Podcast transcript: Environmental Impact of Consumer Electronics Products

September 30, 2006

ANDREW FANARA: Think about how many electronics you have in your home. Now think about how those products impact the environment. Did you know a cell phone charger that’s plugged into the wall is still using energy when it’s not connected to your cell phone? Or that your TV uses energy when it’s turned off? Most people don’t realize just how much energy all those gadgets we have at our home are using. For example, in the U.S., TVs consume around 46 billion kilowatt hours per year, or about 4 percent of residential electricity use. That’s a big number. This is roughly equal to the annual electricity use of all households in the state of New York.

Welcome to EPA’s ENERGY STAR Consumer Electronics Podcast, our series that looks at ways to satisfy our growing fascination with the latest technology while protecting the environment. I’m Andrew Fanara with the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR program, and we’re coming to you today with the second of three podcasts to look at the growing trends around consumer devices in the home and what this growing proliferation means to your home energy budget.

With me today are Edie Lau, the energy reporter for the Sacramento Bee, and Noah Horowitz, senior scientist from the Natural Resources Defense Council. Thanks for being here, folks.

EDIE LAU: Pleasure.

ANDREW FANARA: So let’s jump right in. We know that consumer electronics are more popular than ever. And let’s talk today about how all this adds up and what it means for the home energy budget, and what sort of trends we’re seeing, and what we’re hearing from consumers out there who are using these products or having to pay these growing utility bills. Noah, can you explain how the increased demand for product options are leading to more energy use and ultimately affecting the environment?

NOAH HOROWITZ: Sure, be glad to, Andrew. Consumer electronics is probably the fastest growing category of electricity growth in the home. And in a home that has a lot of the latest devices, it could easily represent 15 to 20 percent of a home’s electricity use.

ANDREW FANARA: Yeah, it really does seem to be a large and growing trend. I know that we’ve got data that goes back to 1980 or thereabouts where consumer electronics was really roughly about 5 percent, really quite miscellaneous, probably just the television and some clock radios. And then today, 2005, that number has jumped to about 13 percent. So it’s certainly grown.

Edie, I know that you spend a lot of time talking to consumers in the Northern California area. What sort of things are you hearing from them in terms of feedback?

EDIE LAU: Well, I think that people really are starting to pay more attention to these things. And in California we had a good reason to really pay attention to our energy use back in 2000 and 2001. We had some difficulty getting enough electricity into the state. And as a result we had some rolling blackouts. And energy efficiency became a really big topic. People who were experts on this, their thoughts and opinions and advice were sought out like crazy. And we wrote a lot of stories about that, and folks totally responded.

Recently I did a story about energy efficiency in California, again sort of the history of it, and a profile of a scientist who’d been key in bringing lots of these new standards to the state and to the rest of the nation, and talked about compact fluorescent bulbs. And some of the responses I got from readers were, oh, yes, I love those bulbs. You know, I put them in a few years ago, and I can really tell that they last longer. And my bill, I can see the difference on my bill. So I do think that recognition is rising, and people are beginning to pay more attention to these issues.

ANDREW FANARA: Yeah, that’s, I think, definitely the case. And I think in spite of the fact that most people believe that their lighting and other major uses of energy in the home, the white goods and eating and cooling, etcetera, they do collectively represent the bulk of the energy use in the home. But this growing miscellaneous category, driven in large part by consumer electronics and computers and the like, is starting to catch up. And it’s growing fast.

Noah, what do you think — Edie spoke a little bit about energy efficiency being such a big deal in California. Can you speak a little bit about, you know, the benefits of energy efficiency and what we can benefit from?

NOAH HOROWITZ: Sure. Before I go to that, I think it’s interesting to talk about, if you go to someone’s home who just bought a new big-screen TV, that new TV might use two to three times more power than the one they’re replacing, and they have no idea. And to put all this home entertainment equipment into perspective, they could be adding the equivalent of two new refrigerators into their home. And that results in a lot of increased energy use. And I think consumers have no idea about those impacts, both on their electric bill and then on the environment.

