ENERGY STAR is moving to a new administrative home within the United States government. A newly signed memorandum of agreement (MOA) transfers oversight of the suite of energy labelling, certification and benchmarking programs from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Department of Energy (DOE).
The two parties are expected to release a plan for the transition by early June. For now, they’ll each fund those efforts with their own operational budgets. However, the MOA states that “EPA may enter into separate agreements to transfer funds to DOE” as the switchover progresses.
ENERGY STAR resources and intellectual property, including partnership agreements, trademarks, IT systems and databases, will also become the purview of the DOE’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation. In future, the MOA indicates that EPA and the U.S. Small Business Administration will be consulted “as needed”. The agreement has a 10-year term, expiring on March 3, 2036.
Advocates for the commercial real estate and buildings sector are now calling for issues related to ongoing staffing and program funding to be addressed in the pending transition plan. A statement from the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) International underscores that the 330,000 U.S. buildings currently enrolled in the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager energy-use benchmarking program represent nearly 25 per cent of commercial space in the country.
“BOMA members across Canada also rely on the program, bringing a level of importance few governmental programs can claim,” maintains Mary Lue Peck, BOMA International’s president and chief operating officer. “BOMA encourages the agencies, during the 90-day transition period, to provide employees with critical programmatic experience the option to transfer with the program to ensure its continuity.”
Meanwhile, the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) reiterates that ENERGY STAR is “one of the most successful public-private partnerships in U.S. history”. It questions the move away from the EPA’s “strong institutional knowledge” of programs it has overseen for 30 years, and raises concerns about potential erosion of future funding, even after there was strong bipartisan support to maintain Energy Star’s budget for the 2026 fiscal year throughout the most recent appropriations process.
“Disruptions or reductions in ENERGY STAR operations could have significant economic consequences because the program is embedded in so many sectors of the U.S. economy, including new home construction, commercial real estate, manufacturing facilities, and consumer products,” asserts Ben Evans, the USGBC’s federal legislative director. “A change of this magnitude calls for more transparency, oversight and public engagement. ENERGY STAR partner organizations, the public and Congress need to know more about how DOE would operate and fund the program moving forward.”
