Energy Star Dims A Bit

The star in the U.S. government's Energy Star certification shines a little less nowadays thanks to the revelations detailed in a recently released report from the Department Of Energy.

The DOE and the EPA jointly run the Energy Star certification program. In short, Energy Star is a certification program that puts an Energy Star logo on products that are designed to use significantly less energy than their non-certified competitors. If the objective is to design a system that accurately describes the environmental impact of a product, Energy Star is not the pinnacle of effective consumer labeling. Yet, it has been effective at shifting consumers towards more energy efficient products. Energy Star is to be praised for the shifts in design and consumption it has sparked. It can be reasonably assumed that Energy Star's success and power are directly related to the unbiased third party nature of its arbiter. The government has no financial stake in certifying one product over another, so for that and many other reasons, people felt they could trust the rubber stamp.

As it turns out, the government's audit of its own program has returned less than encouraging results. Large, credibility damaging holes have been found. The audit discusses the following problems:

• Disparity between a product's claimed energy rating and its actual energy consumption (sometimes using twice as much as claimed).
• The DOE/EPA's decision to allow product manufacturers to self-certify a product's compliance with Energy Star instead of requiring them to use independent labs.
• Energy Star's failure to identify the top performing products in particular product categories. This last problem is especially problematic since it flies in the face of the original intention of the program: to identify, in each product category, the top 25% of products by energy performance. The audit reveals that 90% of CFL bulbs currently qualify for the Energy Star logo.

Much could be said in general about the shortcomings of certification systems. Despite all that could be said though, Energy Star has been known as one of the bigger and more respected certifications. To see such flaws are embedded in its makeup is disheartening. At each point of failure, the DOE/EPA have potentially set back the effectiveness of the Energy Star label. It remains to be seen what the full impact on consumer confidence is and perhaps it will remain strong. The agencies have quickly pledged to revise the Energy Star program to solve these problems. The high confidence of consumers should never have been put in jeopardy in the first place though. The DOE and EPA should get to work immediately and restore some of the shine to their Energy Star program. We will all benefit from the improvements.