ANDREW FANARA: You know, often I hear that consumers might not care about how much energy is being consumed by these devices. But it certainly seems to be the case that they increasingly care about the energy used by their white goods and their lights. Is there any reason to think that we couldn’t change people’s perceptions to understand the impacts of consumer electronics and hopefully get people to think along the same lines as they do with white goods and the like?

NOAH HOROWITZ: Yeah, I think increasingly people are getting the message that global warming is real and is a threat to the economy and to their well-being. So I think we need to make people connect that, when they flick the switch on these products, and increasingly they’re going to be using more electricity in their home, that power plants are the single largest source of global warming pollution. So anything people can do to buy more efficient products and to use their products more wisely, they can make a big difference.

ANDREW FANARA: Yeah, I definitely think that that’s the case. We’re starting to see, I think, more and more awareness of the issue of climate change. Certainly it has made it into the mainstream media, and I think people are paying more attention to it than ever. At the same time, they may not realize that they can make a contribution to combating that, even with simple choices that they have in the home.

Tell me, Edie, what sort of things can we expect to see in Northern California this summer, where energy problems have been so acute in the past?

EDIE LAU: Well, my understanding is that we have probably adequate supplies for this summer, at least in Northern California that’s not forecast to be a problem. We might have some constraints in the southern part of the state. But really I think we’re looking beyond this summer. Our Governor Schwarzenegger, who is a Republican, I should note, last year made a declaration that we were going to address climate change, that, you know, the debate was over, and the time for action is now. And now there’s some proposals on the table, and there’s some legislation that we may be seeing some debate over in August and September. So I think California is trying to take a leadership position in dealing with climate change, even if the federal government is not going to make any mandatory requirements on this.

But I wanted to say something about consumers and the news about climate change and pollution because there is the chance of a little bit of backlash. I remember I did a piece on these big-screen TVs, based upon Noah’s study about the use of these, you know, the larger energy consumption of these larger TVs and the proliferation of them. And there is a chance that people will say, oh, you’re just being a killjoy, you know, these are our toys. We want to have these things. They give us pleasure. And, you know, don’t bother me with this thing about energy.

So there is, I think, sometimes if you berate the consumer too much, they might just turn it off. So probably — and I know you’ve been working on this already — working with the manufacturers and bringing them into the discussion and challenging them to come up with technology so that really the consumer doesn’t have to be bothered too much with this, the way it happened with refrigerators, where with standards the manufacturers simply made refrigerators that were more efficient, and it really didn’t affect the consumer once they could go, and it wouldn’t cost them anymore, and they could get a more efficient refrigerator. It was really sort of an invisible thing. That seemed to work out really well.

ANDREW FANARA: Right. Noah, tell me, what have you been seeing, or what have you been hearing about things that are happening in other states outside of California to address some of the issues that we’ve been talking about?

NOAH HOROWITZ: To date it seems to have been a bicoastal phenomena. So the whole West Coast and portions of the Northeast have really embraced energy efficiency as a resource. So they’re pursuing energy efficiency and offering significant rebate dollars to encourage people to buy the more efficient models. And that’s a lot more effective than building more power plants. So we’re seeing that model, and we hope that spreads throughout the country.

Getting back to Edie’s points about consumers, they don’t like to be preached at. And we completely agree with that. There are some benefits, though. More efficient products give off less heat. The least efficient ones are taking in good electricity and converting that electricity into heat. And heat is the enemy of a lot of these products. So the more efficient ones should last longer, which is good for the consumer and also good for the manufacturer who doesn’t have to pay up money on a returned product. So, for example, the TiVo box that you have, that never goes off at night. So you have a hard drive spinning all the time. That hard drive could be shut down at the middle of the night, at 3:00 in the morning, when you’re not watching or recording a show. And that will result in a quieter box in your bedroom. So that’s some of the cases where efficiency and the consumer, their interests really align well.

ANDREW FANARA: Right, and I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that manufacturers are starting to take action on this and realizing that the more efficient product is the better one oftentimes because it provides other benefits, as well, whether it be less parts that they have to purchase to put it together, or it runs quieter, or it may last a bit longer. Certainly all those are attributes that manufacturers are starting to realize that some of their customers are certainly willing to consider those benefits and factor them into the buying decision. And it’s certainly something we shouldn’t discount at all.

Tell me, Edie, what sort of stories do you have planned next around this issue? Do you have anything upcoming?

