Taming the Beast: 13 Savings Opportunities for Next Generation Consumer Electronics Programs

Plug load energy consumption is growing and efficiency programs have only just begun to address it. First generation programs focus on TVs and desktop PCs and have been in the field only a few years. Their number is small compared to appliance or lighting programs and nearly all aim to increase sales of ENERGY STAR®-qualified products. In late 2009, one efficiency funder, seeking additional opportunities for the 2012-2014 timeframe, commissioned a research project to identify other energy savings opportunities in consumer electronics. The resulting study provides a foundation for new program designs that will be useful to funders, implementers, and researchers. It identified and quantified 13 “high confidence” opportunities for energy savings in TVs, desktop PCs, game consoles, and streaming media. The opportunities address new and existing products and are implementable through upstream, midstream, and downstream program designs. In addition to describing each opportunity, the study recommended implementation strategies, provided Excel savings calculation workbooks that program administrators can customize to project savings in their territories, and characterized the market for each product. The study methodology was innovative in its systematic and multi-modal approach. This paper describes each of the opportunities in detail and the recommended strategies for electronics program design. The study and the editable MS Excel workbooks for the opportunity calculations can be downloaded from Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) website