WASHINGTON (April 21, 2022) — A new report to Congress on the ENERGY STAR Program documents program improvements and expansion that have helped American consumers, industry, and the environment since 2009, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) realigned responsibilities regarding home appliances. These improvements include:
- Nine ENERGY STAR appliance specification updates in order to keep product specifications up to date with a changing marketplace;
- Two new appliance product categories – residential clothes dryers and commercial clothes washers to the program to expand savings opportunities for consumers;
- The launch of the ENERGY STAR Most Efficient recognition program to highlight super-efficient products, including refrigerators, clothes washers, dishwashers, clothes dryers, room air conditioners, and dehumidifiers as part of an integrated effort to enable consumers to identify the top performing products;
- Revised test procedures for home appliances that reflect advancements in the home appliance market;
- Third-party certification to support the integrity of the ENERGY STAR label;
- A sophisticated, consumer-oriented ENERGY STAR Product Finder tool that leverages a single, integrated database of product testing results;
- Updated ENERGY STAR Products Program Strategy and Guiding Principles;
- A more effective consumer education strategy integrated across all product categories and coordinated nationally throughout the year, as well as an evolution in the design of utility rebate programs (i.e. the ENERGY STAR Retail Products Platform);
- And the formalization of the product specification setting process into a standard operating procedure, providing additional transparency, clarity and increased stakeholder participation.
The joint report was written in response to a request from Congress to review the 2009 EPA-DOE Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Improving the Energy Efficiency of Products and Buildings and the extent to which expected efficiencies for ENERGY STAR home appliances have been achieved. EPA and DOE find that the realignment of roles that resulted from the 2009 MOU facilitated program improvements to the benefit of American consumers, ENERGY STAR partners, including the appliance industry, and the environment.
The ENERGY STAR Products Program has grown to include more than 75 product categories and to partner with 2,000 manufacturers, 1,850 retailers, 800 energy efficiency program administrators and others seeking to help consumers select products that can save them money and help protect the environment. Americans purchased more than 300 million products earning the ENERGY STAR label in 2018 with a market value of more than $100 billion. An average of 800,000 ENERGY STAR certified products was sold every day in 2018, bringing the total to more than 6 billion products sold since 1992. Since its inception, ENERGY STAR and its partners have helped American families and businesses save more than 4 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity and achieve over 3.5 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas reductions, equivalent to the annual emissions of more than 750 million cars.
