I can only think of one private scheme in this space that's worked well - 80 Plus. For a voluntary program, it's been pretty broadly adopted, and it created an implicit factor of "why is it not certified" that puts pressure on the worst junk products.

Across the board though, PC PSU quality has gone up quite a bit in the last 20-25 years though.

80 plus doesn't cover idle efficiency though, so unless you only run your computer when compiling or gaming and then turn it back off, it probably doesn't capture the fact that modern computers are basically completely idle at all times.

UL certification has been pretty successful in an adjacent space (fire safety, notably of electronics but it covers other things too). That has been regressing lately, though.

Why do we have to reinvent the wheel! We have the program and its been established for over 3 decades.

Im so tired of the arguement of its not perfect guess we should get rid of it, start from scratch, and the new system will have none of those problems.

This isnt about government excess spending either. If the government was really concerned about excess spending they would take a real deep look at DOD spending and the number of cost plus contracts