The Northwest is currently undergoing another jag of “extreme weather” to complement the huge snowfalls of last winter. All of this has prompted many people to seek air conditioned relief or simply hide in their basements. Perhaps some desperate souls are huddled by their refrigerators. It’s definitely not an efficient use of the fridge, but 103 degrees is hot, hot, hot. Luckily, many of the appliances we use to keep ourselves or our food cold are regulated for energy efficiency.
And, this summer, the Department of Energy (DOE) is engaged in a new review of many appliance categories that will continue through 2011. It will likely result in higher efficiency standards for our big household appliances. This review process is partially in response to a lawsuit a few years back that charged that the Department of Energy had failed to do its duty under federal laws passed in 1975 and 2005 to review and update appliance energy standards.
These standards are an important part of reducing energy costs while cutting climate changing emissions. In fact, Earthjustice says that adopting the most stringent standards in this review “would cut emissions of more than 150 million metric tons of global warming gases each year, eliminate the need for 200 new power plants and save consumers $16 billion a year by 2030.” They are running a campaign this summer urging people to contact the DOE and insist these standards be adopted before the first deadline in August.
My interests in appliance efficiencies have to do with appliances in multi-unit housing. The problem of split incentives means that neither landlords nor property owners have much incentive to change out older appliances for newer more efficient ones because the owners, don’t pay the monthly energy bill and the renters don’t own the appliances.
So, I ran a little test here in the Sightline offices that gave me a chance to hang out by the refrigerator. We have a beautiful late 20th century Kelvinator, (I’m not the first to “test” the Kelvinator) model number MRT18CSCW. It’s a stunning piece of equipment and although its a decade old it gets the job done. But is it efficient?
Judging from a quick run through at the ENGERGY STAR website Sightline could save $150 dollars a year if we were to replace our refrigerator. Not much really. But still it would save some money and maybe the planet, right?
Well, I followed the links to products that were energy efficient. The cheapest fridge that meets the current efficiency standers runs about $600 plus tax. At our rate of savings, assuming the costs are constant, it would take us 5 years to make back the cost of the new fridge. Now if Waxman-Markey passes the Senate, our savings might increase as fossil fuel prices rise. But here in the Northwest our energy is so cheap it still wouldn’t save us much.
But a recent study by Mckinsey shows that savings from efficiencies could be big. The New York Times says that based on the report “an investment of $520 billion in improvements like sealing ducts and replacing inefficient appliances could produce $1.2 trillion in savings on energy bills through 2020.” So added all together these improvements will matter a lot nationwide.
And locally there are programs like Oregon’s efforts to encourage appliance replacement in multi-unit family homes by providing a tax credit for business owners under the Business Energy Tax Credit (BETC) program. Unfortunately the BETC faced significant cuts by the legislature this last session—a step in the wrong direction.
More incentives like BETC’s appliance program to start retiring older, less efficient appliances is the right way to go because, if the McKinsey study is right, many residents of multi-unit housing would reap a share of those $1.2 trillion in savings. These efficiencies and incentives are also an important complimentary policy to any cap and trade program, ensuring both reduced CO2 and a fair distribution of the costs and savings among well-off and struggling families alike. Individual action can matter but cap and trade legislation, which provides for massive changes in energy efficiency, and programs like BETC have the biggest positive impacts.
Now I am headed back to the refrigerator to do some more “research.”
Update 7/30/2009: Alan informed me that we don’t pay our utilities directly, so we really wouldn’t even save $150 per year. Let us know, in the comments section, about your appliance and efficiency stories. Have you audited your own appliances? Have you replaced them? Has it made a difference?
chris
We just purchased a new refrigerator for about $550 taxes that was energy star certified. We made the move because our refrigerator was older than my wife and I are and it was just getting too noisy and leaking too much. I’m guessing we will save on our energy bill and have a little more room in our refrigerator. I’m curious if this energy savings estimate is based on refrigerators from the 90s, 80s, or 70s? I’m guessing there are a few folks out there like my wife and I that haven’t been willing to upgrade an inherited antique.
