a specific mechanism)
TylerE · 12h 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 · 11h 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.
matthewdgreen · 11h ago
Gasoline will end up more expensive, too. The current oil glut is being deliberately engineered by OPEC+, which is pumping excess oil in order to bankrupt higher-cost suppliers. We should be using this time to refill the strategic oil reserve and (simultaneously) to stabilize prices at a level that guarantees continued investment -- but we're not.
Jtsummers · 11h ago
And migrate off oil consumption as much as possible while energy is cheaper (to bootstrap manufacturing/construction of other energy production systems). If the costs are down now because of OPEC+, then they'll go up. That's when we want to be able to sell (improving our trade deficit, a stated goal of this administration) to other countries. The US is the world's largest oil consumer, we consume 50% more than China. If we reduced our rate of consumption we could shift more towards exporting and be the ones controlling prices, since the US is also the biggest producer.
somenameforme · 10h ago
Oil production is a slave to prices. The majority of oil worldwide is quite expensive to extract - shale in the US, oil sands in Canada/Venezuela, etc. And so low prices reduce our ability to produce oil which, in turn, sends prices up. And vice versa, high prices enable even the junkiest reserves to be extracted which sends prices down. And the more you produce, the more expensive it becomes to produce - the reason for this is that you're always going to pick the low hanging fruit first, but as you run out of that you're left picking higher and higher up the tree.
And while we are the world's largest producer of oil, we're also the world's 2nd largest importer of oil as well!
Jtsummers · 10h ago
> And while we are the world's largest producer of oil, we're also the world's 2nd largest importer of oil as well!
Even more reason to reduce our oil dependency if the real economic goal is to improve our trade deficit.
jollyllama · 52m ago
Meh, extraction of commodities is always cyclical. They'll be a glut, domestic producers will take a beating, OPEC will jack up the price, and then the domestic producers will bounce back. It has ever been thus.
tonyhart7 · 12h ago
they cut cost everything that seemed "un-critical"
bcoates · 12h 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)
yodon · 12h 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 · 10h 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 · 9h 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.
addandsubtract · 6h ago
That explains why my new fridge has a little less volume (on paper), even though it's a little bigger.
eclipticplane · 12h 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.
mike_hearn · 5h ago
They have none, which is why you don't ask the manufacturers to do that. You rely on other parties who make money by helping you choose between what products to buy (i.e. reviewers), as you do for any other dimension other than Energy Star ratings.
Even with regulations like Energy Star, you can't just assume they're being followed accurately. It's much easier for companies to game one government-run system than a whole ecosystem of reviewers who are competing on the accuracy of their reviews.
relaxing · 3h ago
If everyone has to buy a subscription to consumer reports that is effectively a tax.
…only it’s better than a tax because it preserves the freedom to get ripped off if you choose. Yay freedom.
mike_hearn · 3h ago
You don't have to buy a subscription to anything. You're welcome to make a purchasing decision in any way you want, including ways that are free like word of mouth.
azemetre · 2h ago
What a weird world where only certain people are allowed the privilege of information via money rather than enforcement thru the government to level the access.
relaxing · 2h ago
Notoriously reliable word of mouth. Very cheap, much freedom.
mike_hearn · 2h ago
People trust word of mouth much more than other sources of information. That's probably because the person giving you a recommendation has social skin in the game (if they're talking smack you won't trust them again in future), and no conflicts of interest.
Versus asking the manufacturer ("very efficient sir") or the government ("efficient and we ignored every other aspect of the product so it might not actually work", see the dishwasher discussion).
Muromec · 2h ago
Shocking news -- Americans are okay with taxes as long as they are ones to collect them.
timewizard · 10h ago
> and display it accurately?
What is accurately? The efficiency of the product will depend on how full it is. The less mass you have inside it the more often it turns on and the more energy it consumes.
So do consumers even understand this particular point of their device? Or how their use case may impact the displayed numbers?
dredmorbius · 8h ago
The point of standards and standardised evaluations is to come up with a measurement methodology which is consistent across units tested and testing sessions.
The Energy Star Test Procedures for refrigerators and freezers is defined in this document:
Refrigerators and freezers are tested unloaded. Which suggests that the Energy Star programme should report a less efficient energy usage as compared with normal loading of a refrigerator/freezer, which will reduce air exchange and the need to re-cool air.
smitty1e · 12h 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 · 11h ago
I mean not really. You'll end up with boycotts around potential political reasons but almost no effective ones around technical reasons.
fngjdflmdflg · 11h 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).
