Via Bloomberg, an attempt to make the EPA and DoE’s Energy Star label more stringent and reliable has drawn pushback from electronics manufacturers who feel that the new requirements increase cost and bureaucracy. Since the inception of Energy Star, companies were largely left to their own devices (as it were) when it came to testing their products and documenting that they met Energy Star requirements. However, a series of often embarrassing reports spotted some flaws in the program: “One report by the Government Accountability Office found that a ‘gasoline-powered alarm clock’ and other fictitious products were able to receive Energy Star certification.” (Well, it would make for a convenient excuse for being late to work: “My alarm clock ran out of gas.”) As a result, companies seeking Energy Star certification need to have their wares tested by a third-party lab, increasing costs and logistics. As a result, manufacturers are seriously weighing the idea of dropping out of the Energy Star program, which would be unfortunate. That’s the rub, isn’t it? As has been commented on Going Green many times, in order to be meaningful, certifications need to be policed in some objective way. The trick is: who pays for it? Increasing the EPA’s budget (or the budget of any governmental agency) is probably a non-starter these days, and if the companies seeking the certification won’t pay for it (or, by passing the costs along, have the consumer pay for it)...then who does? I think it’s going to have to come down to demand from the consumer to eschew electronics and appliances that are not Energy Star certified. After all, Energy Star is not just about reducing GHGs, but also helping save consumers money. Surely those two objectives are worth something? By the way, issues of meaningfulness and reliability of certifications and labels are proliferating as “sustainability” becomes a watchword: Nature (via Scientific American) reports on a new study that finds that “nearly a third of the fish stocks certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council were actually overfished.” The ever-present question: who watches the watchers?