Energy Star Is Voluntary, Is Supported By Industry And Has Saved $.5 Trillion Since Inception, So It Must Be Destroyed

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It’s a voluntary program launched during a Republican administration, endorsed by manufacturers and well-recognized by U.S. consumers, who have saved an estimated $500 billion over the past 33 years guided by its familiar blue label. But President Donald Trump’s administration has decided the Energy Star program has got to go. CNN and The Washington Post first reported the plan to eliminate the program that certifies the most energy-efficient appliances and buildings with the Energy Star label. Knowledgeable sources have confirmed to Inside Climate News that Environmental Protection Agency staffers learned the details at an internal meeting earlier this week.

The EPA press office, when asked about Energy Star, did not comment directly about the program, but noted the reorganization of the agency that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced last Friday. “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,” EPA’s press office said in an email.

Because Energy Star has had strong support across the political spectrum and from industry as well as environmentalists, some close observers are struggling to understand the Trump administration’s motivation for eliminating it. Steven Nadel, executive director of the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, thinks Energy Star simply had the misfortune to be located inside EPA’s Climate Protection Partnership Division, and that Zeldin is eliminating offices with the word “climate” in its name.

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But Joseph Goffman, who headed up air pollution programs at EPA under President Joe Biden, thinks the decision aligns with the Trump administration’s other actions—its regulatory rollbacks, its cuts in personnel and its clawing back of clean air and water grants. “What I think we’re looking at here is an absolute distillation of the ideology of this administration, which is a thoroughgoing hostility to anything that the government does that helps people,” Goffman said. “If you want to destroy the relationship between the public and government, you’re going to target the Energy Star program.”

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08052025/energy-star-program-could-be-eliminated-by-trump-administration/