5. ENERGY EFFICIENCY: EPA hopes to cure weaknesses in popular Energy Star program (05/14/2010)

Saqib Rahim, E&E reporter

Faced with government critiques, Energy Star officials are trying to figure out how to make a good program better.

Energy Star is considered a successful energy efficiency program: About 3 billion products have been sold since 2000. Environmentalists celebrate its effectiveness because so many consumers recognize the label and because it pushes manufacturers toward more appliance efficiency. Manufacturers value it as a way to target products to energy-conscious consumers.

Nevertheless, recent analyses have found weaknesses in the Energy Star program, and U.S. EPA will begin addressing some of them this year.

Last month, the Government Accountability Office found Energy Star to be "for the most part a self-certification program vulnerable to fraud and abuse." GAO fabricated four fake companies and 20 fake products to see if they would survive the Energy Star process: 15 of them did. One was an alarm clock powered by a gasoline generator.

GAO blamed "self-certification": Historically, manufacturers have tested their own appliances for energy performance, using EPA and Department of Energy guidelines. Then they've turned over these data to EPA, which compares it to its latest standards for what should get the Energy Star label.

Guidelines for third-party groups

EPA aims to set a high enough bar to snag the top quarter of the class -- the 25 percent most efficient refrigerators, blenders or televisions, for example. These products can display the signature Energy Star sticker, while the majority of appliances have only to meet minimum federal energy requirements.

By the end of this year, EPA aims to set guidelines for manufacturers testing their own appliances. It will also set guidelines for third-party groups that observe testing and vouch that it was done properly.

How a product is tested can make or break its Energy Star label. Urvashi Rangan, director of technical policy for Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports, pointed to refrigerators made by LG whose Energy Star status was revoked. Rangan said DOE's testing procedure for these fridges was incomplete.

"You don't need to turn on the ice maker to get an energy rating, but everybody uses their ice maker if they buy a fridge with an ice maker," she said at the Environmental Law Institute yesterday. "Basic things like that we feel need to be addressed, really as soon as possible, so the standards can be brought into line with how people actually use these products at home."

Setting the bar too late and too low

Rangan said DOE tests dishwashers full of clean dishes, but Consumers Union packs them with very dirty dishes to get a more conservative estimate of whether the Energy Star appliance does its job.

Casey Harrell, an information technology analyst at Greenpeace, spots another issue. He focuses on consumer electronics and high-tech gear, and he said Energy Star sets standards far slower than companies do to squeeze out waste.

Energy Star is designed to apply to the top 25 percent of appliances, but Harrell said high-tech companies often find that a majority of their products -- even 75 or 100 percent -- in a given year are skimpy enough on energy to qualify for Energy Star.

Harrell said there can be a couple years between the start of an Energy Star rulemaking and the finish -- when manufacturers have to follow it. By the time the rule is ready, he said, technology has rushed ahead and manufacturers often have no trouble meeting the standard. "The bar's not quite high enough," he said.

It has become so extreme, Harrell said, that Greenpeace now gives special recognition to companies that have a higher proportion of their products meeting or exceeding Energy Star.