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Power-hungry gadgets endanger energy efficiency gains
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP May 15, 2009 04:07pm |
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| Category | Analysis |
| News Date | Friday, May 15, 2009 03:50:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | The International Energy Agency is a multinational group that tracks global energy use and makes projections of how current trends are likely to influence future supply and demand. Its latest report, released on Wednesday, is entitled Gadgets and Gigawatts. Not surprisingly, it focuses on consumer products, but it tells two very different tales. For appliances like dishwashers and refrigerators, energy use has been plunging in part due to government efficiency incentives, and that plunge has been accompanied by dropping prices. For electronic gadgets, in contrast, nothing is being done, and the growth in the electrical demand they're generating will put severe strain on future power supplies if business as usual continues.
From the IEA's perspective, a single issue underlies the dynamics in both markets: the price difference between efficient and power-hungry items is often small, and electricity is pretty cheap. As such, individual consumers don't have much incentive to pick an efficient device. Society as a whole, however, has a large range of reasons to prefer that its members pick efficient items, as it's easier and cheaper to supply less power, there are less pollution results, finite fuel sources last longer, etc.
As a result, governments tend to drive efficiency improvements through programs like incentives to manufacturers, minimum performance requirements, and programs like Energy Star, which provide information that consumers find easy to digest. These programs are often portrayed as anticonsumer by trade groups, since efficient devices are assumed to be more expensive, but the IEA doesn't buy that at all. Prices for all major appliances have been dropping at the same time their energy use drops, and the reports analysis finds no relationship between price drops and efficiency gains across different classes of appliances. |
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