WASHINGTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Energy Star program helped to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide billions of dollars in energy savings in 2002, according to the agency's annual report on Energy Star and other programs.

"From light bulbs to entire homes, people purchasing energy efficient products were able to protect the environment and save money," stated EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt. "Our corporate partners, too, are demonstrating that helping the environment can help their bottom line."

The report details the environmental and economic accomplishments attained by EPA's programs. Highlights include:

Energy Star has developed partnerships with 1,250 manufacturers labeling more than 18,000 products in over 35 product categories. More than one billion Energy Star labeled products have been purchased to date.

With Energy Star, Americans saved more than $7 billion on their energy bills last year - enough energy to power 15 million homes and make a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

More than 3,000 builder partners constructed over 110,000 Energy Star qualified homes to date, enabling financial savings for homeowners of more than $26 million annually.

EPA's national energy performance rating system has been used to evaluate and benchmark the energy efficiency of more than 15,000 buildings so far. Evaluation and benchmarking are tools to measure buildings' energy performance and guide in future steps to improve efficiency. Of the 15,000 buildings evaluated, 1,100 buildings earned the Energy Star in 2002. By square footage, 16 percent of office building space, 13 percent of schools, 20 percent of supermarkets, 21 percent of hospitals, and 5 percent of hotels have been benchmarked.

Thirty-four companies joined the Climate Leaders Program since it was launched in early 2002. Seven companies announced aggressive greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals.

The Green Power Partnership 2002, with more than 90 partners, totaled more than 500,000 megawatt hours of green power purchase commitments - including 250,000 megawatt hours from new renewable generation. Green power is electricity generated from resources such as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and low-impact hydro facilities.

Partnership programs achieved reductions of non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases - methane, perfluorocarbons (PFCs), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) - totaling more than 18 million metric tons of carbon equivalent in 2002.

For more information, visit www.epa.gov.

Publication date: 12/08/2003