Questions Unaddressed Relating to End of Energy Star Power Supply Program, Says CEA

The consumer electronics industry has concerns over the EPA’s decision to terminate the Energy Star program for external power supplies, including a reason cited for its shutdown, a CEA official said. The agency is closing the Energy Star programs for power supplies and DTV converter boxes. For the power supplies, the agency cited the existence of a federal minimum efficiency standard, among other reasons, for ending the program, said Douglas Johnson, CEA vice president of technology policy.

That raises questions about the “viability of voluntary standards” like Energy Star when mandated standards take effect for a given product category in the electronics sector, he said. The EPA did not respond immediately to a request for comment on whether the move to withdraw the power supplies program following the adoption of a federal mandate represented a trend. The agency said the federal standard mandating the Energy Star levels plus EPA’s further strengthening the standard resulted in the market share of power supplies meeting the Energy Star specification exceeding 50 percent. Energy use from external power supplies in the U.S. is estimated to be 12 billion kilowatt hours less per year than it would have been had their energy performance stayed at 2005 levels when the Energy Star specification went into effect, the agency said.

The EPA also hadn’t addressed questions raised by some CEA members about how the agency was “going to handle products that use external power supplies and are labeled with Energy Star because of that.” There are some “outstanding questions” about how existing Energy Star labeled devices that use external power supplies and the power supplies themselves can be marketed in the months before the program ends Dec. 31, he said. Questions remain about how long Energy Star would recognize products in store shelves that were qualified because of the external power supplies, he said. External power supplies are sold with many CE products, including digital cameras, cordless phones and cellphones. The EPA estimates that there are about nine such devices for every person in the U.S.