In November, the Energy Star program, a joint project of the EPA and Department of Energy, reached a milestone when it designated its one-millionth energy-efficient home. The agencies credit their program to label energy-efficient homes, buildings, products and appliances with having prevented 22 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions so far, and they claim that this year alone, the emissions reductions have been the equivalent to taking 370,000 cars off the road.

Efforts to reduce greenhouse gases have often focused on long-term, large-scale projects like the development of renewable energy industries and zero-emissions cars. But the Energy Star program may offer an object lesson in how smaller-bore initiatives to change behavior can have a more immediate impact.

"Compared to any other options for addressing global warming, this is remarkably fast," said Lowell Ungar, director of policy at the Alliance to Save Energy. "We're not talking about developing new technologies that nobody's ever thought of and then trying to get them introduced in the marketplace at great expense. We're talking about things people are doing right now."

Buildings consume more energy than any other sector, including transportation and industry, according to the Department of Energy's Building Technologies Program. Together residential and commercial buildings make up 39 percent of primary energy consumption.

That translates directly into carbon emissions. In an October report on energy efficiency, an interdisciplinary group of academics estimated that 38 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from households -- from home energy use and personal transportation. Practices such as home weatherization, replacing heating and cooling units and using more efficient appliances and vehicles could reduce U.S. emissions by up to 7.4 percent, according to the report.

"The Energy Star program demonstrates that we can complement more traditional regulations, price- and technology-based measures, with information-driven measures," said Michael Vandenbergh, a law professor at Vanderbilt University and co-author of the report. "They can be non-intrusive and inexpensive and very effective."

The program has no regulatory authority. Instead, it works more like a consumer watchdog, providing information about relative energy efficiency to help people make decisions about what they buy. The Department of Energy estimates that three-fourths of Americans recognize the Energy Star brand and use it to make decisions about purchases. "Energy Star doesn't just identify best products in the market," Ungar said. "In a number of appliances, Energy Star pushes the market."

That brand recognition means that the benefits for participants may be economic as well as environmental. Maria Vargas, a spokeswoman for Energy Star at the EPA, said the program has saved homeowners $19 billion in electricity bills.

Congress has incorporated Energy Star into its current energy legislation. The Waxman-Markey bill would create a $7,500 rebate for homeowners to replace older homes with Energy Star-qualified ones. In the Senate, the Kerry-Boxer bill cites the program as a model for certifying retrofitted buildings.

It's too early to tell what effect congressional bills will have on the program, Vargas said, but she is encouraged by the Hill's focus on efficiency, as well as the administration's Recovery through Retrofit program announced by Vice President Joe Biden in October. Vargas believes that Energy Star can double its reach within the next decade.

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