Guest post by Conor Coughlin
If it’s not ENERGY STAR, it’s not energy efficient” wasn’t just a motto, it’s the guiding policy for arguably the most corrupt federal program in US history. The nexus for the greatest story never told!
97% of climate scientist supposedly believe in the Global Warming theory [which we know is a false claim], but what about cure? Try to find a single scientist, lawyer, or politician willing to defend EPA’s business ventures, or the delusional energy-saving claims made by the ENERGY STAR brand. Better yet, try to find the scientific evidence supporting EPA’s multi-billion dollar claims and you’ll quickly understand why Silence is Golden!
Where have all the media cheerleaders gone? America’s electrical sector represents one of the largest financial and employment markets on the planet, but suddenly its of little interest to the political elite.
Energy efficiency is the single largest and most expensive component of both Obama’s Clean Power Plan and Hillary Clinton’s Plan for Advanced Building, but you would never know it by press reports. Taxpayers spent billions, upon billions in massive scientific research programs specifically designed to increase energy efficiency in technologies, but now the talking-heads on TV have all gone silent on this unique genre of science. What aren’t they telling you?
The following is a brief analysis of both the political policy and “Clock Boy” type scientific evidence behind ENERGY STAR’s mythical energy-saving claims, and those who profit from this unique product.
Energy Efficiency is much like the term Government Transparency. A rare phenomenon unseen by the average citizen, but essential to the well-being of the political establishment.
Before discussing the science, let’s first consider one of the most important policies in US history. To understand the upside-down nature of today’s politics, science and business we must first reflect back to an Executive Order known as Market Transformation.
Virtually unknown to the average citizen, this policy has impacted every aspect of our economy and culture for decades. While benefiting only a small group of political insiders now identified as the Billionaires Club, as described in a 2014 Senate Report.
Market Transformation is a Clinton era policy originally presented as a vehicle for deregulation of retail electrical markets back in the 1990’s. It also created the ENERGY STAR program which has always operated as a pure Pay To Play scheme, and with the full knowledge and support of mainstream media.
Not just as propagandist, but for destroying the credibility of anyone questioning any portion of the EPA’s science. The ‘settled science’ narrative of Global Warming alarmist started shortly after mainstream media began repeating EPA’s claims regarding ENERGY STAR extraordinary energy-savings. This occurred despite the fact there has never been a National Standard for the measurement of energy-savings in technologies, all energy-savings are currently based on estimations by bureaucrats.
Thousands of lives, livelihoods and reputations have been destroyed, not just for challenging the science but for questioning the shadowy non-profits operating EPA Public/Private Partnerships. Now the media celebrates the Paris Climate Agreement, while pretending there’s nothing unusual or illegal about the collusion between UNIDO and EPA partnerships which turned ENERGY STAR into a multi-billion dollar slush-fund for the exclusive use of the Global elites.
Currently there is no national standard to measure energy savings from energy efficiency programs. Instead, each state commission (or utility board in the case of publicly owned utilities) develops its own measurement and verification protocols (see NRDC REPORT (R: 12-11-A) PAGE 16 – Closing the Power Plant Carbon Pollution Loophole: Smart Ways the Clean Air Act Can Clean Up America’s Biggest Climate Polluters)
There’s no National Standard for a good reason, EPA doesn’t want anyone measuring or recording the magical energy-savings of ENERGY STAR. That would assume the principles of Ohm’s Law still applied to electrical values, as opposed to Rules For Radicals now employed by EPA.
Competition in ‘energy efficiency’ markets is non-existent because the EPA only trusts non-profit organizations to market their products, which can only be provided to large corporations willing to form partnerships with the EPA. This may explain why media has imposed a total news blackout on ENERGY STAR’s mythical energy-savings, a product of incalculable value. Unless you’re a lawyer!
Tens of billions of our tax dollars are supposedly being ‘invested’ in efficiency programs, but exactly who determines the financial return on those investments? How do we know if ‘energy efficiency’ is actually working as advertised when electric rates continue to skyrocket, exactly like President Obama promised. Better yet, how does this ‘industry of experts’ calculate the publics return on their investment in ENERGY STAR? Or does it even matter?
News Flash! It’s not working, never did. Real energy efficiency would have caused electric rates to go down, not up. Which is why the media will never report on the scientific evidence of ‘energy efficiency’, or the coordination between Wall Street and Anti-Capitalist radicals running Big Green Inc.
Obama’s legacy depends on keeping the ‘Big Lie’ alive, not for the environment but for the benefit of phony Free Trade Deals. ENERGY STAR has become a State Owned Enterprise, and must disclose factual information regarding their exclusive product to trade partners. The value of ‘energy efficiency’ is irrelevant to foreign trade partners, because they receive the bulk of this valuable commodity for free.
