This is so frustrating.
Energy Star has been a huge success over the past 30 years. It's (now) widely supported by industry, has reduced the TCO to consumers for most household appliances, and results in hundreds of billions of kWh of electricity saved every year.
Energy Star is not some tree-hugging, drum-circle, feel-good program.
The US urgently needs to expand and modernize our grid. Every GW of power saved, is GW of generation and transmission capacity that we don't have to build and maintain.
Energy Star can be frustrating as well. My latest laptop (Lenovo ThinkPad) has an Energy Star rating. To get this, they need to do things like turn off the power to the audio pre-amp if there's no sound being played. When a sound is ready to be played, latency is undesirable, so it gets pushed to the amp before the amp has powered up. The result is some fraction of a second of missing sound, and also an annoying click through the speakers when the amp is powered down after the sound stops.
I would rather have sound without these issues, even if my computer consumes an extra 100mW at idle to keep the sound system ready.
I'm aware that most sound chipsets allow a user override that keeps the circuits on, but the this newer chipset doesn't seem to implement the feature correctly. No combination of arguments to the linux sound system, or loadable modules seems to keep the sound circuits from switching to standby.
I've had problems with modern monitors shutting themselves off if they don't detect a signal in something like five or ten seconds, which is far too short when I'm trying to debug a PC having boot issues, configure a multi-monitor setup (like a 3-screen virtual pinball cabinet) or even just figure out which HDMI cable is which on the PC end. I don't mind the auto-off feature but the incredibly short time period is unnecessary and the delay time isn't adjustable (at least on the LG monitors I have).
This over-aggressiveness turns a good feature into a problem forcing me to completely disable power saving. Which is sad because the biggest savings of the feature are when a screen is left on for hours when the PC is off or disconnected (which I don't do anyway, as the entire system is on a smart power strip). A monitor should hunt for a valid signal for at least 45 or 60 seconds by default before auto-offing itself.
Another "power saving gone awry" issue is that USB selective suspend can cause wireless mice to stutter after not moving for just a few seconds. I think this is due to lag in the wake-up time. Unfortunately, the interface doesn't have any time adjustment, so I have to just turn selective suspend.
AFAICT my MBP M1 is energy star certified but has no such issue. Might it just be that the Lenovo has a bad implementation?
That sounds like Lenovo just being bad? Certainly they could fix the issue but instead chose the cheaper option.
Interesting. I had similar things from other machines, and the solution is to keep a silent audio file playing in the background at all times, then there is no latency.
> Energy Star is not some tree-hugging, drum-circle, feel-good program.
It saves people money. Less spent on electric bills and tax money can be used elsewhere.
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No. I have several monitors of similar age, and their startup times vary significantly. It's a result of manufacturer choices, but not some nefarious impact of labels that tell you how much power a thing uses.
Doubtful, of my four displays only one behaves this way
How many various inputs does the display on your phone need to scan and handshake?
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.
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.
That’s not really a fair comparison. Fuel consumption is just one of many important factors to consider when car shopping. For instance, a small sedan doesn’t fit my entire immediate family. For some parts of the country 4 wheel drive or all wheel drive are practically essential. Ground clearance can be an issue if you live on a country dirt road. EV charging stations can be unavailable nearby or in sufficient numbers. Some people’s work and hobbies require them to own pickup trucks.
Feels fair to me. Some people need different things from their appliances than efficiency. Those people can choose such appliances.
I’ve never even noticed how long it take my dishwasher to run because overnight is my requirement. If you throw parties weekly and need a fast dishwasher to clean plates between courses, buy one. Just as if you need a truck for your farm.
Most people (and I'm talking 85%+) do NOT need 4wd or ground clearance. I get so tired of these excuses being trotted out by truck owners. Don't get your panties in a wad when people say you don't need a truck. I get it - YOU do happen to tow a 10,000lb boat or trailer every day for work/play. Fine. Nobody is taking your truck. But the vast majority of truck owners do NOT NEED a truck. They WANT a truck. And that is fine too - drive what you want! Just be honest with yourself and others....
