The Hidden CO2sts of a Plugged-in World

At night I drape T-shirts, pillows, and last week’s yellowing newspapers over the electronics in my bedroom. My alarm clock, cell phone, and laptop, as well as the power strips I plug them into, pulse red, green, and white in the darkness. As I try to fall asleep, these little piercing lights penetrate my eyelids and rap on my brain like some luminous form of water torture.

Elsewhere the sink drips, drips, drips, and heat from the clanking radiator escapes out open windows. My apartment oozes wasted energy, but I can’t force my landlord to install newer, Energy Star appliances, and he has no incentive to do so himself -- he doesn’t pay all my utility bills. And this catch-22 of energy efficiency applies to anyone who rents a home or an office.

But NRDC has a solution: earlier this year it launched the Center for Energy Efficiency Standards, with the goal of making the energy-consuming products on store shelves, as well as the buildings they ultimately occupy, less power hungry. The idea is to make it just about impossible to purchase an energy wasting model of any given appliance. The first step: establish industry-accepted standards for assessing the energy efficiency of individual products. For example, manufacturers of TV set-top boxes need to agree which mode of operation -- on, standby, or recording -- to use when analyzing a model’s energy consumption. As for buildings, the center’s experts will focus on updating and working to implement building codes in the United States and in China -- a particular focus of NRDC, because China is now home to half of all the world’s new structures as well as a major appliance manufacturer.

“People increasingly recognize that energy efficiency is the cheap­est, cleanest, and fastest way to reduce carbon emissions,” says Noah Horowitz, an award-winning NRDC scientist and director of the new center.

NRDC is no stranger to these issues. Over the years the group has led an international effort to create a set of standards for a new generation of external power adapters, including those used to charge cell phones, that will reduce CO2 pollution by 15 mil­lion tons a year relative to older models. More recently, Horowitz and his colleagues worked with Coca-Cola and PepsiCo to craft new standards for soft-drink vend­ing machines, which will make them 30 percent to 50 percent more efficient, an energy sav­ings that could power 10 million home refrigerators annually. Buildings, too, can be energy ef­ficient: in China, NRDC helped develop enforceable regional energy standards for residential buildings.

Backed by a $2 million grant, the organization has the funding to expand its operations; up to eight new staff members will work directly with business executives, engineers, and regulators in the United States and China to craft tough standards. The center will continue to push the U.S. Depart­ment of Energy to adopt stringent standards for major appliances, including air conditioners and water heaters, over the next four years. This is a natural extension of the work NRDC attorneys have already done to ensure that en­ergy department regulators keep up with their congressionally mandated obligation to regularly update efficiency standards for a broad range of power-consuming devices. And the benefits could be huge: new standards alone have the potential to prevent more than 100 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. That’s a sig­nificant step toward addressing climate change. But here’s the bonus: saving all that energy is good for my apartment and my wallet -- and yours too.