This cracked me up. From the Arizona Republic this morning.
WASHINGTON - Federal investigators who submitted phony products like a gas-powered alarm clock to the government's energy-efficiency certification program found it easy to obtain approval and say the program is "vulnerable to fraud and abuse."
Investigators with the Government Accountability Office said they obtained Energy Star approval for 15 of 20 fictitious products they submitted for certification with fake energy-savings claims. Two were rejected and three did not receive a response. Two of the certified products even received purchase requests by real companies because four bogus firms, developed for the purpose of this investigation, were listed as Energy List partners.
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Among the phony products that obtained certification was a "room air cleaner" that, in a picture prominently displayed on the Web site of a bogus company, showed an electric space heater with a feather duster and strips of fly paper attached to it.
"Certification controls were ineffective primarily because Energy Star does not verify energy-savings data reported by manufacturers," investigators said in a GAO report released Friday. Work for the investigation, undertaken at the request of Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, started in June last year and did not involve products that are already certified and available to the public.
Designed to promote energy-efficient products that are up to 10 percent to 25 percent more energy efficient than minimum federal standards, Energy Star claims to have helped American families save nearly $17 billion on their utility bills in 2009.
In a joint statement, EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy, which jointly manage the program, vowed to improve certifying standards, saying they have "started an enhanced testing program and have already taken enforcement actions against companies that have violated the rules." A representative said they had received initial verbal notification of the findings in February.