Saratoga
Ahhh . . . . your organization may not pay electric bills directly, but your landlord is promoting your building as a green, sustainable one. So I’m betting that he/she might be willing to cost share. The savings will go beyond the fridge itself because it’s throwing a lot of heat into the workspace and adding to the cooling load – or did the building forego cooling when it did the upgrade?Refrigerators today are 40% more efficient than even 2002 models – so, it’s time to get the new one! Gotta walk the talk – hopefully you guys are motivated by more than just utility bill savings, too. (Check with City Light to see if you’re eligible for the $30 rebate for throwing away the old one.)(And – remind Allan that low electric rates are good for the economy – and the surest way to keep them relatively low is to make better use of what we already have. (that would be energy efficiency.))
Reuben Deumling
Roger:If your Sightline fridge is rated to consume 683 kWh/yr (as the photo implies) then I don’t see how you calculate $150 in annual savings from replacing it with an Energy Star model. Unplugging it and NOT replacing it at all will barely save half that much at 11 cents/kWh. Beware of the Energy Star online calculator—the consumption figures on which it relies are in my view inflated. In fact this tendency to inflate ‘savings’ from energy efficiency upgrades and replacements would be an interesting subject for a future article.Chris:Although often implied, older fridges don’t always consume more/are less energy efficient than younger fridges. The gratuitously inefficient period (peculiar to the US-see below) was roughly 1965-85. And within all periods the size of fridge can make a significant difference in energy consumption. Certainly if your fridge was older than that you might want to think twice about scrapping it if energy consumption is something you’re concerned about. The old fridges (~1940) used the least energy, and were durable, to boot.Saratoga:Today’s refrigerators are not 40% more efficient than 2002 models. As a population they are—for all intents and purposes—indistinguishable from what you can buy today. Though you might find a model or two that evidence that much improvement, I doubt it. Can you give an example? Also it is important to remember that efficiency—the term bandied about here—is a second order concept; the first order concern is (reduced) energy consumption. A more energy efficient fridge might consume less energy, or it might consume the same amount, or it might consume more: it all depends on the details. In the US we consume more electricity per capita for domestic refrigeration than any other country, despite thirty-plus years of regulation. Maybe we need to pay attention to energy consumption not just energy efficiency?One reason our fridges in the US are so big and were for a time so dreadfully wasteful of electricity is that the appliance manufacturers and the electric utilities and the US government wanted it that way. During the Cold War these interests pursued a policy of maximum electricity consumption as a way to demonstrate capitalism’s superiority.* Consequently the history of our refrigerators is unlike that in almost all other countries where the amount of energy a refrigerator consumed didn’t change by more than a factor of 1.5-2, whereas in the US the average jumped almost ten-fold between 1940 and 1973/4. What our energy efficiency policies targeting refrigerators have yielded is a partial undoing of past foolishness, but the growth in size, features, and social status that (bigger, always bigger) refrigerators have experienced have worked against the net reduction in refrigerator energy consumption. In the US we estimate domestic refrigerators presently consume some 4-5 times more electricity (1.1 Quads) than they did when refrigerator saturation first occurred, roughly 50 years ago(0.25 Quads). Our best guess at the magnitude of reductions in energy consumption we need to achieve to avoid or stave off global warming suggest we need to get this figure back down to 0.25 Quads, but no amount of energy efficiency (as practiced) is going to achieve that. Once upon a time it was permissible to talk about how much refrigerator space folks really needed and to question whether auto defrost was really necessary. I think our tendency these days to quickly dismiss this way of looking at the problem as antiquated, as no longer necessary now that energy efficiency is able to deliver the goods with no tradeoffs is no longer tenable.* “The electric utilities, through EEI and NEMA, are directing their sales efforts toward the sales of refrigerator-freezers and combos in order to boost the kwh usage of refrigerators from the present 500 to the 1,300 kwh that the new boxes draw. This means $20 a year extra to the utility when a customer owns one of your deluxe refrigerator-freezers or combos. The Utilities not only want the extra load your refrigerator-freezers will provide, they are ready to spend millions of dollars to get it.” Electrical Merchandising Week, 1962