> I do think products with clearly defined technical specs should in general be reported to the consumer.
A historic example is things was Linksys WRT54G wireless routers. The exact same product number had completely different amounts of memory and core chipsets.
Another one that's common is the first batch of particular SSDs in a model contain more/faster/any cache which gets good benchmarks and great reviews, but later neutered releases of the same 'model' perform like crap.
Retric · 12h 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 · 9h 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 · 4h 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.
toomuchtodo · 12h ago
I just received a $350 rebate on a variable speed pool pump I had installed, because of energy star.
Not sure actively subsidizing recreational novelty uses of electricity is doing anything to save the planet
toomuchtodo · 12h 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.
The link actually provides some insight into this. It's from TECO, a Florida based electric company. In Florida (and maybe the rest of the US south, idk), a lot of houses have pools and the pumps for those run for hours every day.
Even if you don't want to use the pool, if the house has a pool the pump needs to run regularly with filtration and chlorination or else you end up with an expensive, putrid mess to clean up.
And of course in most parts of florida you can't drain the pool long term because of how high the water table is. An empty pool is just a concrete shell so without the weight from the water inside it, the pool essentially becomes boyant and tries to float upwards out of the ground, causing potentially thousands to tens of thousands of dollars of damage.
So a lot of people are stuck with pools with the water in them. So they are stuck with the pumps running.
And regardless of how recreational those pools are, that means a lot of pumps running across the state and that translates into a lot of power usage during the day.
So rebates for upgrading to more efficient pumps is an easy way to reduce power usage, reduce costs for people, reduce environmental costs, and reduce unnecessary overall load on the grid.
It's an incentive that just makes sense for everyone involved because it provides benefits across the board.
toomuchtodo · 1h ago
Indeed, I am stuck with the pool because it was there when I bought the house and filling in the pool can be detrimental to the value of the property (it is a disclosure item when selling). Therefore, I must continue to service the pool to maintain the value of the property. Had the property not had a pool when I acquired it, I would not have installed one.
cyberax · 7h ago
In Florida, you also absolutely don't want stagnant water because of the possibility of mosquitoes and the associated malaria.
Larrikin · 12h ago
Do you support any government programs that don't directly benefit you?
mitthrowaway2 · 12h 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 · 11h 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.
> 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.
ab5tract · 10h ago
It’s weird that they leave the EU letter-grade system out of this discussion.
toomuchtodo · 1h ago
I encourage you to update the page accordingly.
LeafItAlone · 3h ago
>Not sure actively subsidizing recreational novelty uses of electricity is doing anything to save the planet
If that recreational novelty is going to happen regardless, isn’t it better to entice people to do it with lower energy use?
relaxing · 3h ago
If it saves the power company from having to make expensive upgrades then yeah, they should.
happyopossum · 11h ago
> because of energy star.
No - your utility used energy star compliance as an easy yes/no for giving you a rebate, but it could still give out rebates without energy star based on a couple of simple specs.
ab5tract · 10h ago
Not if those specs are only being published to comply with Energy Star.
wmf · 12h 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 · 11h 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.
distances · 9h 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).
I don't understand how the tablets could be in rinse cycle but powder in wash cycle? They both go to the same container that fully flips open during the wash cycle. Or do you have a device that has some different compartment for powder?
SchemaLoad · 9h ago
Most machines have two containers, one that is exposed immediately and one with a flap that pops open. And if they don't you can just chuck some powder in loose in the machine.
distances · 9h ago
Yes, but that's not what the parent was talking about. They said the tablet dissolves in the rinse cycle. Only way that would happen is if someone chucks the tablet inside the machine, instead of the detergent container where it should go.
Eavolution · 4h ago
To be fair I don't even know where to buy dishwasher powder or gel. I am in the EU and have literally never seen it in any supermarket. I'd buy it if it was available but I don't think I can anywhere.
jemmyw · 11h 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 · 11h ago
You should watch the whole video. It is not that long and definitely worth a watch.
jemmyw · 7h ago
I've watched it, I watch all his stuff. I like his humour.
I don't live in the US. He does talk about some differences. For example, I've never had a dishwasher here that didn't heat it's own water.
I did live briefly in the US and I recall that there were a bunch of subtle differences around appliances. Europe, Australia and New Zealand use the same models and the US gets different models.
pfannkuchen · 11h ago
Also extremely loud water heaters.
sokoloff · 5h 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.
hristov · 12h ago
The data you need for power cost calculations was also collected by the energy star program.
