by Alex Russell
California is the first state to adopt strict energy efficiency standards for televisions, estimating a 10-year savings of $8.1 billion in energy costs. According to these new regulations, most televisions will have to consume 49 percent less energy by 2013.
New energy regulations anywhere in the country should make all of us think about the true costs of every kind of energy we use. The California Energy Commission estimated that televisions account for about ten percent of household energy costs. Of course, in Washington we don’t watch as much television as they do in California, but we do enjoy our high-powered desktops and notebooks. We all, in our own ways, can do better, but looking at the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, the idea of exactly what we need to look at changes quite a bit.
Reducing the amount of energy we consume in the home is important, but we have to keep a realistic context if our purposes reach into reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A 2006 study by the Washington State Department of Community, Trade & Economic Development found that of the 88.3 million metric tons of the state’s CO2-equivalent emissions, 45 percent came from transportation. Residential and commercial energy-use emissions combined contributed only 7.9 percent, while in-state electricity generation contributed 13.8 percent. These numbers show that we can cut our household power bill all we want, buy the most efficient appliances on the market, and still have percentage-wise only a tiny bit of greenhouse gas emissions to reduce. Everything we can do individually does make a difference, but it does not eliminate our responsibility to think about the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions—transportation.
The California legislation to reduce television energy consumption is in this respect a kind of token step forward, but it has still come with a hint of the industry backlash any level of government may face when initiating better environmental policies. A scientist with the National Resources Defense Council said, “By simply establishing minimum energy efficiency standards for new TVs, we can cut the state’s electricity use by almost 1 percent,” and, “The newly adopted California TV standards will be the most advanced in the world. If history repeats itself, we expect many policy makers around the world to establish similar standards in the not too distant future.”
Meanwhile, the Consumer Electronics Association is not as happy about California’s decision. They said, “Simply put, this is bad policy—dangerous for the California economy, dangerous for technology innovation and dangerous for consumer freedom. Instead of allowing customers to choose the products they want, the Commission has decided to impose arbitrary standards that will hamper innovation and limit consumer choice.”
These kinds of free-market arguments are familiar, and have come up with every kind of regulation even recently, from energy to healthcare. Considering all the legislation that’s really needed to solve the problem of climate change—much more serious and intrusive legislation at that—there is surely plenty more of this kind of talk on the way.
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