For years, beginning in the 1990s through just a few years ago I considered ENERGY STAR® to be fluffy foo foo feel good goo – kind of like eating meringue smothered in corn syrup after chopping wood all day.
Then they introduced the ENERGY STAR rated homes and ENERGY STAR rated commercial buildings. Both of these seem to be solid “programs”. ENERGY STAR for commercial buildings is based on energy intensity, which is energy consumption per square foot, climate region, type of facility and a few other things. To “earn the ENERGY STAR” commercial buildings must be in the 75th percentile of energy efficiency by energy intensity AND buildings must be inspected by a licensed professional engineer to ensure the occupants or owners aren’t cheating by starving the building of fresh air, sufficient lighting, or comfortable temperature and relative humidity conditions. This is solid.
Then the ENERGY STAR label for appliances started to carry some weight with me, although I have an ENERGY STAR rated dehumidifier that won’t shut off automatically anymore and I otherwise have no idea what about it saves energy.
Unless you’ve been cryogenically frozen like Austin Powers for the past 30 years and were thawed out yesterday, you know the government has been throwing money at ENERGY STAR rated appliances as fast as the presses at the US mint can churn out $100 bills.
Recently some ENERGY STAR warts were exposed. The famous electric space heater with feather duster and fly strips passed as an air purifier. This is ironic because electric resistance is the most wasteful source of space heat and a feather duster kicks up dust, just sort of moves it around – not good at air purification. The other infamous example that passed was the gasoline-powered alarm clock.
For an organization that has eight pages of how and how not to use their brand, including how to use ENERGY STAR properly in a statement, and how to use the logo, this is a major scandal. The insouciant reaction to this fiasco is unfortunately not surprising to me, as this is the federal government we are talking about. An ENERGY STAR spokeswoman states the approvals of these bogus products did not pose a problem for consumers because the products never existed. There was “no fraud”, and she said she doubted that many of the 40,000 genuine products with EnergyStar status had been mislabeled.
Come again? These ridiculous examples get through the “screening” process, but don’t worry, the 44,000 products with the label are all ok. I think this woman needs to take a statistics class or maybe some taekwondo six sigma courses.
This is another blithe example of no accountability at the federal government. If something like this happened in the private sector some big heads would roll.
Snooty congress people haul all sorts of people they don’t like in front of them to call the kettle black. Examples: Mark McGuire, Jose Canseco, Roger Clemens (why their “crime” rises to a federal level is beyond me), Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and half of Microsoft, automotive executives, and most recently, evil corporations who are going public with the hit they will take to earnings due to the passage of the healthcare bill – reporting which ironically congress made them do in their kneejerk reaction to Enron with the passage of the millstone known as Sarbanes Oxley.
The problem is the government has a horrible record of policing itself. I went into this in an earlier rant, or maybe it was while I was in a deep sleep one night; the purpose of government is to protect people from being ripped off. When they start delivering products and services, in this case ratings, who’s going to oversee that? Look at this ENERGY STAR scandal. The government didn’t protect us from getting ripped off, but instead was complicit in it. I don’t know of a single energy efficiency program in the US that is administered by a state agency – except for Wisconsin, which controlled the energy efficiency purse strings for a while and then, you guessed it, they stole the money to fill budget gaps they were too cowardly to fix the right way. Programs are administered by utilities, consultants, and/or non-profits and overseen by state agencies. Yes. This is how things should work.
This guy says toscrap the ENERGY STAR immediately. I don’t know if I would go that far. As mentioned above, I think the intent is very positive for consumers. Instead it should be privatized, turned over to a non-profit or consortium to manage and police. This is how commercial equipment is rated. Organizations include the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute, and the American Gas Association.
If the ENERGY STAR “program” were turned over to the private sector and a scandal of these proportions broke, you can bet the executives of the organization administering it would be singing to Henry Waxman right now.