LeafItAlone · 3h 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.
metaphor · 9h ago
Yes[1].
This includes every major appliance in my primary home...and HEPA air cleaners too.
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.
happyopossum · 11h 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.
metaphor · 9h 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.
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 · 5h 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.
bushbaba · 11h 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 · 10h ago
For gas powered cars I did look at mpg
riffraff · 8h 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)
koliber · 5h 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.
Someone1234 · 11h 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 · 11h 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 · 10h 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 · 9h 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 · 2h ago
The numbers are the same because the system worked, and manufacturers starting engineering energy efficiency into all their lines.
zdragnar · 1h ago
Not all appliances I looked at were energy star certified.
The energy guide (yellow label with cost estimates) is mandatory for most appliances. The energy efficiency is quantified as an estimated annual cost of operation.
Energy star certification is a voluntary and binary thing. There's no readily visible difference between appliances with or without the energy star certification, short of going back to the energy guide label to compare.
cjcampbell · 2h ago
I do the same.
foogazi · 10h ago
Yes, I used it when picking out a refrigerator and TV
SoftTalker · 11h ago
Rarely. But sometimes I will buy a lower-rated model because they are cheaper, simpler and more reliable.
vampiresdoexist · 12h ago
Yes. My dehumidifier.
kcb · 11h ago
Same
freen · 8h ago
100%
Energy costs over the lifetime of many appliances types are many multiples of initial purchase price.
Spivak · 9h ago
Literally the "Energy Star" logo, no. But the big yellow datasheet sticker which has
its power usage and other info, yes.
ocdtrekkie · 12h 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 · 12h 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.
Muromec · 2h 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.
Spooky23 · 12h ago
You’re not going to get it, as the regulation is gone.
tomnipotent · 11h ago
It's not a regulation, but an opt-in voluntary program.
vineyardmike · 12h ago
Article claims it costs $32M a year, which is effectively free relative to the cost of the remaining government.
DavidPeiffer · 11h 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 · 10h 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 · 10h 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.
phendrenad2 · 11h ago
The purpose of this is obviously to end tax breaks for businesses that meet energy star certification.
kristopolous · 10h 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 · 10h ago
Now is a good time to read The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner.
Spivak · 9h 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.
pfoof · 3h 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.
wink · 39m 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?
standardUser · 12h 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.
insane_dreamer · 55m 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.
hristov · 12h 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.
insane_dreamer · 51m 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.
GiorgioG · 11h ago
I’ve never bothered to look at the energy star label before or after purchase.
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 · 4h 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…
wombatpm · 10h ago
Can we get rid of LEED Certification levels next?
dyauspitr · 9h ago
A general war on anything that improves the quality of living.
Muromec · 5h ago
Not in anything-anything, but quality of living for people not rich enough to have their own space program.
raverbashing · 10h ago
Unacceptable
I need that Energy Star logo showing up while my PC bios is doing a memory test
cantrecallmypwd · 11h 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 · 9h 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 · 10h ago
Good. Maybe we can get dishwashers that actually dry the dishes again.
reseasonable · 10h 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.
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.
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.
And sure Americans care about energy costs but looking at the car market you can see Americans don’t actually care to make choices that save them money in the long run. Ford doesn’t even produce sedans anymore.
- [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43912989
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.
> manufacturers don't have any incentive to start producing power-guzzling appliances when power costs are increasing
That's only true if customers can know how much energy their devices are going to use. Energy star forces that disclosure and that's it. Market forces are done everything else. Consumers prefer lower energy costs and devices that voluntarily achieve an energy star certification
Also, "takes like 4 hours to finish a load", I have a new dishwasher, there is no combination of settings (except adding a delay) that will make a load take four hours. Max I can get is 2:36
Incorrect. The far bigger part of the program is certification:
https://www.energystar.gov/about/how-energy-star-works/energ...
(There's also the scoring system, though I don't know if that falls under certification.)
This is how the efficiency requirements become de facto mandates. Federal procurement, among other things, requires energy star certification. There are even mortgage discounts for energy star certified buildings.
Nobody forces manufacturers to get certified, they do it because the market prefers it.
Energy star does not force manufacturers to be certified. I can walk into my local appliance store and walk out with a whole kitchen full of uncertified products if I wanted too.
