Solutions for EnergySTAR

Recycle Your Old Clothes Washer; Replace When Needed with ENERGY STAR®
 
Has your clothes washer been around for years? You've had it so long, it sounds like a marching band when it runs?
 
There's no better time than the present to recycle your time-worn clothes washer. If your washer is more than 10 years old, you're paying about $145 more each year on your utility bill than you would if you owned a new, ENERGY STAR qualified model. You're also wasting 30 gallons of water per load of laundry--equivalent to almost two times the amount of water used in an average shower.
 
In addition to the immediate energy and water savings from unplugging your old unit, some utilities, cities, and counties are paying consumers to get their old washers off the grid, and to properly recycle the steel and other materials they contain. You may also be able to take advantage of rebates on new energy-efficient appliances in the coming months, thanks to federal stimulus funds. Visit the ENERGY STAR Make a Clean Change: Recycle Your Old Clothes Washer Campaign at www.energystar.gov/recycle to find recycling options and learn about rebates and special deals in your area.
 
When you go searching for a new unit, be sure to look for the blue ENERGY STAR label. Every major appliance manufacturer sells ENERGY STAR qualified clothes washers, which are 40 percent more energy and water efficient than the minimum federal energy standard. That means that purchasing an ENERGY STAR qualified model over a conventional model will save you an average of $50 a year on your utility bills. Over the life of your new washer, you'll save enough money to pay for the matching dryer.
 
Other plusses: new ENERGY STAR qualified clothes washers are easier on your clothes, have larger capacities, and use less detergent than their conventional counterparts. Perhaps best of all, ENERGY STAR qualified clothes washers use less energy, helping us reduce our contribution to global climate change. By reducing water consumption, they also help protect our lakes, streams, and oceans.
 
To get the best performance from your machine, use the recommended amount of high-efficiency laundry detergent. For the greatest energy savings, fill the washer to capacity and use cold water whenever you can.
 
ENERGY STAR is a government-backed program that helps individuals and businesses save energy and protect the environment through superior energy efficiency. Learn more at www.energystar.gov.
 

The U.S. Department of Energy announces the ENERGY STAR® Make a Clean Change: Recycle Your Old Washer Campaign. Found at www.energystar.gov/recycle, this campaign encourages consumers to properly recycle their inefficient clothes washers and, when needed, replace them with new ENERGY STAR qualified models.

Why? Because clothes washers manufactured before 1999 use more than 4 times the energy of today's ENERGY STAR qualified models. These inefficient units waste 30 gallons of water per load of laundry--equivalent to almost two times the amount of water used in an average shower. An estimated 84.1 million households have a top-loading washer; 24 million of these are ten years old or older. Combined, the inefficient appliances use $9 billion per year in energy and water costs.

Please spread the word by sharing the article below with your friends and family. 

A complementary effort to recycle inefficient refrigerators and freezers is also in progress. Thank you for your continued support of ENERGY STAR.

EPA's GreenChill Advanced Refrigeration Partnership

GreenChill's founding food retail partners created baseline measurements of corporate-wide refrigerant emissions in 2007 and set goals to reduce those emissions in 2008. These partners reduced their aggregated total corporate emissions rate from 13 percent to 11.9 percent in 2008, an emissions reduction of 8.5 percent in one year.

Early GreenChill Partners are:
Sprouts Farmers Market, Fresh & Easy, Raley's Family of Fine Stores, Whole Foods, Supervalu, and Hill Phoenix Chill for the Environment

EPA's GreenChill Advanced Refrigeration Partnership announced its 2009 partner awards, and among the awardees are: Sprouts Farmers Market, Fresh & Easy, Raley's Family of Fine Stores, Whole Foods, Supervalu (including the Albertsons and Lucky Supermarkets banners), and Hill Phoenix. An EPA cooperative alliance with the supermarket industry, the GreenChill Partnership works with supermarkets to reduce their emissions of ozone-depleting and greenhouse gas refrigerants.

Sprouts Farmers Market, which owns stores across California, Arizona, Colorado, and Texas, received a New Partner Award, as did Fresh & Easy and Raley's Family of Fine Stores. Fresh & Easy can be found in Arizona, California and Nevada while Raley's Family of Fine Stores is located in California and Nevada.

