Understanding the Energy Code: The Influence of EnergyStar – GreenBuildingAdvisor

By Robby Schwarz | July 11, 2025

A few weeks ago, the Trump Administration announced that it plans to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Energy Star program, and the news reverberated across the energy efficiency industry, producing a simple response time and time again; Why? There were many quickly written reactions, such as Ted Kelly from the Environmental Defense Fund pointing out the accomplishments of Energy Star.

Ted stated, “For more than three decades, the Energy Star program has helped American families shop for reliably energy-efficient home appliances that would save them money. Generations have looked for the blue Energy Star label in stores when they were buying a refrigerator or dishwasher and wanted something they could trust. Companies chose to participate in the voluntary program because they knew their customers liked it … The Energy Star program has helped Americans save more than $500 billion in energy costs and has kept approximately four billion metric tons of climate pollution out of our air since 1992. More than 1,000 companies recently wrote to EPA in support of the program.”

Energy Star, then and now

The Energy Star program was founded in 1992, in recognition that environmental protection and economic growth are one and the same. The innovative concept has successfully proven that the fight against climate change can be profitable for business and government when the partnership is leveraged. In its simplest form Energy Star can be described as an organization that sets an energy efficiency specification for how to build a product. On a voluntary basis when a manufacturer follows the product manufacturing specification, it can label the product with the blue Energy Star label to market it as energy efficient. Over the course of the last 33 years through this public and private partnership, energy-efficiency specifications have been created for at least 14 product categories, including household…