If those appliances consume 30 percent less energy, the savings add up quickly. The average home is responsible for considerable air pollution and carbon dioxide, since the energy it uses generally comes from power plants that burn fossil fuels, primarily coal. Installing Energy Star appliances in a single home can equal the pollution savings of taking a car off the road for seven years. If every household and business switched to Energy Star products, over the next 15 years the carbon dioxide reductions would be equivalent to taking 17 million cars off the road for each of those years. Energy Star products save energy in a host of ways.
Most furnaces lose a significant amount of heat out the flue or chimney.
Instead of heating the outdoors, Energy Star furnaces capture more than 90 percent of available heat, making them both cleaner and less expensive to run. They typically use half the electricity of similar products that don't merit the label. Even light fixtures can receive Energy Stars. Most of the electricity needed to light an incandescent or halogen bulb is wasted as heat. Energy Star fixtures use compact fluorescent light bulbs, which consume a fraction of the electricity of incandescent or halogen bulbs by turning nearly all the energy into light.