> Some people’s work and hobbies require them to own pickup trucks.
The majority of truck owners don’t use them for towing or hauling
You made the same comment 5 hours ago [0] in the same thread. Accidental duplication?
Guess he just wanted double the downvotes.
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.
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
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).
I’m neither a libertarian, nor am I a snowflake…and the argument I am making has absolutely nothing to do with the presence or absence of a specific button.
When there is a huge government bureaucracy that is devoted to writing and implementing “efficiency standards”, then I question the value of the expense.
Y’all do realize that other countries with energy efficient appliances don’t have this program, right?
(It’s almost like it isn’t necessary to achieve the same outcome.)
The second sentence in your initial post is literally whining about how dishwashers take 4 hours to finish unless you put in non-bureaucratic mode, as if this some huge inconvenience to the American household. And since you feel no need to clarify what you meant by "non-bureaucratic mode" in your additional comment we can only conclude that you were referring to literally turning a dial or pressing a button. Overblowing a minor inconvenience is the literal definition of a snowflake in how it's colloquilly used.
Having failed to demonstrate convincingly how this greatly imconveniences the American household as consumer, you pivot to the inconvenience of the American household as taxpayer. But any serious discussion of that point requires you to discuss the concrete cost of this certification program compared to all other government services. This, you also do not do.
As for other countries not having this program, what do you think the purpose of the "EU energy label program" is?
Mischaracterizing my argument, and then attacking that mischaracterization is called a straw man.
My argument is not about dishwashers. It's not about specific buttons. It's that removal of this particular government bureaucracy is unlikely to lead to any bad outcomes, because it has long ago stopped doing much of anything that actually impacts energy use, and instead focuses on things like making your dishwasher work worse in the name of efficiency. A classic story of bureaucratic imperative.
Even if you do think it's doing something, you have yet to adequately explain why it needs to be done by the government.
The EU has had Ecodesign regulations for a long time, and the Brussels effect [1] does the rest.
The Ecodesign regulations are pretty new. The EU used to just join the US's EnergyStar program until there was talk of getting rid of it in 2018. Canada, Japan and Switzerland still join the US's EnergyStar program. I have no idea what the GP is talking about with the claim that most countries don't have the energy Star program.
Maybe China? But I feel like China has pretty strict regulations about a lot of things.
> Canada, Japan and Switzerland still join the US's EnergyStar program.
I can't speak for Europe, but I know Japan well. It may have "joined", but there is literally no awareness of the program. You don't see the symbol on appliances here, and I'm not sure anyone would know what it is, if it appeared. They simply don't need such a program to have efficient appliances.
One thing the government does do is offer rebates for people upgrading old appliances. One might ask whether the money spent on EnergyStar would be better put to use on these kinds of direct incentives.
> Energy star forces that disclosure and that's it.
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.
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.
It’s “voluntary” except for all of the different ways it’s been written into regulations, from federal procurement all the way down to local government.
But if the market prefers it, great! Do it without the need for a government bureaucracy! Organizations like Underwriters Laboratories don’t need an arm of the US government to exist.
If the market prefers dishwashers that are slower then you don’t need the government creating that certification.
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?
I think looking at how much it costs to operate an appliance without looking at how well the appliance does its job is relying on incomplete information. I can make a dishwasher that costs 0 to operate but doesn’t clean the dishes. Therefore I think the whole system is flawed and useless and shouldn’t exist.
Do you also think we should do away with mandatory fuel economy disclosures for the same reason?
Information on performance is usually provided by third parties like Consumer Reports, Car and Driver, and other review services. Government provides and mandates quantitative statistics as a public service; private parties take care of the qualitative and subjective analyses (i.e., opinions).
No, information about power of cars is widely available in the specs sheet of the car (torque, etc). Therefore there is the chance of a fair and useful comparison.
Why do you think that information is widely available?
Perhaps it's because there's a government program requiring it's disclosure and specific testing process?
