If you use an appliance, you likely have seen a "Blue Star" label on it. That means that the technology was improved to reduce pollution. It also means your appliance uses less energy and costs you less to operate. People and companies who use the technology benefit. Except that the Trump Administration thinks saving Energy and reducing pollution is apparently stupid. So they're pulling the $60 million of funding from the program, killing it. How incredibly STUPID.
Here's the article from the Baltimore Sun:
White House targets Blue Star
Planned ax for energy saving push elicits mass shock
By Evan Halper, Baltimore Sun Washington Bureau
BOTTOM LINE: The Trump Administration is now planning to eliminate a voluntary, cost-effective initiative that has saved its customers millions of dollars and had almost no critics.
The Trump administration has decided the immensely popular Energy Star program must go.
The fight centers on the Environmental Protection Agency’s 25-year-old effort to boost efficiency in products and services by encouraging companies to compete for coveted, government-issued labels that certify a product or property meets high standards for saving energy and costs.
Functioning like a government seal of approval, the Energy Star program costs taxpayers a pittance and is widely beloved by the 16,000 companies and organizations that participate. Now it is fast becoming a test case of how committed the Trump administration is to pursuing the agenda of once-fringe groups seeking to slash government programs wherever they can.
“Never in my wildest thoughts have I considered something like this,” said Dave Pogue, who leads the sustainability efforts at Commercial Real Estate Company CBRE. He said the program helped the firm cut energy use at its properties by 16 percent in the last decade.In the Trump administration Energy Star has come under scrutiny. The plan to jettison the program from the federal government, now embedded in the White House budget blueprint, emerged after Trump placed Myron Ebell, a prominent climate skeptic, in charge of his EPA transition team.
THE SOUNDS OF STUPID- Yes, the new head of the EPA REALLY Said This:
“The EPA is meant to improve environmental quality,” said Ebell. “I’m not sure what that has to do with how much energy consumers use. But a great deal of the work at EPA has been dedicated to that. The president made clear during the campaign he will get rid of as much of that as he possibly can.”
Energy Star has everything to with environmental quality - The nation’s biggest companies compete aggressively to win Energy Star labels for their products, which signal to consumers that everything from the air conditioners they purchase at Best Buy to the buildings where they lease office space engage advanced technologies to use the least possible amount of power. The eagerness to meet consumer demand for that seal of approval has driven firms to invest big in cutting energy use.
Energy Star has been a pillar of the federal government’s effort to fight climate change, with the EPA boasting that it has kept some 2.8 billion tons of greenhouse gas from escaping into the atmosphere — or roughly the equivalent produced from powering 36 million homes with electricity each year. It has enabled consumers and businesses to cut their energy bills more than $30 billion per year.
WHAT DOES IT COST?
At an annual cost of $60 million to taxpayers, it is easily the cheapest and least burdensome initiative the federal government runs to help Americans lower their energy consumption.
EVEN REPUBLICANS THINK ITS STUPID TO ELIMINATE IT
The proposal has been met with shock across party lines. Christie Todd Whitman, who ran the EPA during the administration of George W. Bush said, “not in a million years” would she have targeted Energy Star. “There was no reason to,” she said. “It was a no-brainer. It worked, and it hardly cost any money.”
