Star power
Trust the U.S. Government to come up with an ecological reason to throw away your working refrigerator and buy a new one. ‘Energy Star qualified refrigerator models use at least 15% less energy than required by current federal standards and 40% less energy than the conventional models sold in 2001,’ notes the government’s Energy Star website, [www.energystar.gov].
Energy Star is a ‘government-backed program helping businesses and individuals protect the environment through superior energy efficiency,’ as the website puts it. The joint Environmental Protection Agency/Department of Energy program is most famous for its little blue-and-white star logo, which it awards to energy-efficient devices ranging from battery rechargers to refrigerators. There’s even an Energy Star rating standard for new homes.
The program doesn’t say which appliance is most efficient; it simply says whether or not it met Energy Star’s high standards of energy efficiency. Each type of appliance has its own standards, ranging from 10 to 50 percent energy savings over industry standard models. Energy Star-qualified clothes washers, for instance, use 50 percent less energy than do standard washers. Energy Star dishwashers are 25 percent more efficient, giving consumers an estimated $100 in energy savings over the life of the product; TVs and air conditioners yield about 10 percent energy savings; computers, a whopping 70 percent. The website lists all approved brand names and models and the stores that carry them locally.
But the program has its limitations. For instance, the 259 models of Energy Star-approved televisions range from conventional TVs to wall-sized plasma monsters–but the plasma TVs are only compared to equivalent-sized plasma TVs. The rating doesn’t say which television technology–plasma, LCD or conventional cathode-ray tubes(CRTs) –is more energy efficient overall, or how much extra energy twelve more inches of screen will cost. Much worse, some the household’s biggest watt-gobblers–ranges, ovens and clothes dryers–are not covered by the program at all.
Consumers can get some help with even those beasts, however, from another Department of Energy program, which tests all major appliances and records the results on a simple yellow ‘Energy Guide’ sticker on the floor model at the store. The sticker displays three key pieces of information: how many kilowatt hours per year the appliance is expected to use, what those hours might be expected to cost (based on national cost/kilowatt/hour averages from several years ago, so expect it to cost much more in Hawai’i now) and where, on sliding scale from least- to most-energy-guzzling, it compares to equivalent models.
Information on the Energy Guide program and lots of other tips on energy saving can be found at the DOE’s ‘Energy Savers’ website: [eere.energy.gov/consumer/tips].
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