Posted on 02/07/2009 4:12:18 AM PST by reaganaut1
WASHINGTON — When he ordered the Energy Department on Thursday to set new, mandatory efficiency standards for a variety of household appliances, President Obama projected how much electricity would be saved.
“We’ll save through these simple steps over the next 30 years the amount of energy produced over a two-year period by all the coal-fired power plants in America,” Mr. Obama said.
But two audits of a prominent 17-year-old program to conserve electricity used in consumer goods, a voluntary effort called Energy Star, have found that such estimates, however rosy, are not completely reliable.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department, which run the program as a way of encouraging more energy efficiency in furnaces, refrigerators, television sets, computers and so on, have said that Energy Star, whose distinctive logo appears on the labels of qualifying products, saved consumers more than $16 billion on utility bills in 2007 and $14 billion in 2006.
But according to the E.P.A.’s office of inspector general, which has released two reports on the program in the last 18 months, those estimates may be misleading, and safeguards to protect the integrity of Energy Star labels could be stronger.
In December, the inspector general issued a report that said Energy Star’s savings claims were “not accurate or verifiable.” The report found that shipment data for Energy Star products were not being adequately reviewed and in some cases were based on estimates instead of actual shipping totals.
In the other report, in August 2007, the inspector general addressed the integrity of the Energy Star label, noting that “E.P.A. does not have reasonable assurance” that the process allowing manufacturers to self-certify their products is effective.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“Thanks. I’ll mention this to my husband. He’s a fix-it man.”
I’ve been thinking through my solution and am not sure it would work, unless you wanted all your clothes to be washed in the hottest water your water heater puts out. Now, if your washer has both a cold and a hot water input then I would just switch the hoses and remember that when you set it on cold you will actually get hot and vice versa.
Between TARP and the “Stimulus”, it’s $1.5 trillion+.
Divide by 150 million adult citizens, and you could cut a check for $10,000 cash to each adult citizen.
Or, per citizen, including children, you could cut a check for $ 6,000 each. That would be $30,000 for a family of five.
But instead we have these politicians angling for control. Sick, Evil people.
My menfolk say a person could put both the hot and cold into a y and hook it up to the machine, capping off the second water intake on the machine. That way, there would be warm water all the time. Sound right?
He’s smarter than I am. That is a simpler solution, although it would only let you have warm water for everything.
What I was trying to get at is the fact that they want to regulate how we use the electricty. That takes our freedom to choose away. If you can afford to use it they way you want, that is your right. If you can’t afford it, you will adjust accordingly. The governments lack of willingness to improve our electricy producers, such as nuclear, is not our fault but they are attempting to make look so.
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