EDIE LAU: Well, I was just thinking yesterday that I wanted to do something about standby power, or what is more colorfully known as "vampire power." And that’s the notion that many of these products that we have today are not actually turned off when you think they’re off. And televisions are a wonderful example. I was remembering that when I was growing up in my house we had this big TV that, you know, took up a whole corner. And when you turned it on, it took a few minutes for it to actually come on, you know, those tubes had to warm up. Today you flip it on, and it’s on. And what I had learned is that anything with a remote control is always standing by, ready to get that signal from the remote. So a lot of people don’t know this. I learned about it only recently myself. And evidently, according to some preliminary research at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, their best guess is that this sort of — that this demand amounts to about 10 percent in your home. And in California, that would be 600 kilowatt hours a year, which is actually more than a new refrigerator would use. So that’s significant. And I think my goal is to just bring these facts to people’s attention and how, you know, whether they react to it or not is their decision, of course. But we can’t — they can’t make any changes if they don’t know.

ANDREW FANARA: You’re absolutely right. And I think the other thing that we found is that, if you look at just the category of miscellaneous products, which is not lighting, heating, or cooling, hot water heating, it’s all of the energy used in the home which is, again, somewhat unaccounted for. Much of this energy is consumed by devices which may use only a few watts, may or may not have low standby. And also these products are distributed to all parts of the homes. You’ll find products in the garage, in the basement, in the bedroom, the kitchen, living room. All of them may, in fact, be using small amounts of power when they’re actually not in use. And oftentimes the consumer has no understanding of this whatsoever. And the difficulty is, even if they did understand, if they would have to try to eliminate those last few watts — which, again, add up after you are talking about lots of different products —- they’d have to go around and unplug many different devices in many parts of the home. And that is not probably an appealing scenario.

So one of the things we’re trying to do at ENERGY STAR is make sure that, when you buy products that have the ENERGY STAR label on them, you know that they will have low standby power energy consumption when the product is not in use or when it’s charging up to be ready to use, to be ready to be used the next time. So standby is something we’ve definitely gotten the message on. And hopefully we can address it to the extent that consumers won’t have to worry about it any longer. But they’re going to have to buy ENERGY STAR.

NOAH HOROWITZ: Andrew, I think there’s…

EDIE LAU: If you want to bear with…

ANDREW FANARA: Go ahead, Edie, I’m sorry.

EDIE LAU: Excuse me. Oh, that’s all right. I just — I had a short list of things which I found really revealing. I had this, I got this from a PG&E energy efficiency person who had gone around his house and counted up 40 items that were drawing electricity, a small amount, all the time. And I won’t give you all 40. Actually he didn’t, either. But I just wanted to run through a few of them because I think it could be enlightening for folks. Start with the garage door opener. Look at the doorbell. Your cell phone charger. Your wireless phone. And of course your TV, VCR, DVD, stereos, if you have a digital adapter on your television or you may soon in the future, even the thermostat for your furnace, if you have a programmable thermostat, or your automatic sprinkler control, these are all drawing a little bit of power that is adding up.

ANDREW FANARA: Yeah, and in terms of many of those products, or almost all of them will have some power supply in it, which is converting the power from the wall into power that can be used by the product. And we estimate now that there’s about 2.5 billion of these power supplies sold worldwide, and adding to the 6 to 10 billion which are in existence. And of course products run their useful life and are being phased out.

But I think increasingly we’re seeing greater density of products in the typical American home. And many of them are consumer electronics. And certainly they’ve made our life, our lives, a lot richer and more interesting, and even helped us at times maybe not do the commute to work but stay home and work. And certainly that’s a big advantage and something that should be encouraged. But this is certainly a large and growing trend. And if we are — if we don’t marshal enough consumer interest about this to hopefully change the market, you could see a doubling of the amount of power in the typical home attributed to these miscellaneous products, which would make it the single largest component of home energy use, compared to all the other typical end uses which consumers associate with their utility bill.

