Industry groups are not happy about the imminent demise of Energy Star

“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.”<p>the amount of doublespeak in this administration is unreal. Destruction of public institutions is announced as an improvement. The agency&#x27;s &quot;core mission&quot; remains unstated so they don&#x27;t need to square the circle on how destroying consumer info helps improve the environment.

Energy star like CAFE for cars was well intentioned but ended up driving all sorts of undesirable design practices to hit the ratings. Manufacturers especially in the high end chase the highest rating and design appliances that do a poor job of cleaning to hit the low water use target. In the end we all end up eating a bunch of unwashed detergent to save a gallon of water or using 10 gallons to pre and post rinse. That being said a lot of these problems could have been updated into the standard instead of killing it but industry groups didn’t allow that so now it’s going to die and everyone losses.

I wouldn&#x27;t want to ascribe too much method to this madness, but the increases for defense, homeland security and immigration control in the 2026 budget request, combined with a desire to be seen as cutting the budget rather than increasing spending, could have set the extreme civilian costcutting requirements.<p>What the administration is preparing for that requires raising defense spending to one trillion is beyond me. Actually it&#x27;s not.

Who cares. Maybe now I can get a washing machine that actually washes my clothes. You&#x27;d think at the $1,100 price point, a washing machine should actually work, even with the strict Energy Star standards, but everyone on Reddit suggests switching to a LITERAL commercial washing machine (Speed Queen). Famously-liberal Reddit is suggesting switching to a LOUD, WASTEFUL washing machine because it actually works. I think that says a lot about the current state of things.

I always chuckle when I boot up some old PC with a clone BIOS in 86Box and the Energy Star logo pops up.

I wonder whether without this albeit flawed quality indicator we would see competition focused purely on price and margins would shrink.

Related from earlier in the week:<p><i>EPA Plans to Shut Down the Energy Star Program</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43911252">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=43911252</a>

Maybe a private non-profit can startup in it&#x27;s place for the time being.

They could adopt the EU energy label instead.

If it’s a valuable program someone else can do the work.<p>Oh no, the government is not doing something… so someone can turn it into a business or start a nonprofit or academia can do something useful.<p>And government resources can help other more critical projects.