Yes, I know the reason, but now say it in a way that doesn't make the assumption that the rule is rational: EnergyStar continued to increase the efficiency requirements to the point where the only option manufacturers had was to make the default cycles much longer in order to get the same performance [1]. Every dishwasher therefore has a button that reverts to the pre-regulation mode, but it's usually named in doublespeak.
Somehow I doubt that dishwashers are driving the power consumption curve in the US in 2025. But this is what bureaucracies do, unless given a self-destruct date.
[1] for example, what's preventing EnergyStar from requiring that the water be cold? That would use way less energy!
The idea that manufacturers wouldn’t just make energy and water hogging dishwashers now is naive at best. Making something run well using less resources costs more money up front, even though the total cost of ownership is lower. If you don’t have to make them efficient and you don’t have to display how much energy or water they use and how much that would cost, then you can massively undercut anyone that does those things, even though the consumer would end up paying more over time.
> Somehow I doubt that dishwashers are driving the power consumption curve in the US in 2025.
But of course it isn’t just dishwashers, it is practically every home appliance. If every house was using 10% more energy, that adds up to a lot. It doesn’t mean that data centers aren’t also a problem, but abandoning a program that saves energy doesn’t fix either problem.
>for example, what's preventing EnergyStar from requiring that the water be cold? That would use way less energy!
Is that something you are worried about or was discussed? Or is that just a ridiculous made-up scenario trying to paint a reasonable regulation for nonsense?
Really? You sound like someone who would pay for such a thing. I bet there are more of you!
> If you don’t have to make them efficient and you don’t have to display how much energy or water they use and how much that would cost, then you can massively undercut anyone that does those things, even though the consumer would end up paying more over time.
Nobody said anything about getting rid of the stickers. We can still require stickers, just like we require food has labels on it. We don't need a sprawling certification system encompassing everything from telephones (sigh) to roofing materials and the government bureaucracy that defines it.
I, and I would guess most consumers, are perfectly fine with the trade off of taking longer at lower cost (energy and water). I run mine overnight so it doesn’t matter. This is what I want as the default.
On the few occasions I need it to run faster and am fine with the trade off of higher cost, I press a button and it’s there.
What’s the problem?
My argument, in a nutshell, is that we don't need a government agency mandating energy consumption limits for home appliances, and moreover, getting rid of government agencies that do X rarely means that we get less X.
The fact that you would be perfectly happy choosing a more annoying appliance for lower overall energy consumption is merely validation of my belief that, when it comes to this kind of thing, the market is better than a government bureaucracy.
Do you have any examples where that has been the case?
>The fact that you would be perfectly happy choosing a more annoying appliance for lower overall energy consumption is merely validation of my belief that
I have re-read my own comment multiple times and I am not seeing where I said that I would be an annoying appliance at all. In fact, I say the exact opposite that the appliance is doing exactly what I would want it to do for trade offs. Are you replying to the wrong comment?
I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but the department of education comes to mind as a bureaucracy that has no net influence on the amount of education occurring.
(not totally fair, since the department of education is little more than an inefficient way of allocating block grants, but it's a particularly amusing example.)
If you want to be certified, sure, but that's voluntary.
The only thing energy star is going is mandating companies inform their customer so the customer can decide and compare products. The free market is making you dishwashers use less energy, not energy star
Sure, it's "voluntary" in the sense that if you don't do it, you won't be picked up by any major distributors. How many non-Energy-Star appliances do you see at Home Depot and Wal Mart?
(Edit: also, federal procurement requires certification. So you know...if you don't ever want to sell to the government, go ahead and ignore the certification.)
I just did a search for dishwashers on Home Depot's site.
166 dishwashers are Energy Star certified out of 310.
Of standard-size only dishwashers, 136 out of 241 carry the Energy Star certification.
That's a not insignificant portion of the dishwasher market that has not done this thing that you put in scare-quotes as "voluntary" and are still carried at the number two reseller of major appliances in the US.
But now you’re describing market forces.
This coming from the administration that uses tariffs to force production to be happening in one place over another doesn't seem to be motivated by free market absolutist position either.
The difference between appliances in 1970 vs now is immense. My dishwasher is so quiet we double check if it’s on. It uses less water than handwashing. Even the Chamber of Commerce (big business lobby) asked them to keep Energy Star.
