Why would Trump’s EPA shut down the successful Energy Star program?

If you’ve ever shopped for appliances — refrigerators, dishwashers, even computers — you’ve probably noticed the blue star on the box, letting consumers know that the product meets the government’s energy efficiency standards. That label is part of the Energy Star program, and for more than three decades, it hasn’t been controversial in the slightest.

Nevertheless, during Donald Trump’s first term as president, the Republican White House unveiled a budget plan that eliminated the Energy Star program, for reasons the administration struggled to explain. The industry backlash was swift: Exactly eight years ago this week, The Associated Press reported that more than 1,000 U.S. companies, including some of the nation’s largest manufacturers, urged policymakers to preserve the program.

The AP’s report added at the time, “The program costs about $50 million per year to administer, while saving consumers more than $34 billion per year in reduced energy costs.”

In 2017, the lobbying campaign succeeded, and the Energy Star program lived to see another day. Eight years later, as The New York Times reported, Trump and his EPA are apparently eager to finish the job:

According to a recording obtained by the Times, Paul Gunning, the director of the EPA’s Office of Atmospheric Protection, told employees, “The Energy Star program and all the other climate work, outside of what’s required by statute, is being de-prioritized and eliminated.” (The reporting has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News.)

An EPA spokeswoman did not confirm that the program was being eliminated. She told the Times that the EPA had announced “organizational improvements to the personnel structure that will directly benefit the American people and better advance the agency’s core mission.”

Note, eight years ago, the Republican administration set out to zero out the Energy Star program through the budgetary process. In 2025, however, Team Trump is apparently taking a more direct and unilateral approach, overhauling the EPA’s structure and scrapping the offices that oversee the project.

There is no constituency for such a move. Support for the Energy Star program has long been bipartisan — it was created under George H.W. Bush’s presidency — and it’s one of only a handful of landmark energy policies that have been celebrated by environmentalists and industry advocates alike. It costs almost nothing to administer, and it’s delivered massive annual savings every year for decades.

The Times’ report added that Energy Star “has helped households and businesses save more than $500 billion in energy costs and to get rebates and tax credits, according to the program’s 2024 report. At the same time, it has also prevented four billion metric tons of greenhouse gases from being released into the atmosphere.”

Even from a conservative perspective, this is precisely the kind of public-private partnership that the right has championed for many years. No one, in other words, would benefit from this kind of change.

So if the Times’ reporting is correct, why in the world is this happening? By all appearances, it’s because much of the modern Republican Party has embraced the idea that taking energy efficiency seriously is ridiculous. We’ve seen overwhelming evidence of this among GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill in recent years — see the “Refrigerator Freedom Act,” the “Liberty in Laundry Act,” the “Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act,” the “Clothes Dryers Reliability Act,” et al. — and the same perspective has clearly been embraced at the White House.

There was a time when the so-called “culture war” focused on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. In contemporary politics, however, energy efficiency has been added to the list.