HONG EXAMINER – July 2025
Monthly Newsletter of Hong Consulting, LLC.
Energy Star Program. As part of a reorganization plan, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is looking to eliminate the Energy Star Program. Energy Star is a voluntary labeling and certification program that improves energy efficiency of appliances and buildings. Since 1992, it has reduced energy costs for American families and businesses by more than $500 billion, prevented 4 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, and supported over 790,000 jobs manufacturing or installing Energy Star certified products.[1] Over the lifetime of the program, every dollar EPA has spent on ENERGY STAR resulted in nearly $350 in energy cost savings for American business and households.[2]
EPA has said the reorganization “is delivering organizational improvements to the personnel structure that will directly benefit the American people and better advance the agency's core mission, while Powering the Great American Comeback.”
Ending the Energy Star program would have a direct impact on the City & County of Honolulu’s Better Building Benchmarking Program as building owners use Energy Star’s Portfolio Manager to generate and submit benchmarking reports to the county. To provide more information on how cutting Energy Star would affect Oahu’s building owners, I interviewed Nick Gladfelter who runs the Better Buildings Benchmarking Program for the county.
How will this affect the Better Buildings Benchmarking Program?
Since its inception, the Better Buildings Benchmarking Program has utilized the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager as a free online tool for building managers to track and manage their energy and water data and comply with Ordinance 22-17. Portfolio Manager is an industry-leading benchmarking tool, and has been favorable and effective for the City's benchmarking program. The ENERGY STAR program also has rebates for energy saving technologies and provides important resources on benchmarking, energy efficiency, and utility cost savings. If ENERGY STAR is eliminated and Portfolio Manager becomes unavailable, the City's benchmarking program will need to migrate to an alternative reporting platform.
What alternatives are there to Energy Star Portfolio Manager?
There are several alternative management tools available, for example, Touchstone or Cambio Vault. Any new alternatives would need to be evaluated for fit with our participants and overall program function.
Will building owners be able to port their data and property profiles from Energy Star Portfolio Manager to any new system the City uses?
This is a highly desirable feature for the City to ease the burden on our participating buildings; however, at this time, it is uncertain if a new portal would be compatible with Portfolio Manager. The City does have all reported data saved and displayed in the virtual Data Transparency Map. Should Portfolio Manager lose funding, building managers will be encouraged to download data from their existing profiles.
If the Energy Star Program is cut, when will it happen? When will building owners lose access to Energy Star Portfolio Manager?
The federal government has not released any timelines or details on account access. The federal fiscal year begins October 1, and it is unknown how long it may take for Portfolio Manager to be pulled. There are proposed budget cuts to the EPA's ENERGY STAR program, which not only impacts Portfolio Manager, but ENERGY STAR certified products as well. The City remains in close contact with other municipalities, jurisdictions and partners who would also be impacted.
Does the Office of Climate Change, Sustainability & Resiliency have the budget to make these changes to the program?
The City's benchmarking program is currently covered under a federal grant and future funding is being explored.
Hong Consulting recommends completing your benchmarking reports and submitting them to the county as soon as possible given the uncertainty about the future of the Energy Star program. You don’t want to be non-compliant and unable to submit reports to the City & County of Honolulu because the reporting system got cut. You will also want to put off transitioning to a new reporting system for as long as possible and submitting this year’s report as soon as possible will do that.
The following are additional resources on this topic:
NPR article on Energy Star being targeted
Letter Senator Schatz and other colleagues wrote to the EPA urging the Trump Administration to immediately reverse course on its plan to illegally and unilaterally terminate the ENERGY STAR program
Planet Detroit article on how the loss of Energy Star Portfolio Manager would affect other jurisdictions
Vacation. I wanted to inform everyone that I will be out of the office on vacation from Saturday, July 5th through Wednesday, July 17th, with limited access to email during this period. If you anticipate needing assistance with any benchmarking or accounting matters, please reach out to me before I head out. I’ll resume normal operations on Friday, July 18th, and will respond to any outstanding messages promptly upon my return.
Webinars. I have decided to cancel the July 24th and August 12th webinars due to lack of interest. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate everyone’s understanding. If you were registered for either session, you will receive a separate email confirming the cancellation. If there is future interest in the webinars, I will revisit them but attendance at the webinars has continued to decline.
[1] ENERGY STAR, ENERGY STAR Impacts (online at: https://www.energystar.gov/about/impacts)
[2] Ibid.
