A❤️410-word🧡under💛2.5-minute💚read
Since the election, there hasn’t been much actual good news on the climate front. Putting aside the wishful thinking and cherry-picked statistics, clean technology momentum is clearly slowing, and not just in the United States.
Worse yet, the Trump administration is attempting to eliminate any regulation that has a hint of climate change as a goal. That includes the Energy Star program.
In late May I posted about the program with the headline:
𝗔 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗡𝗼 𝗘𝗻𝗲𝗺𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗦𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗚𝗼𝘁 𝗔𝘅𝗲𝗱
As I noted then, Energy Star is truly a rare beast. It’s a voluntary program that worked, saving consumers an estimated $500 billion. Over the last 30+ years it has enjoyed bipartisan support. And the Energy Star label is viewed in much the same fashion as the “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” once was.
Despite the fact that no one - and I mean no one - was working to end the program, it got swept up in the broad strokes of President Trump’s disdain for all things climate change. I ended the previous post with a call to make our feelings known to our political representatives.
That call was mostly symbolic, as I’m the furthest thing from an influencer as there is for someone who regularly posts to social media. Nonetheless, there is a movement on Capitol Hill to keep Energy Star alive.
Last week representatives in both the Senate and House proposed funding Energy Star for next fiscal year. The cost: a whopping $32 million. That doesn’t even reach the level of a rounding error in the federal budget. Yet another reason why eliminating the program is the height of stupidity.
I Googled to see how much the program has reduced energy demand over its life and the AI answer (unvetted) was 5 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity. That more electricity than the entire U.S. consumes in a year.
According to AI, in 2020 alone, the program saved 520 billion kilowatt-hours of power reducing electric bills by $42 billion. It also helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 400 million metric tons, but please don’t tell the president.
The fate of the program remains uncertain, but if I were a betting man, I’d bet on it surviving, for at least another year. In scheme of things, it may be a small win in combating climate change. However, it does demonstrate Washington is capable of at least a small element of independent and rationale thought in an environment where group think dominates.