Opportunities and recommendations for reducing the energy consumption of consumer electronics products

Over the past few years entire new categories of consumer electronics products including DVD players, TiVo recorders, broadband modems, and large high definition TVs have entered the market place. While these products provide features consumers value, they consume considerable quantities of electricity. Residential electricity use by consumer electronics products has essentially doubled over the past decade, and is now responsible for up to 15% of household electricity use. Unlike consumer white goods, (i.e. refrigerators and clothes washers) which have over time made dramatic reductions in their annual energy use, most classes of new electronics products use more power than the ones they are replacing. Part of the reason for this category´s escalating power use is that energy efficiency is typically not a consideration during the manufacturer´s design process. For example, TV set top boxes used to receive and decode cable or satellite signals operate at essentially full power levels in the middle of the night even though the user is not watching or recording a show. For other product categories such as TVs and computers, the power used during periods of extended inactivity has been successfully reduced, but little progress has been made to address the more significant energy use when the product is being operated. In this paper, we summarize the work of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Ecos Consulting have performed to assess the power consumption of selected consumer electronics products. Per our analysis, if all of today´s computers, TVs, and TV set top boxes (STBs) were to meet minimum efficiency requirements recommended by NRDC/Ecos, their combined energy consumption would drop by more than 25%. This has the effect of preventing the need to operate seven large (500 MW) power plants and eliminates the emission of approximately 22 million tons/yr of carbon dioxide, a key global warming pollutant.