by Brianna Crandall — October 16, 2013—Massachusetts-based nonprofit Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP) has issued a groundbreaking report, Business & Consumer Electronics: A Strategy for the Northeast. This report lays out for the first time a unified regional strategy to reduce energy consumption from a notoriously challenging sector: business and consumer electronics (BCE), says NEEP.
“While the Northeast is a leader in energy efficiency and has achieved substantial energy savings over the last several decades, the business and consumer electronics sector continues to grow, both in energy consumption and in the number of devices drawing power,” said Jim O’Reilly, Acting Executive Director of NEEP. “We believe the opportunity exists to influence consumers in their purchasing choices, manufacturers in their product design, and policymakers in program design.”
According to NEEP, key findings for the BCE report are:
• The BCE industry moves so quickly it is hard for efficiency labels such as ENERGY STAR to keep up. However two trends are able to circumvent the delay: increased streaming, and the connected home. Through these two methods, consumers are increasingly able to bypass energy-intensive devices such as set top boxes, yet are able to receive data in real time, which allows them to make adjustments to energy-consuming behavior. Utilities can play a key role in accelerating these trends through their preexisting energy efficiency programs.
• A whopping 24 percent of energy is consumed by BCE products that are not even in use—i.e. in idle (active waste), sleep, and off modes. In the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region, an estimated 4.2 Terawatt-Hours (TWh) of energy are consumed by BCE products when they are not being actively used. BCE products such as advanced power strips (APS) can eliminate some of this needless consumption, and new technologies can address idle or wasted power mode. Utilities should pursue an education and direct install program around advanced power strips and other incentive programs.
• As new electronics products are purchased, old inefficient ones are often put in secondary rooms, given away, or are sold on the resale market. Utilities can create or subsidize electronics recycling programs as a way to remove these inefficient products from use.
“We are excited about the findings of this report, in particular the way NEEP has offered a path forward for reducing energy use among the disparate products of the business and consumer electronics sector,” said Lara Bonn, Retail Efficient Products Program Manager of Efficiency Vermont. “We look forward to partnering with NEEP and state agencies in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region to turn these recommendations into reality.”
