Really? You sound like someone who would pay for such a thing. I bet there are more of you!
> If you don’t have to make them efficient and you don’t have to display how much energy or water they use and how much that would cost, then you can massively undercut anyone that does those things, even though the consumer would end up paying more over time.
Nobody said anything about getting rid of the stickers. We can still require stickers, just like we require food has labels on it. We don't need a sprawling certification system encompassing everything from telephones (sigh) to roofing materials and the government bureaucracy that defines it.
I also don’t have the time, energy, and knowledge to be an expert on every single thing I buy or use. I know nothing about roofing materials, so having some bare minimum standards and left and right limits balancing societal harm/good and individual choice is perfectly reasonable to me.
Natural resources and infrastructure are a shared resource “owned” by everyone, collectively known as the nation. Protecting that value is what the government should be doing.
The idea that manufacturers wouldn’t just make energy and water hogging dishwashers now is naive at best. Making something run well using less resources costs more money up front, even though the total cost of ownership is lower. If you don’t have to make them efficient and you don’t have to display how much energy or water they use and how much that would cost, then you can massively undercut anyone that does those things, even though the consumer would end up paying more over time.
> Somehow I doubt that dishwashers are driving the power consumption curve in the US in 2025.
But of course it isn’t just dishwashers, it is practically every home appliance. If every house was using 10% more energy, that adds up to a lot. It doesn’t mean that data centers aren’t also a problem, but abandoning a program that saves energy doesn’t fix either problem.
>for example, what's preventing EnergyStar from requiring that the water be cold? That would use way less energy!
Is that something you are worried about or was discussed? Or is that just a ridiculous made-up scenario trying to paint a reasonable regulation for nonsense?