If you press the "non-bureaucracy" button that's on every modern dishwasher (usually labeled "quick wash" or a similar euphemism), you get a 'normal' cycle time (which works just fine, regardless of detergent), but at the cost of not being EnergyStar compliant. This is a product design that is entirely the result of government regulation.
No. I'm saying that you don't need a government bureaucracy mandating it. Moreover, you definitely don't need one mandating ever-more-strict energy consumption limits on energy uses that are not driving the consumption problem, which inevitably run up against hard physical limits (e.g. warm water works better for washing dishes).
Take the argument to the point of absurdity: should we have an EnergyStar rule on doorbell efficiency? The same line of reasoning applies, but by golly...if we had one, I'm sure we'd be sitting here arguing about why doorbells have to be barely audible in order to save the planet.
Except it doesn't really, because doorbells use very little current in pretty much any configuration. Appliances use a lot of current in most configurations, hence why many of them require a 240V/20A circuit versus the standard US 120V/15A circuit. Hence why the Energy Star program focuses on appliances.
This is a real stretch as slippery slope arguments go. Pick something better.
To this point, you're making a big leap, going from "current consumption while running", to "overall energy usage". How many times a day are you running your dishwasher? I guarantee mine isn't in the top items in my life that consume electricity, in aggregate.
While EnergyStar may have been a good idea when it was created (when energy prices were lower), it's no longer necessary in a world where cost of use significantly exceeds the cost of the appliance itself during its own lifetime. And if that isn't true, then you really have to ask what you're doing in the first place, regulating the energy use of an appliance that doesn't use much energy?
I think there are certain aspects of EnergyStar that make sense -- the little label that tells me how many watt-hours an AC uses helps me compare products, so fine. Keep the little sticker. But it doesn't require an agency making silly rules about how much energy any dishwasher, doorbell or dongle can use. Let the market decide.
At least once, sometimes twice, very rarely 3 times when my wife is doing a lot of baking or making candy.
Google says dishwashers can draw between 1200W and 2400W. Asking the same source puts a doorbell at 10W to 40W. 2 orders of magnitude less. The dishwasher consumes massively more power than a doorbell.
How many times a day is your doorbell ringing? Does your doorbell ring for a couple hours on each press, like the length of a dishwasher cycle?
Said differently: precisely how "efficient" does EnergyStar need to make dishwashers, or microwaves, or whatever else, before the gains in theoretical "efficiency" are offset by the compensating behaviors of the users working around the brokenness of the system?
I can replace your microwave with an easybake oven, powered by LED lamp, and it'll be "efficient" in terms of operating current draw, but...
Don't know what to tell you on that...
Probably. The traditional setup includes a 120->24 transformer sitting there burning a couple watts the entire time. A modern switch mode power can sip less, although the doorbells themselves would have to be made to work off of DC.
Ideally there would be a standard for practically wiring homes with 48VDC or 24VDC so there is only one idle power overhead, rather than making every single "smart" controls gadget need to step down on its own from 120 (170) volts. Then a standard doorbell would use no power when the button is not being pressed, as you're imagining.
Both of these things are dependent on network effects (ie markets are sticky), which is why talking in terms of standards makes sense.
A better fix would be to expand the scope of Energy Star. I'm sure you'll still be able to find a suitable door bell just as easily as you discovered the quick wash button on your dish washer.
And, to take your argument to absurdity, we'd still have lead paint and no nutrition labels.
What is one of the most market-effective US regulations?
Requiring a standardized EnergyGuide appliance label for average yearly energy costs. (Aka the yellow label https://www.energystar.gov/products/ask-the-experts/whats-di... )
What did companies do before that? Installed the cheapest, least-efficient parts, put marketing copy on their boxes about how they were high efficiency, and then passed the costs onto unknowing consumers.
https://www.gao.gov/assets/files.gao.gov/assets/gao-10-470.p...
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:
proved useful in finding such fraud or in decreasing any occurance.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.
But of course, there is always a chance that this program was sunset to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse since the current head of the executive branch is notoriously anti-fraud.
Many comments on Hacker News don’t strictly adhere to the rules and aren’t removed. Should they just shut down all of the moderation?
They're just no substitute for things like Energy Star
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.
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.
You're failing to consider the alternative no-EnergyStar scenario -- higher aggregate electricity demand, requiring more power plants, so everyone pays more for power.
Either you pay pennies to promote efficiency, or you pay quarters for energy infrastructure.
When you need to pay the king's taxes with the king's money as otherwise the king's men will beat you up, which is why you'll give the king's soldiers food in exchange for the king's money.