If MPG labeling laws go away, what makes you think Ford will continue disclosing those values? And if they do, why wouldn't they start declaring MPG values driving downhill in a windtunnel giving the vehicle a tailwind?
You don't have to look too far to find those examples. Go to your local dealership that has some of the super duty trucks for sale. Notice how their spec sheet where the MPG is disclosed says "MPG testing not required" or something similar. Now how are you supposed to compare two trucks from the same brand, much less across two brands?
No third party certification is involved in those vehicles. Why do you think a third party would get involved in passenger vehicles if we relax the disclosure laws?
That suggests you would support even more mandatory disclosures from appliance manufacturers, as opposed to reducing information by killing off the Energy Star program.
Exactly. Either full information or none. What exists now is useless. The current system can give good scores to dishwashers that force you to rinse all dishes before you put them in the dishwasher or that you have to run twice, making you waste time and energy.
That's not my experience. I have a relatively new Energy Star-rated dishwasher (KitchenAid) and it works great. The trick, as re-discovered by Technology Connections, is to take advantage of the prewash cycle and use a bit of prewash detergent along with the main wash detergent, and not use too much.
Check out the discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHP942Livy0
> can give good scores to dishwashers that force you to rinse all dishes
That's just simply false. Read your dishwasher's manual. It'll tell you not to pre-rinse dishes.
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.
> 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!
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?
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.
Incandescent bulbs have a color temp of about 2700K and you can currently purchase LEDs at that same temp.
They are talking about the CFL bulbs (compact florescent), which have that cool colored industrial look lighting. Like all their examples, it is a grain of truth spun into ridiculousness. Most of the development of CFLs was in the 1970s because of the energy crisis. In the 1990s, they were promoted for use by the government and power companies, with rebates and other subsidies. The government didn’t start banning incandescents until 2012, after warm light LEDs had been around for a long time.
> 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.
I just do not agree with the libertarian mindset. It is a “tragedy of the commons” situation for me. We live in a complex society and share/use the same resources and infrastructure, and the net effect of individual use can be huge. Power grid capacity is a perfect example, where each individual using a bit more energy doesn’t cost them much directly and there is little market pressure one way or the other. The overall effect requires higher infrastructure spending, that everyone pays regardless of if you use a bit more or less energy. Never mind how much pollution comes from energy production, and we all breath the same air. “The market” is absolutely terrible at solving for indirect effects like that.
I also don’t have the time, energy, and knowledge to be an expert on every single thing I buy or use. I know nothing about roofing materials, so having some bare minimum standards and left and right limits balancing societal harm/good and individual choice is perfectly reasonable to me.
Natural resources and infrastructure are a shared resource “owned” by everyone, collectively known as the nation. Protecting that value is what the government should be doing.
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?
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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
> 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.)
> 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. Walmart is not a significant reseller of dishwashers.
At Lowes (the number one reseller), 396 out of 539 built-in dishwashers carry the Energy Star certification.
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.
When you insert a giant labeling bureaucracy in the middle of it, then point to consumers doing what they would have done anyway, then no, it’s not “the market at work”.
It’s a bit like making a Department of Deliciousness, and “voluntarily” labeling every cookie sold as part of the SweetStar program. My goodness…people like certified delicious products! Let’s hire more people…
> How many non-Energy-Star appliances do you see at Home Depot and Wal Mart
I shop at lowes, not home depot or walmart, but lots.
Look at all the fridges lowes sells: https://www.lowes.com/pl/refrigerators/4294857973?goToProdLi...
There's 994 total, 554 are energy star certified. Just over half.
To take it even further, if I shop only what's in stock at my local store, there are 17 options. 11 Energy Star certified.
There's no absence of options if you don't care about energy star certifications.
> 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.
> 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?
> 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.)
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.
Good news. EnergyStar isn't a mandate.
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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.
False; my brand new dishwasher from Bosch takes approximately two hours and ten minutes to complete a load of dishes on the standard mode.