NOAH HOROWITZ: Yeah, Andrew, I couldn’t agree with you more. We’ve spent the last decade or so trying to make our refrigerators and air conditioners more efficient. And through standards and voluntary programs we’ve done a great job. And it would be a shame to throw away all those savings as we introduce all these new, full-featured consumer electronic products in the home. We need to make those more efficient. And we also need for people to use them more effectively. I can’t tell you how many of my neighbors and good friends leave their computer and monitor on all night. And they’ve moved to a broadband or cable modem and the Voice over Internet Protocol telephone. All of those little boxes are designed — they’re fully on all the time, even at 3:00 in the morning. And there’s got to be a way for those things to go to sleep when you’re sleeping.

ANDREW FANARA: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I think that we’ve taken some aggressive steps at ENERGY STAR to try to come up with specifications to recognize the more efficient power supplies and battery chargers. But in the end, consumers are going to have to — consumers are going to have to demand that. And it doesn’t have to be all consumers, but it just has to be enough of them to make a difference in the eyes of manufacturers.

And, you know, speaking of just the proliferation of products, I suppose the way they’re used is important. And I know that there’s been a lot of talk about home networks, and both their promise and potential to make our lives better. But I suppose for a product to be on a network it in one way or another has to be on for it to be recognized, to some degree, by that network. So it could be that we’re moving towards a world where our homes will be ever more connected with tremendous numbers of devices. And that may be a good thing. But I think we want to try to encourage that, while those devices are on the network, they’re using as little energy as possible.

EDIE LAU: I’d like to speak to the consumer awareness piece for a minute. I think the technology actually can help advance that. There’s a, you know, smart meters are on the horizon. These are meters that communicate, you know, instantly, real-time information both to the consumer as well as to the utility company. And just recently our local utility agency in Sacramento brought out, is piloting a program where they are going to offer people these display units that are attached to some of these newer generation meters. And that will actually allow people to see how much energy they’re using at any given time.

And I interviewed a gentleman who uses this in Phoenix, which has been doing it for a few years. And he loved it. He said, I can have my sons look at this and know how much energy they’re using when they have their TV on or their videogames. And what they use it for is a pay as you go. You pay ahead, and then you can watch as your money is used up. But clearly this sort of device could be used in lots of applications. And it’s a kind of a nifty way for people to see exactly what’s being used. In fact, the man said, if you didn’t have a life, and you could just sit around all day, you could plug in different things and see how much they’re using at any given time.

ANDREW FANARA: Well, the energy dashboard, if you will, the feedback mechanism for the houses is, I think, really critical. I mean, if you don’t have — if consumers can’t get feedback about how much energy they’re using, they really are unable to make decisions which impact that. And I certainly don’t see any other way around it than trying to create more of that feedback mechanism for them. I know that there’s a lot of interest in these types of products. And I just hope we see more of them because they’re badly in use — or badly needed, excuse me.

NOAH HOROWITZ: Yeah, take the person that owns a Toyota Prius. Whenever you’re the passenger, or even the driver, people stare at that screen to see, oh, I’m charging the battery. Oh, my mileage is 48 miles per gallon. Oh, if I coast here I can be 51. And that information directly translates to their changing their behavior. And I think we have a disconnect here as people have bought all these great new full-functioned products and have no idea how much power they’re using, or if they don’t turn it off, what that means.

Take the example of a screensaver. Lots of people still have a CRT monitor and a desktop computer, and they have that virtual aquarium running when they’re away from their desk. That causes the computer to use more energy than just leaving it the way it was. And they’re probably spending an extra 50 to $100 a year just due to those virtual aquariums or the flying toasters. So if I can leave people with one message, it’s kill your screensaver.

ANDREW FANARA: Yeah, that’s a great point. I guess the name "screensaver" was something that was actually accurate at the time of maybe the introduction of the first CRTs, and screensavers helped or kept your screen from burning in an image into it. But I think the quality of displays nowadays is just vastly, vastly superior. And they’re completely unnecessary from the standpoint of trying to extend the life of the monitor. And I think, you know, there are myths like that that continue onward. And certainly we’ll try to disabuse people of those because, again, they do add up after a while. And, you know, I’m just curious to know, you know, to the both of you, what we can do to raise the energy IQ of Americans, if there’s one or two things that you think that are critical at this juncture. Edie, you want to take that one first?