> companies often ensure reviewers
LOL! Of course they do! Companies pick reviewers who give good reviews, and spurn those who are critical. You every wonder why most game reviewers are so fawning?
Consumer Reports knows this, which is why they buy their products on the market, which is why they can't have reviews with the product first comes out.
Which is why when a product is first released you'll rarely find honest negative reviews.
Who rates the reviewers? Are they shilling for the manufacturer? Are they the marketing arm of the manufacturer? How do you know?
There are even claims that Black Friday products are even special runs that are slightly different to lower cost.
(if you can't tell whether that is sarcasm that might be because I also don't know)
First: Those numbers are all BS and have been for decades. If you want damp clothes, dirty dishes and refrigerated to within a blond one of the legal minimum food then you can trust the numbers. If you want your appliances to do their jobs in a satisfactory manner you're going to find yourself turning them up (whatever that means will vary by appliance) and consequently using a lot more energy.
Second: Those yellow stickers are from the FTC, not the EPA.
I have had zero of these issues. Can you be more specific about when you have encountered them yourself?
This article is about the blue Energy Star sticker program, which is managed by the EPA.
I googled, and you are right. Here's the description of Energy Star from the EPA website [1]
[1] https://www.energystar.gov/products/ask-the-experts/whats-di...Across the board though, PC PSU quality has gone up quite a bit in the last 20-25 years though.
Im so tired of the arguement of its not perfect guess we should get rid of it, start from scratch, and the new system will have none of those problems.
This isnt about government excess spending either. If the government was really concerned about excess spending they would take a real deep look at DOD spending and the number of cost plus contracts
When I needed a new washing machine a year or so ago there were many machines that were very similar except for large variations in energy efficiency. If it weren't for the Energy Star labels I almost certainly would have ended up with a machine with higher operating costs.
> Plus, a private certification program could easily fill in the void.
Ah there’s your problem. It turns out private solutions actually cost money, and relying on a private certification program to “fill the void” as you say, is what actually changes the costs.
Alternatively if you believe that private corporate actions are always free when comparing it to government services, then this is a net zero change
The recent Energy Star requirements have gone horribly wrong for some things (eg dishwashers that no longer dry dishes because they omitted a drying heating element, clothes washers that fail to clean clothes because they skimped on water too much), but the basic idea is sound.
(edit: oh, apparently the labeling is EnergyGuide, so that's not even Energy Star)
There is no "drying heating element" in dishwashers. Disassemble one and see for yourself. The same coil is used both for water heating and air heating during the drying cycle.
And I've so far had no problem with dishwashers drying my dishes.
Sure, if it's the classic design of the heating coil sitting exposed near the bottom of the wash tub.
But most newer dishwashers tend to have a much smaller heating element as part of the sump assembly, capable of heating the water only, because they omit the heated dry cycle. From what I've seen these days, you have to buy one without the Energy Star label to get back the traditional dual-use heating element.
And I haven't researched, but I'd venture a guess that those models are just the old designs still being sold, leaving out straightforward efficiency developments like electrically commutated motors. I've fixed many appliances myself, and based on what I've seen I have got little faith in manufacturers' motivations to improve much on their own.
I love how Americans just can't figure this out, as if the German brands that are all three of better, cheaper to buy, and cheaper to operate simply don't exist. The American consumer is a person who cannot comprehend thermodynamics.
Cutting edge technologies can eke out higher efficiencies, but at the cost of all the downsides of new tech - cost premium, unproven designs, potential evolutionary dead end.
I'm in no way in favor of ending Energy Star, but it's risible to assert that stupidity is the only the only reason a consumer would favor a straightforward, easily repaired design over an over-engineered turd stuffed with controller boards that regularly go bad and cost more than the appliance is worth to replace.
I'm only aware of Bosch, which uses some type of humidity-absorbing crystals that then desiccate with the heat of the next cycle. The marketing implication that this doesn't use energy would seem to be playing on that lack of understanding of thermodynamics.
Never mind costing 2x or more for the models with this feature, still seeing complaints of people online saying they don't get the dishes dry, combined with the all-too-common refrain that you have to use "rise aid" - ie elective chemical residue.
(I edited my original comment to focus on the failure of functionality over the lack of a specific mechanism)
Private industry cannot be trusted to act in any interest but their own bottom line.
And while we are the world's largest producer of oil, we're also the world's 2nd largest importer of oil as well!