EnergyStar on GPUs wouldn’t be that bad nowadays!
I actually sort of agree. If you're going to put the regulations in place, at least do it where it matters!
Why is it that every time libertarians win a victory for my freedom my life gets harder and worse?
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.
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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?
> 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.
> 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.
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.
> 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?
Doorbells should actually provide power draw figures. I had to upgrade my doorbell transformer to support two Nest video doorbells, and they run 24/7, so I’d guess that they actually take more aggregate power than the dishwasher that I run once every couple days.
Doorbells are an extra pain for consumers to measure power draw for - you can’t easily use a kill-a-watt metre as you have to hardwire them to a low-voltage power source.
I don’t want my video resolution capped for energy-draw reasons, but I’d absolutely like to have some specs on typical power draw so that I can adequately compare doorbells.
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...
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.
Maybe not, but they replaced dishwashers that used to take 1 hour to clean a load with ones that take 4+ hours.
except, by your own admission, nothing has been replaced?
you can still push the quick wash button.
the only difference, is that the default choice trades off cleaning time for energy savings.
what is your argument against consumers having a choice?
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...
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.
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?
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.
> should we have an EnergyStar rule on doorbell efficiency?
Probably. The traditional setup uses a 120->24 transformer sitting there burning a couple Watts the entire time, waiting for the few seconds when the doorbell gets turned on. A modern switch mode power supply can use less.
Ideally there would be a standard for practically wiring homes with 48VDC or 24VDC so there is only one centralized 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.
The GAO wrote a report on fraud, waste, and abuse potential of Energy Star in 2010. They were able to get a gas-powered alarm clock (and 14 other fake products) marked as Energy Star compliant. Worth a read/laugh.
https://www.gao.gov/assets/files.gao.gov/assets/gao-10-470.p...
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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?
You should really look up how much the program costs vs how much it saves consumers each year.
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
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.
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.
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
There are lots of companies offering product reviews. There is no requirement that every single product be reviewed by all of them. And, there are a million things someone might want to know about a product, there's nothing special about energy usage that justifies a whole special government programme. Otherwise where does it end? Why not demand new taxes to pay for reviews of the GUI friendliness of every single electronic product? Or movies? The arguments being made in this thread would apply to an enormous number of questions someone might ask about a product.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Power doesn't work as simply as that.
Example: as a regulated utility it will often cost more per unit if underused vs optimal generating supply (which has already been passed through into rates)
Additionally, the generating source heavily influences ultimate cost.
Efficiency savings make no difference to aggregated demand so that is irrelevant. See Jevon's Paradox, which absolutely applies to electricity.
So you're saying people will install two water heaters if they buy a more efficient one?
Not sure this is the elastic droid that paradox is looking for.
No, that's not what I'm saying. Jevon's Paradox has a good Wikipedia page that describes the problem. Efficiency improvements don't reduce consumption in aggregate, because the lower demand causes lower prices that then unlock new use cases that create more demand that pushes up usage again.
As the wikipedia page points out, this assumes a highly price elastic good.
Household energy use is not such a good, because most uses have fixed utility.
Very few people are going to cool their house down to 10C because the price of cooling to 15C decreased.
Nor is their overall energy use budget-capped. (Outside of low income AC and/or heating use cases)
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?
Nobody is threatened into using cryptocurrencies, yet they exist and can be used as money.
Yes, companies can choose who gets to review pre-release products. Negative pre-release reviews come out anyway, and if you don't trust them you can wait, as you say. Reviewers who aren't trusted by people looking for reviews rapidly lose their audience and stop being given product access.
You guys are talking as if product reviews are some theoretical thing that don't exist today, that only a government can supply. Reviews obviously do exist and billions of people rely on them every month. There is just no problem that specifically requires the US government to step in here.
> and can be used as money
Yes, and so can Canadian Tire money, but try paying your taxes in scrip or Bitcoin.
> and if you don't trust them you can wait
Nope. Models numbers are cheap. Each chain can get their own model number, updated every six months. You wait and the numbers all change.