"We look forward to a productive and mutually beneficial partnership with our new partners," said Keilly Witman, GreenChill Program Manager. "The public wants to do business with companies that share their environmental values. By joining GreenChill, these supermarkets are proving to consumers that they care about the Earth's ozone layer and climate system."

New partners pledge to go above and beyond regulatory requirements by measuring and tracking refrigerant emissions that affect climate change and the Earth's ozone layer, and then setting reduction targets for these emissions. Partners also agree to use only ozone-friendly alternatives in all new and remodeled stores.

"In Raley's first year as a GreenChill Partner, the company has already taken the lead in the number of GreenChill-certified stores," said Witman. "Raley's Family of Fine Stores has received two gold-level store certification awards and two silver-level store certification awards, proof that Raley's takes the GreenChill mission to protect the ozone layer and fight climate change very seriously."

Whole Foods, a nationwide chain of supermarkets, received the award for Most Improved Emissions Rate. Supervalu, which is the parent company of the Albertsons and Lucky banners, was recognized for achieving its emissions target in 2008/2009.

Refrigeration manufacturer Hill Phoenix also earned a Distinguished Partner Award for its advanced refrigeration technology, including compact chillers and secondary loop systems.

EPA estimates that if every supermarket in the nation joined GreenChill and reduced its emissions to the current GreenChill average, the nation could save the equivalent of 22 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and 240 ozone depleting potential (ODP) tons every year, all the while saving $108 million in refrigerant expenses annually.

GreenChill now has a total of 46 partners, including 37 food retail partners with over 6,500 stores in 47 states. For additional information on the EPA GreenChill Partnership, please visit: www.epa.gov/greenchill.

The number of commercial and industrial organizations joining ENERGY STAR almost tripled in 2008, accounting for more than 2,000,000,000 (2 billion!) new committed square feet. By the end of 2008, there were more than 2,400 organizations that have committed to adopt continuous energy management practices.

Partnerships between EPA and organizations such as the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the largest industrial trade association in the U.S., have signed memoranda of understanding (MOU) to work together to improve the energy efficiency of their sectors of the U.S. economy.  NAM helps  educate U.S. manufacturers that they CAN and SHOULD  strategically manage energy in their operations.  The savings make this a win-win message and contributes significantly to the total reduction of energy use in the U.S.

If you would like to partner with EPA to improve your energy efficiency, visit: www.energystar.gov/joinbuildings

For the first time, EPA released a list of U.S. metropolitan areas with the largest number of energy efficient buildings in 2008 that have earned EPA's Energy Star. The list is headed by Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Washington, D.C.,

Additional top achieving  cities include:

• Dallas-Fort Worth
• Chicago
• Denver
• Minneapolis-St Paul
• Atlanta
• Seattle
• Boston
• New York
• Austin
• Detroit
• milwaukee
• San Antonio
• Philadelphia
• Charlotte
• Portland
• Grand Rapids
• Sacramento
• Phoenix
• Miami
• Riverside, CA
• Madison

These top cities are those whose schools, hospitals, office buildings, courthouses, grocery stores, retail centers and auto assembly plants have earned the EPA's ENERGY STAR.

To label your building, go to www.energystar.gov/eslabel.
To label your industrial plant, go to www.energystar.gov/plants.

Buildings earn the ENERGY STAR by achieving a score of 75 or higher on EPA's energy performance rating system and meeting relevant requirements for indoor air quality.


More than 6,200 top performing buildings earned the ENERGY STAR rating through 2008 for being energy all-stars. Total labeled floor space topped over 1 billion square feet for the first time, an increase of more than 55% over 2007.

Industrial Sector:  45 plants have also qualified for the ENERGY STAR since that recognition became available in 2006. They include

• 15 auto assembly plants,
• 19 cement plants,
• 3 wet corn milling plants, and
• 8 oil refineries.

According to Energy Star calculations, the 2008 achievements in Energy Star labeled buildings and plants reflected an overall annual utility savings of more than $1.7 billion and prevented greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of more than 2 million cars a year.

Ten major industries participate in Energy Star's Industrial Focuses to pool ideas and work toward energy efficiency improvements.

Industrial Focuses provide an opportunity for companies within each single manufacturing industry to network with peers and share industry-specific energy management tools and resources.

The goal of each industrial focus is to:

• Improve energy efficiency of the industry
• Create momentum for continued improvement
• Provide energy guides to uncover energy efficiency opportunities
• Encourage sharing of ideas
• Develop an energy performance indicator to evaluate the energy efficiency of their plants relative to the typical efficiency levels of their industry and to recognize the high performers with the ENERGY STAR label.

