News Releases from Headquarters›Air and Radiation (OAR)
Energy Star Collaboration Aims to Increase Sales of Energy-Efficient Products
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced an innovative pilot program with Energy Star partners to encourage the sale of more efficient products for the home. The Energy Star Retail Products Platform (ESRPP) seeks to establish a consistent model for utilities to incentivize retailers to sell and consumers to purchase more energy-efficient products.
“EPA is excited to be facilitating this collaborative effort among the most innovative of our many great Energy Star partners,” said Janet McCabe, acting assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. “Once fully implemented, this approach to energy efficiency programming could expand the availability of energy-saving products for consumers and more effectively contribute to protecting our climate. This is Energy Star doing what it does best: exploring a creative model with its partners that has the potential to transform markets for lasting change and make being energy efficient even easier for Americans.”
Appliances and other miscellaneous household electronics contribute an estimated 15-20 percent of residential energy use. Energy efficiency programs run by utilities and other organizations have traditionally offered consumer rebates to incentivize the purchase of more Energy Star-certified options. With the success of these programs, the per-unit energy savings opportunity has decreased, so utilities and retailers have explored new approaches to further incentivize the purchase of energy-efficient products. The ESRPP provides financial incentives directly from utilities to retailers to sell the most energy-efficient products to their customers. The ESRPP is designed to capture remaining, hard-to-reach energy savings and promises increasing energy savings and reduced costs over time.
A nationwide collaboration, the ESRPP gives retailers, utilities, manufacturers and other participants a more efficient platform to deliver Energy Star products. The ESRPP allows these partners to leverage each other’s resources and shared objectives, avoid duplication of effort and redundancy across neighboring service territories, and streamline operations. A typical household equipped with Energy Star certified products can reduce emissions by about 72,000 pounds of CO2 and save about $8,200 on utility bills over the life of the products. ESRPP offers EPA and its partners a systematic and cost-effective way to continuously expand the sale and use of Energy Star certified products to deliver lasting economic and environmental benefits to the consumer.
In this first pilot year, nine program sponsors representing 12 states and almost 15 percent of the U.S. are participating in the ESRPP. Energy Star certified models in five product categories are being promoted by program sponsor-labeled signage in almost 700 stores. By the end of 2017, the program is expected to expand to serve approximately 30 percent of the U.S. population through increased program sponsor and retailer participation. In the future, the ESRPP is expected to offer a gateway for energy efficiency programs to capture energy savings in the growing “miscellaneous/plug load” product categories at a significantly lower cost than current programs incur. Currently, each year, utilities and others invest more than $7.6 billion on energy efficiency programs, saving nearly 25,850 MWh of electricity. These savings prevent an estimated two million metric tons of annual greenhouse gas emissions and are equivalent to the electricity used by more than 290,000 homes. More information: energystar.gov/ESRPP.
Energy Star is the simple choice for energy efficiency. For nearly 25 years, people across America have looked to EPA’s Energy Star program for guidance on how to save energy, save money, and protect the environment. Behind each blue label is a product, building, or home that is independently certified to use less energy and cause fewer of the emissions that contribute to climate change. Today, Energy Star is the most widely recognized symbol for energy efficiency in the world. Since 1992, Energy Star has helped families and businesses save $362 billion on utility bills, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 2.4 billion metric tons. Join the millions who are already making a difference at energystar.gov.
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