> Reviewers who aren't trusted by people
You're smoking the good stuff!
"Up to 30% of online reviews are fake and consumers can't tell the difference", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33472922
"Big media publishers are inundating the web with subpar product recommendations", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39433451
See also the comments of HNers who find it hard to find trusted reviewers.
How do you find a trusted reviewer for air purifiers, which that last link concerns?
That's almost certainly the yellow Energy Guide sticker you're praising (and I agree). That's not the subject of this article.
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.
Most other countries have their own version of this. If the product sells internationally you could use their tested values.
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.
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.
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)
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".
One specific thing is maybe a patent, but the whole liberal democracy with laws and all that could be run as a franchise.
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.
>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?
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 AgencyI 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Appliances can use less energy of the mfrs are encouraged to design that. Energy Star was that encouragement.
Not sure about that. Industry created, private energy efficiency programs have often been nothing more than industry cheerleaders.
> 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
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.
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.
"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)
I don't know why I'm getting downvoted so hard here. If you read the context of my initial comment, I am generally supportive of Energy Star. But nuance is important.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
> 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.
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.
they cut cost everything that seemed "un-critical"
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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)
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.
> 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.
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.
That explains why my new fridge has a little less volume (on paper), even though it's a little bigger.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Notoriously reliable word of mouth. Very cheap, much freedom.
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).
People trust all kinds of nonsense they shouldn’t.
You want to talk about word of mouth? I’ve never heard anyone complain about dishwashers except from the people on here who have a libertarian axe to grind.
Shocking news -- Americans are okay with taxes as long as they are ones to collect them.
> 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?
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:
<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.
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.
I mean not really. You'll end up with boycotts around potential political reasons but almost no effective ones around technical reasons.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
I just received a $350 rebate on a variable speed pool pump I had installed, because of energy star.
https://www.tampaelectric.com/residential/saveenergy/energys...
Oof. My pool pump uses 0 watts, do I qualify?
Not sure actively subsidizing recreational novelty uses of electricity is doing anything to save the planet
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.
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.
In Florida, you also absolutely don't want stagnant water because of the possibility of mosquitoes and the associated malaria.
Do you support any government programs that don't directly benefit you?
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).
It’s fairly straightforward to understand that energy efficiency programs offset combustion generation emissions through avoided energy use. It would’ve taken GP one glance at Wikipedia, if questioning the environment benefits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Star
> 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.
It’s weird that they leave the EU letter-grade system out of this discussion.
I encourage you to update the page accordingly.
>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?
If it saves the power company from having to make expensive upgrades then yeah, they should.
> 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.
Not if those specs are only being published to comply with Energy Star.
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.)
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.
I watched the video out of interest and it seems like that would only happen if you didn't use the dispenser flap. If you use tablets the only thing you miss is pre-washing. The argument is that cheap powder is just as good and it's got the same ingredients.
It sounds like a more important step (if you're plumbed into the hot line) is to run your water just before the first cycle so that the machine fills with the hottest water it can get, as not all of them will heat initially.
> 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?
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.
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.
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.
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".
You should watch the whole video. It is not that long and definitely worth a watch.
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.
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Also extremely loud water heaters.
The data you need for power cost calculations was also collected by the energy star program.
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.
Yes[1].
This includes every major appliance in my primary home...and HEPA air cleaners too.
[1] https://www.energystar.gov/about/federal-tax-credits/air-sou...
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.
Let’s be honest - you’re going to buy a mini split based on its capacity and SEER rating, not an energy star label.
Bad faith argument, and certainly not the case for homeowners intending to leverage certain tax incentives[1].
When I tapped this two years ago, it was for a ducted heat pump system replacement where the only immutable requirement was that the system had to have earned the ENERGY STAR label. SEER2 rating was a mere secondary consideration that had no impact on credit qualification; 14.8 was my saddle point.
At the time, ductless mini-splits had to be ENERGY STAR certified and SEER2 > 16 to qualify.