It’s the American people that must be kept in the dark about this EPA invention, because we’re paying to export this cutting-edge American know-how abroad. Few understand how ENERGY STAR works and the media means to keep it that way.
Case in Point. Obama’s Clean Power Plan was crafted with four separate Building Blocks, which together was to represent the EPA’s best plan for emission reductions. Except that EPA pulled the entire 4th Building Block concerning ‘energy efficiency’ from the Plan just before its release to the public.
In a classic case of Bait & Switch, the 4th Building Block was quietly replaced by the Clean Energy Investment Program (CEIP) a program that doesn’t contain any language regarding energy efficiency.
Where was the outrage from lawyers, journalist and politicians which had for decades presented ‘energy efficiency’ as a Magic Bullet?
Here’s the real question! Was ENERGY STAR selected in a No-Bid process as the sole source for emissions reduction in Obama’s CPP, or was CEIP always the preferred program? Was this sleight-of-hand to hide the illegal selection of ENERGY STAR in Obama’s national agenda, or was it to disguise the corrupt nature of the CEIP on state guidelines which also rely exclusively on ENERGY STAR for emission reductions?
Either way, ENERGY STAR is the only approved source for emission reductions in CPP. Which explains why media refuses to allow any honest debate on either Obama’s Clean Power Plan or Clinton’s Plan for Advance Buildings. Not because these aren’t important issues, but because it’s important that Americans not understand these issues.
Any proper understanding of the science behind ENERGY STAR brand must begin with the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), the federal agency marketing hydroelectric power from Pacific NW dams and the Natural Resource Defense Council(NRDC).
BPA was tasked with implementation of Market Transformation for the Clinton/Gore administration, while NRDC was created in 1970 with funding from the Ford Foundation, the same group that recently ponied up $100 million for Black Lives Matters.
Back in 1997 NRDC’s Ralph Cavanagh, flaunting his ties to the Energy Foundation helped the Enron Corporation purchase Portland General Electric (PGE) by vouching for Ken Lay to the environmental community. This set in motion a series of large financial frauds related to ‘power trades’ and ‘fiber swaps’ worth billions of dollars, which were later lumped together under the omni-titles of the California Energy Crisis and dot.com bubble.
Media blamed it all on Enron while providing a complete pass for the hundreds of bureaucrats involved, including the state and federal watchdog agencies whose job it was to stop this type of criminal behavior. This also marked the beginning of Sue & Settle type lawsuits, which has been used to push corrupt back-room policy in ways few understand.
In 1998 BPA and NRDC formed the Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) which is funded in part with a 3% surcharge on electric bills to pursue an activist agenda, while lobbying government for additional regulations on business. BEF is a non-profit organization that now openly boasts of the profits made from marketing their exclusive environmental products and services to business forced to meet regulations that provide minuscule ecological benefits.
During this same period, BPA and PGE (Enron) plus ten other government agencies created the Poised for Profits Partnership (P4PP) which began funneling billions of tax dollars into massive scientific research programs conducted in the Pacific NW. This occurred while members of P4PP were still systematically defrauding electric ratepayers and investors in California, Oregon and Washington.
Most of the so-called research into energy efficiency, fuel cells, Smart Grid and bio-fuels occurred at industrial facilities of large corporations involved in Public/Private Partnerships. Each of those government-funded programs were by invitation only, and small business and entrepreneurs were uniformly forbidden entry.
P4PP created or funded two non-profits, the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) and Climate Solutions to operate as fronts for the bulk of these programs. The research conducted by these two non-profits was often converted into Regional or National initiatives, which are virtually unknown to the average citizen.
Most of the silly clichés like “Leveling the Playing Field” and “Eliminating Barriers” originated from this small group of zealots promoting climate-friendly goods and services. It’s important to understand that the stated purpose for all of those research programs was to search out new cost-effective energy efficiency products and services, and then assist entrepreneurs in making them commercially viable. Never happened!
NEEA was the original ‘energy efficiency’ organization, which served as the model for all the other energy efficiency alliances. They began with testing of ENERGY STAR products, and rightly deserve full credit for developing the scientific methodologies behind EPA’s extraordinary energy-saving claims.
Energy-saving claims ‘peer reviewed’ by Stratus Consulting and Summit Blue Consulting in a 2003 report;RETROSPECTIVE ASSESSMENT OF THE NORTHWEST ENERGY EFFICIENCY ALLIANCE. This report established NEEA as an international leader in ‘energy efficiency’.
This is an important report not because it verified NEEA’s energy-saving claims, because it didn’t. The authors clearly didn’t agree with any of NEEA’s scientific claims on any of the programs they examined. In every case they found wide differences in estimated ‘energy savings’ benefits, but it didn’t matter.