Industries that participate in Energy Star's Industrial Focus programs include:

• Cement Manufacturing
• Corn Refining
• Food Processing
• Glass Manufacturing
• Motor Vehicle Manufacturing
• Petrochemical Manufacturing
• Petroleum Industry
• Pharmaceuticals
• Pulp & Paper
• Steel

EPA's online tool Portfolio Manager enables building owners and managers to rate their individual commercial buildings on a scale of 1 to 100 against similar buildings, track energy performance over time, and target investments in energy efficiency.

States and local government agencies, professional associations, and vendors offer training, expertise, and networking opportunities to make benchmarking buildings easier for their constituents, and they are tapping into ENERGY STAR to accomplish this task.

This partnership has resulted in continued growth across the country, reflecting a 50%  increase in rated floor space from over 7.5 billion square feet in 2007 to more than 11.5 billion square feet in 2008.

Regular Assessment Becoming SOP
 
About 60% of this space is being repeatedly rated for its energy use, which indicates that regular assessment is becoming a standard practice for many.

Benchmarking By Building Type

EPA's energy performance rating system is now available for 11 specific building space types that account for around 60% of the carbon emissions resulting from commercial buildings.

• Offices
• K-12 Schools
• Retail Stores
• Hospitals
• Hotels / Motels
• Supermarkets / Grocery Stores
• Banks / Financial Institutions
• Warehouses
• Medical Offices
• Courthouses
• Residence Halls / Dormitories

By building type, offices and schools experienced the largest increases in benchmarking in 2008. Offices close to doubled the number and floor space rated; rated schools increased by almost 80% with floor space almost doubling.

An update from Energy Star shows that commercial and industrial organizations continued strong activity in 2008, outpacing previous year efforts. 

Use of EPA's energy performance rating system maintained solid growth. 


Recognition of organizations for improvement and top performance grew significantly and the number of facilities qualifying for the ENERGY STAR label surpassed 6,200.   

For an update on this progress, please view the latest version of the "ENERGY STAR Snapshot: Measuring Progress in the C&I Sectors".  The report also includes state-by-state activity and ratings data on the top Designated Market Areas in the U.S. 

It provides a look at:

• Trends in the energy performance rating of commercial and institutional buildings
• State-by-state activity along with activity for the top 25 Designated Market Areas
• Industrial sector participation in ENERGY STAR
• Trends in ENERGY STAR certification for commercial and industrial facilities

GOAL:  6 million new green-collar jobs.

Efficiency First is a nonprofit trade association that unites

• Home Performance contractors,
• residential energy consultants,
• building product manufacturers
• and other key members of America's growing green-collar workforce

Efficiency First advocates using the federal Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program as a standard model for efficiency retrofitting, including third-party verification. National contractor and auditor certification and accreditation should be mandated through RESNET (Residential Energy Services Network), BPI (Building Performance Institute) or other qualified accreditation agencies who conduct independent, third-party quality assurance on the work performed.

Together they intend to escalate the fight against global warming. Efficiency First was founded in 2009 to represent its members in public policy discussions at the state and national levels, to promote the benefits of Home Performance retrofitting, and to help our industry grow to meet unprecedented demand for quality home retrofitting services.

Our mission is to collaborate with legislators, government agencies and professional organizations in the advancement of a performance-based market for energy efficiency that will enable rapid growth in our industry while maintaining profitability and quality of service.

"Our goal is to see a steady run rate of
10 million home retrofits per year by 2020."

According to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, residential buildings alone generate over 20 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel consumption in the United States.

Because the vast majority of America's 128 million homes do not operate anywhere near peak efficiency, large-scale retrofitting of existing residential buildings will play a key role in achieving significant greenhouse gas reductions, while lowering residential energy bills, improving indoor air quality and thermal comfort, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and creating millions of new jobs for American workers.

The home retrofitting industry can achieve a 25% or greater decrease in non-renewable energy consumption by America's housing sector, leading to a 5% decrease in the country's overall carbon emissions - equivalent to taking half of all current passenger cars off the road.

The industry will employ at least 1.25 million American workers directly, and with the inclusion of manufacturing and other supporting industries, will generate up 6 million new green-collar jobs.