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The Trump administration has launched an all-out assault on American energy-efficiency efforts that have saved consumers billions of dollars and eased the transition away from fossil fuels.
From proposing to eliminate the popular Energy Star and Low Income Home Energy Assistance programs to firing staff and delaying building efficiency standards, President Donald Trump’s moves threaten to upend decades of progress on making appliances and structures do more with less energy.
“Energy efficiency is the best, fastest, cheapest way to lower energy costs,” said Mark Kresowik, senior policy director at the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. “That’s something that, ostensibly, the Trump administration said they want to do.”
Trump’s actions could undercut his own promise to halve energy bills during his first 18 months in office, as well as hamper climate action.
Efficiency is an undersung tool for reducing carbon pollution. If the globe maximized efficiency efforts, it could phase out fossil fuels by 2040, according to nonpartisan clean energy nonprofit RMI. It’s typically the lowest-cost way utilities can meet power needs, a crucial consideration as electricity bills rise around the country. And with electricity demand forecast to climb to record highs due in large part to the rapid expansion of AI data centers, efficiency could take on new importance as a way to get more out of every unit of energy.
One of the most recent and notable moves against efficiency programs is the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to kill Energy Star. The EPA announced the decision to shutter the program at an all-hands meeting last week, according to The Washington Post, though the agency has not publicly confirmed the decision.
Energy Star is a voluntary program that certifies the most efficient appliances available to American households and businesses. Products that have earned the iconic aqua-blue label span dozens of residential and commercial categories, including data center storage, water heaters, clothes dryers, furnaces, and heat pumps.
The program has been wildly successful. Since 1992, Energy Star has prevented 4 billion metric tons of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions — equivalent to a year’s pollution from 933 million cars — and helped consumers save more than $500 billion in energy costs. For every dollar the federal government spends on the program, consumers save a whopping $350.
Axing Energy Star would also scramble eligibility for federal and local incentives that require the program’s seal of approval, such as the $2,500 tax credit for home builders.
More than 1,000 companies, building owners, and other organizations have come out in support of Energy Star. “Eliminating it will not serve the American people,” a coalition of appliance manufacturers and industry leaders wrote in a letter to EPA head Lee Zeldin, Inside Climate News reported.
Energy Star isn’t the only federal energy-efficiency program in peril.
In April, the Department of Health and Human Services fired the more than two dozen staff members who administered the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), according to Harvest Public Media. The initiative provided financial support to nearly 6 million households in 2023 across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, helping vulnerable Americans cover utility costs, undertake energy-related home repairs, and make weatherization upgrades that reduce energy bills.
Released in early May, the president’s “skinny” budget proposal for the next fiscal year recommends shuttering the $4 billion program, which in particular helps households with older adults, individuals with disabilities, and children.
Cutting program funding and failing to hire back staff may affect more than energy bills, according to advocates.
“The elimination of the staff administering LIHEAP could have dire, potentially deadly, impacts for folks who will not be able to safely cool their homes as we enter what is predicted to be another historically hot summer,” Amneh Minkara, deputy director of Sierra Club’s building electrification campaign, said in a statement.
President Trump and Congress are also targeting efficiency standards for appliances sold in the U.S. The president just signed four resolutions to undo a handful on Friday.
That’s despite both Democrats and Republicans saying they want appliance standards. According to an April poll by Consumer Reports, 87% of Americans, including four out of five Republicans, agree that new home appliances for sale in the U.S. should be required to achieve a minimum level of efficiency.
Part of the administration’s strategy will likely include simply not enforcing the standards, according to the Appliance Standards Awareness Project. Last month, ProPublica reported that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team had “deleted” the consulting contract that the Department of Energy relies on to develop and enforce these rules. But the item subsequently disappeared from DOGE’s online “wall of receipts,” making its status cloudy.
Beyond appliances, the Trump administration is snarling rules for more efficient buildings, too.
In March, the Department of Housing and Urban Development delayed compliance deadlines set by a landmark 2024 measure that requires certain new homes purchased with federally backed mortgages and new HUD-funded apartments to meet updated building energy-efficiency codes. The rule would save single-family households an average of $963 per year on energy bills, according to the agency’s estimates, and affect up to a quarter of new homes nationwide, per RMI. The administration wrote in a recent court filing that it is “actively considering whether to revise or revoke” the rule.
In April, the Department of Energy proposed to indefinitely delay implementing efficiency standards for manufactured homes that would reduce average annual energy costs by $475.
And on May 5, the agency punted by a year the compliance date for a standard that would ensure federal buildings that are built or significantly renovated between this year and 2029 slash on-site fossil-fuel use by 90%. In 2030 and beyond, the standard requires new and renovated federal buildings to be all-electric.
That rule, Energy Star, and many of the other energy-efficiency efforts under threat are congressionally mandated — and not all Republicans are rolling with the administration’s attacks.
In a statement earlier this month, Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, said she had “serious objections” to some measures in Trump’s budget blueprint, including the elimination of LIHEAP. Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, noted that “ultimately, it is Congress that holds the power of the purse.”
Corrections were made on May 12, 2025: This story originally misstated that consumers buying heat pumps must purchase Energy Star-certified equipment to qualify for the $2,000 25C federal tax credit. The tax credit does not base eligibility on Energy Star, but rather on the Consortium for Energy Efficiency specifications. The story also originally misstated that a handful of resolutions to undo federal efficiency standards await the president’s signature. President Trump signed the resolutions on May 9, 2025.
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