Industry groups are not happy about the imminent demise of Energy Star
47 comments
·May 10, 2025nothercastle
Energy star like CAFE for cars was well intentioned but ended up driving all sorts of undesirable design practices to hit the ratings. Manufacturers especially in the high end chase the highest rating and design appliances that do a poor job of cleaning to hit the low water use target. In the end we all end up eating a bunch of unwashed detergent to save a gallon of water or using 10 gallons to pre and post rinse. That being said a lot of these problems could have been updated into the standard instead of killing it but industry groups didn’t allow that so now it’s going to die and everyone losses.
graemep
> but industry groups didn’t allow that so now it’s going to die and everyone losses.
The fact that "Industry groups" like a regulation is an indication that they have managed to turn it into a means to reduce competition.
mjevans
I believe it; it's like the first decade or two of low-flow / flush toilets which were generally just terrible and ineffective.
Hopefully, like the toilets, a new standard rises that is based around how effective something is at it's primary job _first_, with efficiency in other areas then measured after completing the intended task.
detourdog
That is where I expect care in product development. A standard is a number to hit and if a manufacturer takes care in their work the consumer should experience no degradation in quality.
prof-dr-ir
[citation needed]
rubitxxx
This is the dilemma: some things need regulation, but they need good regulation that evolves over time, and you can’t just throw money at that, you need good leadership to oversee it.
Deleting it is not a solution.
whatshisface
I wouldn't want to ascribe too much method to this madness, but the increases for defense, homeland security and immigration control in the 2026 budget request, combined with a desire to be seen as cutting the budget rather than increasing spending, could have set the extreme civilian costcutting requirements.
What the administration is preparing for that requires raising defense spending to one trillion is beyond me. Actually it's not.
graemep
> What the administration is preparing for that requires raising defense spending to one trillion is beyond me.
A cold war with China. Everything they are doing is based around that expectation.
whatshisface
Cutting national science foundation funding by 55% doesn't match with a cold war against a peer adversary, so I'm leaning towards Iran being the imagined target.
bryanrasmussen
Iran might be a sensible adversary in some reasoning, so that's out. How about exactly what they've said - a multi front war with Greenland, Panama and maybe Canada?
tomrod
It's not madness, it's political targeting in excess of good governance.
squigz
> What the administration is preparing for that requires raising defense spending to one trillion is beyond me. Actually it's not.
Why do you think America is suddenly 'preparing' for something? Hasn't defence spending steadily increased for quite a long time now?
whatshisface
>Hasn't defence spending steadily increased for quite a long time now?
Not as a percentage of GDP. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...
The administration has expressed a desire to destroy several other countries over the last year. Iran, Denmark's autonomous territory Greenland and Canada stand out for being explicitly named, and China for being a career target of important advisors. Iran out of all these is singled out by congressional support and a history of military action in the region. In conclusion, the administration most likely wants to invade Iran.
https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-says-there-will-be-bombi...
tomrod
The Mad King Trump wants all the trappings of North Korea, with military parades and silencing of political dissent.
Ignores Congress (impoundment), ignores SCOTUS (Abrego Garcia), corruptly enriches himself from his position (Meme coin), cuts social programs (numerous), encourages stochastic terrorism (numerous), and expresses sentiments fully divorced from reality or otherwise distracting from heinous and corrupt actions.
marxisttemp
Careful being too openly anti-fascist on the Paul Graham site
phendrenad2
Who cares. Maybe now I can get a washing machine that actually washes my clothes. You'd think at the $1,100 price point, a washing machine should actually work, even with the strict Energy Star standards, but everyone on Reddit suggests switching to a LITERAL commercial washing machine (Speed Queen). Famously-liberal Reddit is suggesting switching to a LOUD, WASTEFUL washing machine because it actually works. I think that says a lot about the current state of things.
dgacmu
That's weird. My LG front loader has been amazing for 6+ years now. Washes well, super quiet, and energy efficient enough that I ran a load while my house was operating on battery during a 4 day power outage. I would totally buy another one.
singleshot_
If you can't find a washer that "actually washes" your clothes today, you probably won't be able to now either. It's not the washer.
(It's probably not your clothes, either).
WalterGR
Could you link to that Reddit discussion? I’d like to get a new washer for my mom.