EDIE LAU: I’m thinking. Well, obviously what I do for a living is to try to bring, you know, information to people. So I see as kind of central to my job, you know, raising people’s awareness of these things. And I guess I’m thinking more fundamentally about consumption in general and that everything that we do and everything that we use does take something out of the environment, for the most part. So if people could just become really more connected to, you know, the natural processes and natural resources, I think that they might have a better appreciation and a fuller appreciation, not just, oh, you know, you’re having fun, so that’s a bad thing. It’s kind of like eating, you know, junk food. That’s not the point. The point is that everything that we do does have an effect for good or for bad. And that’s kind of what underlies the reporting that I do is trying to make people aware of these things.

ANDREW FANARA: Noah, what does NRDC want to impart to consumers across America?

NOAH HOROWITZ: So consumers and people who are purchasing agents, whether for a university or a state government, the simplest thing they can do is look for ENERGY STAR-labeled products. That’s an easy way for the consumer to know, all things being equal, this product will use less energy than the other one. They don’t need to know what a kilowatt hour is, whether they want more or less of them. So that’s kind of the no-brainer, and they’ll be saving money and helping the environment.

ANDREW FANARA: Yeah.

NOAH HOROWITZ: The next thing is for people to use the products wisely. So, yes, it’s great to be hooked up into the Internet and have all this information. But when you go to bed at night, turn your computer off, or at a minimum put it into the low power mode and turn off your cable modem. There’s no reason that should be chugging away all night long. So those are two of the things that can be done. And on a manufacturing scale, you know, people think, oh, if I make this device a little more efficient, who cares, I can’t make a difference. But all together this can make a huge difference.

You mentioned earlier those little black boxes, the external power supplies, which we have five or ten in our home typically. If all of those are made more efficiently, in other words, if all external power supplies met the standards set in California and met the ENERGY STAR spec, we could cut the world’s electricity bill by more than a billion dollars a year — that’s "B" as in boy — and eliminate the need for six large power plants. So this is a painless way for us to help the environment and save money.

ANDREW FANARA: Yeah, I know if I could plug my own program, ENERGY STAR, I would certainly encourage consumers who want to save on their utility bills, want to do something good for the environment, and want to get a product that they don’t have to actually sacrifice anything to get the energy savings, you should look for products with the ENERGY STAR label on them. And those products cumulatively can significantly reduce the energy bill in your home.

And one thing that many consumers do not know is that the average home pollutes twice as much as the average car. Essentially, all those devices churning away in your home, they get their energy from a power plant. And those power plants are very polluting, or can be. And so compared to the typical car, which it’s frankly very clear that cars get the disproportionate amount of attention when it comes to pollution, people need to know that what goes on inside the house is as significant as what they’re doing on the road. And people need to be aware of that. And so buying ENERGY STAR products helps to really dampen the energy consumed and the pollution that’s contributed to the environment from all the products in our home. So…

NOAH HOROWITZ: And another environmental angle with all this is the production of these products is not benign. There are lots of hazardous solvents and heavy metals in the factories. And we need to continue to oversee this on a worldwide basis, not just in the U.S., to make sure these products are produced in an environmentally sound way. And at the end of life, as these products continue to become — have shorter lives, many of us have several cell phones sitting in a drawer, or you have your old TV or a computer monitor in the garage. We need to make sure those are collected and recycled in an environmentally sound way. Your old TV has about three to five pounds of lead in it, and we need to make sure that’s collected properly.

ANDREW FANARA: Yeah, you make a great point about recycling. I know that a number of the companies that work or that are part of the ENERGY STAR program have been extremely active in developing a market for recycled goods. In the area of computers, I know HP and Dell have gotten a lot of attention recently for the work they’ve been doing to create an aftermarket and to reuse a lot of the viable components inside a computer. And that’s certainly good news. It’s creating a market where there wasn’t one before and certainly squeezing out waste out of a system, which certainly makes the economy more efficient, I think, overall. So we should certainly keep that in mind.

So thank you both, Edie and Noah. I appreciate you being our guests. And please, everyone, join us again for Part 3 of our podcast series on consumer electronics. Thank you very much.

To comment on this podcast or for more information on consumer electronics and the energy they use, visit the ENERGY STAR website at www.energystar.gov.