The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Energy Star program recognizes and promotes products that satisfy a high performance standard while saving energy. Created in 1992, the voluntary labeling program now covers a broad range of products, including lamps and residential luminaires.


Utility prescriptive rebate programs favor products that bear the Energy Star mark. Currently, more than 370 U.S. utilities operate some 1,200 incentive and promotion programs centered on Energy Star-certified lighting, spending more than $500 million annually. For lamps, this represents about 95 percent of all prescriptive lighting rebate programs.


To qualify for the Energy Star mark, a product must satisfy criteria detailed in a specification. For lamps, the applicable document is the Lamp Specification, revised and released on Dec. 31, 2015, as Lamps V2.0. It will go into effect on Jan. 2, 2017. After that date, a product must satisfy these requirements to get the Energy Star mark. This includes omnidirectional, directional and decorative lamps. 


Lamps V2.0 follows Luminaires V2.0, which was released in May 2015 and became effective June 1, 2016. The EPA set out to simplify requirements while increasing efficacy levels in step with advancing technology. The distinction between commercial and residential luminaires was eliminated, surface-mounted LED retrofit products were included (excluding self-ballasted lamps and products that use an existing ballast), and the outdoor category was expanded to differentiate between directional and nondirectional luminaires.


Energy Star products are subject to annual off-the-shelf verification testing. Every year, EPA-recognized laboratories independently test about 10 percent of products in each category.


Taylor Jantz-Sell, Energy Star lighting program manager, said V2.0 had several significant goals. Energy Star has always recognized the most energy-efficient products as a rule, and as light-emitting diode (LED) lighting continues to develop, increasing energy-efficiency requirements has become attractive. 


For all lamps, efficacy requirements have become more stringent while adjustments were made to performance criteria, such as increasing lumen and color maintenance requirements for reliability and decreasing minimum service life to reduce cost. In addition, the EPA included color-tuning and connected lamps along with a streamlined way to certify decorative luminaires simply by including an Energy Star-certified lamp.


“Other primary goals of the 2.0 revision were to align with pending final U.S. Department of Energy test procedures and improve harmonization with the Energy Star specification for Luminaires V2.0,” Jantz-Sell said. “An additional priority was to allow for more cost-effective lamp designs to earn the Energy Star while maintaining a high level of performance.”


The most notable change is a raised energy-efficiency bar, which favors LEDs. In 2014, the EPA estimated that about 70 percent of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) shipped were Energy Star-certified. Now, that may change to zero, which would effectively eliminate CFLs from current utility rebate programs.


In the omnidirectional lamps category, V2.0 increases minimum efficacy based on color rendering index (CRI) rating. Lamps have to achieve a minimum efficacy of 80 lumens per watt (LPW) if CRI is lower than 90 and 70 LPW if CRI is 90 or greater. Additional adjustments to the criteria aim to broaden adoption by reducing cost, such as adjusting lighting distribution requirements, reducing minimum service life from 25,000 to 15,000 hours, and reducing the power factor requirement for 5- to 10-watt (W) lamps from 0.7 to 0.6.


CFLs don’t comply with these requirements, which may affect their already declining demand. (GE Lighting announced it will cease production of coiled-type CFLs by the end of 2016.) Also, many LED lamps do not satisfy V2.0’s 80 LPW threshold, which will require some redesign for certain models. Models that do not comply may continue to be sold due to their lower cost, providing suitable value whether the lamp is supported by a rebate or not.


In the directional lamp category, the EPA raised minimum efficacy to 70 LPW for less than 90 CRI, or 61 LPW for 90-plus CRI. Again, CFLs—reflectorized lamps in this case—are expected to be effectively eliminated from Energy Star. In decorative lamps, minimum efficacy increased to 65 LPW for all lamps. “ST”—a lamp shape mimicking old-­fashioned filament lamps—is included as a new lamp type in this category.


Utilities are expected to shift funding from CFLs to LEDs, which will stimulate LED demand. Distributors in rebate-intensive regions are being encouraged to switch to compliant products to take advantage of these rebates. Electrical contractors may benefit from initiating conversations with customers that use screw-base CFLs—particularly if they rely on rebates—and discuss transitioning to LEDs. Manufacturers are expected to offer good availability of Energy Star-certified LED lamps to make the transition as seamless as possible.


As LEDs technology achieves wider adoption, demand for legacy technologies, such as CFLs, will continue to decline. These types of lamps may continue to be used, but they will no longer be favored by utility programs, manufacturers or consumers.