Even more reason to reduce our oil dependency if the real economic goal is to improve our trade deficit.
(As opposed to efficiency/power cost/TCO in general, specifically refusing to buy non-logoed goods)
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.
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.
Even with regulations like Energy Star, you can't just assume they're being followed accurately. It's much easier for companies to game one government-run system than a whole ecosystem of reviewers who are competing on the accuracy of their reviews.
…only it’s better than a tax because it preserves the freedom to get ripped off if you choose. Yay freedom.
Versus asking the manufacturer ("very efficient sir") or the government ("efficient and we ignored every other aspect of the product so it might not actually work", see the dishwasher discussion).
What is accurately? The efficiency of the product will depend on how full it is. The less mass you have inside it the more often it turns on and the more energy it consumes.
So do consumers even understand this particular point of their device? Or how their use case may impact the displayed numbers?
The Energy Star Test Procedures for refrigerators and freezers is defined in this document:
<https://www.energystar.gov/sites/default/files/specs/ENERGY%...> [PDF]
Refrigerators and freezers are tested unloaded. Which suggests that the Energy Star programme should report a less efficient energy usage as compared with normal loading of a refrigerator/freezer, which will reduce air exchange and the need to re-cool air.
See: Bud Light.
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
A historic example is things was Linksys WRT54G wireless routers. The exact same product number had completely different amounts of memory and core chipsets.
Another one that's common is the first batch of particular SSDs in a model contain more/faster/any cache which gets good benchmarks and great reviews, but later neutered releases of the same 'model' perform like crap.
Because of Energy Star that gap has generally shrunk, but that just means it’s working well.
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.
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.
https://www.tampaelectric.com/residential/saveenergy/energys...
Not sure actively subsidizing recreational novelty uses of electricity is doing anything to save the planet
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/
Even if you don't want to use the pool, if the house has a pool the pump needs to run regularly with filtration and chlorination or else you end up with an expensive, putrid mess to clean up.
And of course in most parts of florida you can't drain the pool long term because of how high the water table is. An empty pool is just a concrete shell so without the weight from the water inside it, the pool essentially becomes boyant and tries to float upwards out of the ground, causing potentially thousands to tens of thousands of dollars of damage.
So a lot of people are stuck with pools with the water in them. So they are stuck with the pumps running.
And regardless of how recreational those pools are, that means a lot of pumps running across the state and that translates into a lot of power usage during the day.
So rebates for upgrading to more efficient pumps is an easy way to reduce power usage, reduce costs for people, reduce environmental costs, and reduce unnecessary overall load on the grid.
It's an incentive that just makes sense for everyone involved because it provides benefits across the board.
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.
If that recreational novelty is going to happen regardless, isn’t it better to entice people to do it with lower energy use?
No - your utility used energy star compliance as an easy yes/no for giving you a rebate, but it could still give out rebates without energy star based on a couple of simple specs.
I don't understand how the tablets could be in rinse cycle but powder in wash cycle? They both go to the same container that fully flips open during the wash cycle. Or do you have a device that has some different compartment for powder?
I don't live in the US. He does talk about some differences. For example, I've never had a dishwasher here that didn't heat it's own water.
I did live briefly in the US and I recall that there were a bunch of subtle differences around appliances. Europe, Australia and New Zealand use the same models and the US gets different models.
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.
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.
This includes every major appliance in my primary home...and HEPA air cleaners too.
[1] https://www.energystar.gov/about/federal-tax-credits/air-sou...
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-sou...
Energy Star is the blue and white label stickers granted to products meeting some energy efficiency levels and is managed by the EPA.
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.
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.
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.
The energy guide (yellow label with cost estimates) is mandatory for most appliances. The energy efficiency is quantified as an estimated annual cost of operation.
Energy star certification is a voluntary and binary thing. There's no readily visible difference between appliances with or without the energy star certification, short of going back to the energy guide label to compare.
Energy costs over the lifetime of many appliances types are many multiples of initial purchase price.
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.
Institutional collapse is a thing.
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.
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.
I'd agree Energy Star requires presenting that, but I feel like a lot of manufacturers would want to.
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.
However, isn't it better to implement this A -> G scale we have in the EU? It's easier to read than EnergyGuide.
Am I just personally oblivious or is it more prominent in the US?
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.
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35659006
I need that Energy Star logo showing up while my PC bios is doing a memory test
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.
Is this really a problem of energy star?