Increasing concerns about the lack of energy resources, global warming and environmental pollution have pushed the relevant organizations to develop energy saving strategies such as energy labeling programs. In this research, a new energy labeling program is developed and evaluated for the wet cooling towers in Iran. The cooling tower parameters, including its cooling capacity and the fan power consumption, are measured using an experimental setup. The experimental data are standardized to compensate the effect of the ambient wet bulb temperature on the cooling tower performance which cannot be controlled during the experiments. The results show that the cooling tower capacity and the fan power consumption may be correlated properly using a linear function which conducts the authors to present a linear energy index (El). Based on the statistical analysis of a comprehensive range of products, the energy rating limits are extracted for the main types of cooling towers, including induced draft and forced draft ones. The economical and environmental impression of the program authorization is also discussed in detail. Administration of such program may lead to considerable energy saving in the cooling systems which have major economical and environmental benefits, especially in the large industries. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.