[1] https://www.energystar.gov/about/federal-tax-credits/air-sou...
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?
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.
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.
For gas powered cars I did look at mpg
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.
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)
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?
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.
That sounds like a classic upfront cost fallacy, especially if you haven’t revisited it with actual calculations and for other appliance types.
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.
The numbers are the same because the system worked, and manufacturers starting engineering energy efficiency into all their lines.
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.
I repeat, the system worked, and manufacturers starting engineering energy efficiency into all their lines.
There are knock on effects like economies of scale making energy efficient parts cheaper to source, marketing the latest technology driving consumer expectations, and manufacturers flat out copying each others’ designs.
I do the same.
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.
Yes, I used it when picking out a refrigerator and TV
Rarely. But sometimes I will buy a lower-rated model because they are cheaper, simpler and more reliable.
Yes. My dehumidifier.
Same
100%
Energy costs over the lifetime of many appliances types are many multiples of initial purchase price.
Literally the "Energy Star" logo, no. But the big yellow datasheet sticker which has its power usage and other info, yes.
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.
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.
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.
You’re not going to get it, as the regulation is gone.
It's not a regulation, but an opt-in voluntary program.
Article claims it costs $32M a year, which is effectively free relative to the cost of the remaining government.
>...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.
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.
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.
The purpose of this is obviously to end tax breaks for businesses that meet energy star certification.
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.
Now is a good time to read The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner.
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.
I can understand, I guess, preferring fossil fuel energy to renewable. There is an argument to be made about the economic impact of depending on one thing for a long time and then switching over to the other. But shutting down a thing whose job is to promote efficient use of energy regardless of the source is just making things worse because you can.
A carbon tax has its problems, but it is very attractive in how many incentives it would automatically align without explicit bureaucracy.
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.
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.
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.
RIP the Energy Star logo in some bioses.
That logo went away when they stopped supporting proper S3 sleep.
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?
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.
A general war on anything that improves the quality of living.
Not in anything-anything, but quality of living for people not rich enough to have their own space program.
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.
Unacceptable
I need that Energy Star logo showing up while my PC bios is doing a memory test
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.
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.
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Can we get rid of LEED Certification levels next?
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.
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…
I’m not even making an environmental statement. The spread in dollar cost per year in operating an efficiently cooled and insulated fridge and one that is neither is enormous. Obviously the size of the enclosed space matters as the heat gain is proportional to the surface area. But for the same volume you can spend 2x per year depending on the model.
Before energy star there was no way to know which was relatively more efficient. This led to people buying appliances that were extraordinarily and unreasonably inefficient, costing way more than necessary.
This is a return to the “bad old days.”
"I'm a climate-change not-care-er."
What reaction did you expect from posting that?
Good. Maybe we can get dishwashers that actually dry the dishes again.
Not one of my last five dishwashers (Bosch / Samsung) have had any problem with drying dishes. I have had three in my current house (two kitchens) and they work just fine. One will even auto-open the door to dry faster.
Is this really a problem of energy star?
My dishwasher (an 11 year old Bosch, which was Energy Star rated) is by far the best dishwasher I've owned at cleaning items and dries them perfectly well also on its default settings.
It won't dry a bowl or ladle that's been turned to fill up with water, but anything that's oriented to shed water comes out bone dry.
I have a brand new dishwasher from last year. It dries just fine.
I've never used heated dry in any dishwasher in my entire life. It's a massive waste of power for no gain, and will destroy things like plastic food containers and utensils.
Your dishes dry just fine through normal air. The dirt cheap dishwasher my family had in the 90s even had a little flap to let out the steam and let in cool air after the cycle was done.
I can't understand how people are so insistent this is even a mild annoyance, let alone something worth destroying our government over.
I think some of you guys are buying "high end" appliances on this mistaken belief of "it's so much more expensive, surely something about it is better right?" and just get taken for a ride. Nothing in those super "smart" dishwashers has any value.