MxM News

Quick Hit:

The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to shut down its long-standing Energy Star program, which has certified energy-efficient appliances for over three decades. The move is part of a sweeping agency reorganization that also includes eliminating the climate change office and other environmental initiatives not mandated by law.

Key Details:

• EPA officials announced the dismantling of the Energy Star program in a staff meeting on May 6, 2025.
• The agency is eliminating its climate-related divisions, including those overseeing Energy Star and greenhouse gas reporting.
• The move is framed as part of a broader restructuring to prioritize statutory obligations and reduce government overreach.

Diving Deeper:

In a significant shift for federal environmental policy, the Environmental Protection Agency will eliminate the Energy Star program, a popular certification used to identify energy-efficient home appliances like refrigerators, dishwashers, and dryers. Internal documents and a recorded staff meeting reveal that EPA leadership is dismantling entire divisions focused on climate change and voluntary energy initiatives.

Paul Gunning, director of the EPA’s Office of Atmospheric Protection—which is also being cut—told staff the agency would “de-prioritize and eliminate” all climate-related work outside of what’s legally required. The Energy Star program, created in 1992 under President George H.W. Bush, has helped save American households and businesses over $500 billion in energy costs and prevented billions of metric tons of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere.

Supporters argue the program has been a bipartisan success story. Nearly 90% of U.S. consumers recognize the Energy Star label, and manufacturers have long relied on it to market efficient products. Even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and major industries, from lighting to food-equipment makers, have urged the EPA to keep it in place. A joint letter in March from dozens of trade organizations to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin warned that ending the program would not benefit Americans.

Critics of the move, like Paula R. Glover of the Alliance to Save Energy, say the Energy Star program costs just $32 million annually but delivers $40 billion in utility bill savings. “Eliminating the Energy Star program is counterintuitive to this administration’s pledge to reduce household costs,” she said. Glover added that with electricity demand set to rise 35–50% by 2040, energy-saving measures are more important than ever.

The Biden-era EPA heavily prioritized climate policy and environmental regulation, often blurring the lines between environmental stewardship and bureaucratic overreach. In contrast, the current administration—under 47th President Donald Trump—is refocusing the agency toward its statutory mission, aligning with the broader conservative agenda of streamlining government and cutting redundant or ideologically-driven programs.

While Trump previously attempted to defund Energy Star during his first term, the effort failed amid bipartisan concern that privatization could lead to lowered standards. The current plan appears to accomplish the same goal through internal restructuring, cutting not just Energy Star but programs related to methane emissions reduction, climate science, and policy.

Notably, the agency’s largest union has cried foul over how the reorganization was handled. Marie Owens Powell, its president, accused the agency of “union busting” after being blocked from attending reorganization meetings. Staff have been told they may be reassigned or let go as the EPA scales back to staffing levels not seen since the Reagan administration.

For an agency that has long served as the regulatory spearhead for the left’s climate agenda, this realignment could represent a return to core environmental functions—clean air and water—while removing the taxpayer burden of subsidizing climate-centric programs with questionable returns. The decision also signals a shift away from corporatist alliances that prop up select industries under the guise of energy policy.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

The dramatic expansion of the number and scale of planned datacenter projects across the United States has generated a great deal of news over the last year. The central question in many of those stories centers around the power needs of these projects, and how the power will be generated.

Early developers hyped their preference to use electricity generated by wind and/or solar to power their projects but found the 99.999% datacenter uptime requirements can’t be met by these intermittent power sources, even when backed up by stationary batteries.

With new nuclear projects facing permitting times of 10-15 years and coal being crowded out by emissions regulations, more recent speculation has centered heavily on natural gas as being the fuel of choice for developers whose projects won’t be interconnected into a regional power grid. Natural gas generation is cheaper and faster to build than nuclear, and, while anti-fossil fuel activists complain that gas still comes with emissions, it presents a far cleaner alternative to coal.

In Wyoming, a group of three companies said this week they’ve agreed to a joint project that also satisfies the emissions critics. In a release dated May 6, data center developer Prometheus Hyperscale, Wyoming’s largest gas producer PureWest Energy, and carbon capture and storage (CCS) developer Frontier Carbon Solutions, LLC, rolled out what they call “a first-of-its-kind partnership focused on driving innovation and sustainability while contributing to Wyoming’s long-term economic growth.”

In simple terms, the plan goes like this:

• Prometheus will permit and build the datacenter;
• PureWest will produce and supply the natural gas to a nearby power plant operated by an independent power provider from its Wyoming production portfolio, which it boasts maintains “industry leading emissions performance with a rigorous Measurement, Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MMRV) program and ISO 14067 verification;”
• Frontier will capture biogenic carbon dioxide from across the Mountain West and sequester it in underground formations in Southwestern Wyoming; and
• Frontier will sell traceable carbon removal credits to Prometheus.

Through entering into these various agreements, a datacenter sporting a net-zero emissions profile is created. This not only embellishes the clean energy scorecards for the three companies involved in the partnership, but also for customers who purchase the computing power from the datacenter, as well as the operators of processing plants and transportation systems which move both the natural gas and the carbon dioxide.

“PureWest’s goal to be the region’s energy supplier of choice is rooted in innovation and cutting-edge technology, and today’s exciting announcement reflects our ongoing mission and progress,” said Ty Harrison, President and CFO of PureWest said in a release. “We’re proud to partner with Prometheus and Frontier because this project affirms the critical role that verified low-carbon natural gas will play in sustainably meeting the growing energy needs of AI and its related infrastructure. PureWest is committed to ensuring Wyoming continues to be a leader in delivering scalable energy and decarbonization solutions for the data-driven future of the United States.”

While the joint venture is fairly complex with a number of moving parts, it actually represents a pretty ingenious solution. Once up and running, the partners end up creating a major datacenter with the same carbon footprint as one powered by wind or solar would have, but which will enjoy the added benefit of being able to meet its 99.999% uptime requirements.

But it’s more than that. As the Trump administration’s energy and climate regulatory agenda moves ahead to consolidation, these companies will also avoid running into the reality of so many U.S. wind and solar projects becoming financially unsustainable when the endless stream of rising subsidies their business models require are inevitably reduced or cut off entirely.

As the religious global fervor driven by climate alarmism continues its inevitable fade, producers of American natural gas like PureWest will find themselves presented with a wide array of innovative opportunities like this one. Those opportunities will be driven by customers and potential partners who need the combination of abundance, affordability, reliability, speed of development and low emissions profile that only natural gas is capable of providing.

Anyone who still believes that oil and gas is a dying industry is in for a very rude awakening.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.