Edit: Probably this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/laundry/comments/1jco8a1/recommenda... . Speed Queen, Whirlpool, LG, and other brands are recommended. Reading the reviews after you’ve purchased something is always painful! Have you heard of Consumer Reports? They at least used to be pretty reliable.
phendrenad2
[delayed]
CoastalCoder
I've used Consumer Reports I'm that past, and found that their ratings poorly matched my experience.
I don't doubt their integrity, but I no longer use them.
lima
Energy Star is entirely voluntary.
Manufacturers make energy-efficient appliances because consumers prefer them over less efficient appliances, not because the government is forcing them.
jfengel
Huh. My clothes always get clean just fine in my middle-of-the-road residential machine.
Maybe the tree huggers at Reddit are spending a lot of time hugging pine trees. Pine sap is hard to get out.
marxisttemp
you talk a lot in your comments about wanting to avoid politics but almost all of your comments mention politics
trollbridge
I always chuckle when I boot up some old PC with a clone BIOS in 86Box and the Energy Star logo pops up.
ginko
They could adopt the EU energy label instead.
newsclues
If it’s a valuable program someone else can do the work.
Oh no, the government is not doing something… so someone can turn it into a business or start a nonprofit or academia can do something useful.
And government resources can help other more critical projects.
whatshisface
The government has a couple of things that a startup doesn't:
1. The trust of the public. (This is essential for certifications.)
2. The ability to borrow at the lowest interest rate. (This is mainly due to the above.)
That makes spending to organize or coordinate the industry and the public a natural government activity.
anonym29
The government does not have the trust of the public. Presidential approval ratings in recent administrations have been under 50% on both sides of the aisle and Congress is even lower than that.
If anything, distrust of government is nearly a core value inherent to being an American, again - regardless of which side you're on. Stonewall, George Floyd Protests, and Jan 6 were all protests against government, and they're all progress compared to the past, when these tensions would have instead started armed conflicts, like the anti-government sentiment that started both the revolutionary war and the civil war.
tomrod
Also, provision of public goods.
detourdog
Our New England town hall has on display the weights and scales that were used to regulate our local trade. Measuring energy usage seems like a natural expansion of this role.
Even the empire had Imperial Bureau of Standards.
newsclues
The trust is the energy star brand, not the organization that owns it. Also parts of the public do not trust government.
Not sure why a long running and effective program needs government to borrow money, especially if industry finds the program valuable (enough to fund).
I’m fine with government starting programs like this, but think they should eventually be divested and run as self sufficient organizations and not constantly be a drain on the taxpayer.
whatshisface
Why would anyone trust the EnergyStar trademark if it had been sold to an entity that was not trusted?
fzeroracer
Does your argument equally apply to things like food standards and safety? I'm curious where your cutoff for this is, or if you genuinely believe the government should provide no services at all.
delfinom
The problem is industry is under capitalism. They have all the incentive to start their own programs, numerous multiples of that are completely misleading and unfair to one up each other on marketing.
Instead of their being one central neutral auditor.
newsclues
If your claim is the problem is capitalism, and that industry is beholden to it, your argument fails to consider the government’s relationship with capitalism.
brookst
It’s not perfectly transitive.
Three things that can all be true:
1. Industry has no incentive to improve per-unit efficiency if it impacts price
2. Government is largely beholden to industry, especially in oligarch America.
3. A government efficiency mandate can be better than nothing.
ImPostingOnHN
If your claim is the problem is the government and/or it's relationship with capitalism, your argument fails to consider capitalism
constantcrying
I don't know why you get down voted for saying something so sensible.
You are exactly right. Industry can create their own certification scheme with some independent entity, which sets the certification standards. Energy star is not safety relevant, which is the one thing which government arguably should have oversight over.
fzeroracer
Why should the government have oversight over safety? If it's so critical, then the industry can create their own independent entity and safety scheme.
constantcrying
>Why should the government have oversight over safety?
Because the additional cost is worth it when lives are at stake.
Cost doesn't mean just mean money. Government oversight creates significant friction and there needs to be a very good reason to accept that friction into an industry. Risk to human lives is one of the few things where it is sensible to introduce that friction.
“With this action, EPA is delivering organizational improvements to the personnel structure that will directly benefit the American people and better advance the agency’s core mission, while Powering the Great American Comeback.”
the amount of doublespeak in this administration is unreal. Destruction of public institutions is announced as an improvement. The agency's "core mission" remains unstated so they don't need to square the circle on how destroying consumer info helps improve the environment.