**GAO-11-888**                      Published: Sep 30, 2011. Publicly Released: Sep 30, 2011.                  

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## Highlights

American consumers, businesses, utilities, and federal and state agencies rely on the Energy Star product labeling program to identify more efficient products that lower their energy costs. Even with the program's successes, several reports by GAO and others have identified weaknesses in the Energy Star program. The program, which began in 1992 and was reauthorized in 2005, has been jointly administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE). In 2009, the agencies signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that outlined changes to address these weaknesses. The changes included identifying EPA as the lead agency, clarifying the roles and responsibilities of each agency, as well as instituting third-party testing of products. GAO was asked to examine (1) the status of EPA's and DOE's implementation of changes to the Energy Star program under the MOU and (2) program partners' views of the Energy Star program and changes that are under way. To examine the status of the changes, GAO reviewed guidance and eligibility criteria and interviewed various program partners to gather their views. The results of these interviews are not generalizable, but provided insights on changes to the Energy Star program.

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## Topics

Natural Resources and Environment

Eligibility criteriaEnergy consumptionEnergy efficiencyEnergy policyEnvironmental monitoringLaboratoriesProduct evaluationProgram evaluationProgram managementSpecificationsStandardsTestingNeeds assessmentProgram implementation