This program should make a DOGE bro swoon. It’s imperiled instead.
I was there at the creation. Energy Star is everything government should be.
May 14, 2025 at 11:03 a.m. EDTToday at 11:03 a.m. EDT
William K. Reilly was administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 1989 to 1993.
The Trump Environmental Protection Agency has made clear its hostility to initiatives animated by concern about climate change. But the Energy Star program, targeted for elimination last week, is not and never has been about climate.
I was there at the creation. The EPA created Energy Star in 1992 as a public-private partnership to provide builders, owners and renters with reliable information about the energy demand associated with their buildings, homes and appliances. The agency noted particularly the surging energy use associated with the emerging popularity of computers.
Here we have an example of democratic government at its best — leveraging its strengths to provide a money-saving service at low cost and without coercion.
When an enterprising EPA staffer named John Hoffman first briefed me on his proposal to promote new energy-efficient and cost-reducing lighting across the United States, I challenged him on the improbability that the EPA could be aware of huge economic savings that businesses had missed.
Follow But the case for replacing incandescent lightbulbs with more energy-efficient and long-lasting LEDs was compelling. Hoffman’s analysis that businesses had treated their lighting bill as incidental proved to be correct, and building operators across the country began responding to the EPA’s leadership and switching to lower-energy lightbulbs. Major savings also resulted from the reduced frequency of lightbulb replacement.
Soon computers, dishwashers, air conditioners, heaters and other home appliances were added to the program. For home and apartment construction, the EPA prescribed rigorous requirements for insulation, windows and HVAC systems. We aimed to offer a reliable new source of information about how to save energy and reduce the cost associated with heating and cooling homes and commercial buildings.
The objective was to lock in savings in building-operating costs by designing for maximum energy efficiency from the beginning. And builders embraced it, contrary to the expectation of critics, who viewed them as mercenaries always focused on the short term.
The program costs $32 million in annual federal outlays to administer but has saved consumers $200 billion in utility bills since 1992 — $14 billion in 2024 alone. The averted air pollution, which was the EPA’s initial objective, has been considerable, equivalent to the emissions of hundreds of thousands of cars removed from the road.
Results like that ought to make a DOGE bro swoon. Why, then, does the Trump administration want to kill the program? It appears to be a case of mistaken identity. In its antipathy to climate activism, the EPA has taken an ax to that rare government program embraced by both seller and buyer, builder and environmentalist, because everyone comes out ahead. How can so much winning be unwelcome within President Donald Trump’s White House?
Read via the Washington Post.