The report went on to claim that NEEA’s business model was doing a good job of advancing Market Transformation, even if their numbers were bogus and their credibility suspect they should continue to carry on their mission. This report may be the only scientific evidence supporting ENERGY STAR’s extraordinary energy-saving claims, except it doesn’t.
Stratus Consulting has written literally hundreds of reports for the EPA, including the Clean Energy Lead by Example Guide released in 2009. In the Lead By Example guide, Stratus Consulting makes the incredible claim of ENERGY STAR saving 25-50% more than conventional products which has become the central theme of all EPA policy. Strange claim, given that the 2003 RETROSPECTIVE ASSESSMENT OF NEEA never made such spectacular energy-saving claims.
Originally ENERGY STAR claimed its products were in the top 25 percentile for energy efficiency, now ENERGY STAR suddenly began consuming 25-50% less energy than similar products. This play on words turned ENERGY STAR into a multi-billion dollar industry for bureaucrats.
Bureaucrats can now claim to save billions by simply buying ENERGY STAR products or constructing Green-built Buildings, no need to verify anything. If electric bills go up, they can blame the occupants for using their products incorrectly and nobody would be the wiser.
compared to conventional products (U.S. EPA, 2007c 2008)”
Shortly after establishing ENERGY STAR’s supremacy in energy efficiency, NEEA went on to conduct the Industrial Sector Initiative. This multi-year program was touted as the most comprehensive Industrial study yet, with a set of thirty-three Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track progress over time. This Industrial Initiative began with high hopes, but just like every other NEEA program it ended in complete failure by any reasonable standards. Only to be elevated to a full-blown government bureaucracy, complete with a rich history of accomplishments.
This Industrial Initiative only lasted a couple years before it ended without accomplishing anything of value. Later the data from the Industrial Initiative served as part of the basis for Obama’s Save Energy Now program, a $100 billion Industrial investment boondoggle. Which has 24 federal universities providing free ‘audits’ of industrial facilities, and claiming to have saved billions for large corporations in partnerships with the EPA. Those audits had all the quality of a Clock Boy invention.
Climate Solution was a franchisee of the notorious Earth Island Institute when the P4PP selected this small, relatively unknown group to conduct some of the largest and most expensive scientific research programs in history. Earth Island Institute has been an incubator for some of the most radical environmental and anti-Capitalist groups on the planet through assisting “early stage’ leaders.
In 2003, Climate Solutions separated from Earth Island Institute, becoming a non-profit with funding from the State of Washington almost two years after it had produced the Poised For Profits report. The Washington Office of Trade and Economic Development is member of P4PP, as is the Seattle Office of Economic Development but apparently conflicts of interest don’t apply to these government bureaucracies.
The Poised for Profits report then used by the Prosperity Partnerships, a another government-funded non-profit group from the Puget Sound area, which create a Regional Economic Agenda covering all of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia. The Prosperity Partnership non-profit was formed in 2004, and is composed of politicians, academics, union bosses, bureaucrats, large corporations and radical environmentalist that came together to profit from marketing climate-friendly goods and services in Global markets.
The Prosperity Partnership included members from every government agency represented by P4PP, but was by invitation only for private sector corporations.
Mainstream media has never provided any coverage of the Prosperity Partnership or the Regional Economic Agenda, and it’s entirely likely that less than 1% of the population within the region has any knowledge of their existence
Which is part of the reason for the media blackout on Obama’s Clean Power Plan and Hillary Clinton’s Plan for Advanced Buildings. The general public would immediately suspect any policy presented by the Billionaires Club, even if they had never read the Senate Report.
Obama’s Clean Power Plan was never designed as a uniform set of national laws governing emissions within various states, but a plan forcing states to achieve the same levels of emission reductions claimed by states considered national leaders in emissions reductions. There is a huge difference between meeting clearly defined laws, and trying to play catch-up to the fictitious energy-saving claims made by corrupt state politicians that secretly received billions of taxpayer dollars from the EPA .
States like California, Oregon and Washington received tens of billions of taxpayer dollars from EPA (P4PP) under the guise of scientific research without any accountability. We’re now supposed to pretend that nothing improper occurred in the federal contracting process, because those investments had the full support of high ranking federal officials like Richard Windsor (aka Lisa Jackson) and Lew Alcindor (aka Eric Holder).
The Clean Energy Investment Program is exactly the type vague program promoted by the most transparent administration ever, understood by only Wall Street’s environmental lawyers. Kept secret by media moguls hoping to cash-in once Obama finishes his term, and he can move on his new career as a Venture Capitalist.
Obama’s legacy is directly tied to the success of ENERGY STAR, and delivering the green to the Billionaires Club. The Village Idiot or journalist may believe in EPA science, but big money is banking on the magic of ENERGY STAR!
Crossposted by request from N4Mation
