Efficiency Gains Could Prove Proposed Plasma Ban Shortsighted

hihopes writes "As the EU calls for a ban on plasma TVs, a leading Harvey Norman executive said that the issue should be left to vendors, who at the recent CES Show in the USA showed an array of low-powered TV display screens."

Comments

Not banning plasmas.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Before everyone starts wetting themselves, calm down. While the frothing-at-the-mouth article states:

Despite several plasma vendors including Panasonic who are the worlds #1 manufacturer showing plasma power reductions of up to 40 percent, the European Union wants to ban the display technology.

The EU is not actually thinking about banning a particular technology, but:

The countries are close to agreeing upon new energy performance standards for TVs that large plasma displays will not meet. Plasma models typically use about 50 percent more energy than LCD models. The new standards, which will go into effect this spring, will pull the least efficient TVs from shelves and start a labeling system that ranks the efficiency of the remaining models.

Source. The new, more efficient Plasmas mentioned in TFA will presumably be fine under the legislation.

I now return you to your anti-EU anti-regulation frothing-at-the-mouth posts.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[caitsith01]

I now return you to your anti-EU anti-regulation frothing-at-the-mouth posts.

I'm no free market radical, but this does seem like a good example of something that is best left to the market.

There is a direct and increasing incentive for consumers to buy lower energy use products. Therefore there is a direct incentive to reduce the energy use in these panels. Therefore the market is likely to either produce lower energy use plasmas, or LCDs or other similar technologies which have plasma-like quality.

The time and money no doubt involved in this regulatory process might be better spent on improving the level of mandatory information disclosed in relation to all electrical products so that consumers can (voluntarily) make an informed decision.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[rrohbeck]

You'd be right if the energy cost of a large TV was noticeable in end users' wallets. But it's not.

It's the usual thing about internalizing energy costs. Energy is way too cheap for the market to have much of an effect. Why else would the US need gas mileage standards?

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[caitsith01]

You'd be right if the energy cost of a large TV was noticeable in end users' wallets. But it's not.

It's the usual thing about internalizing energy costs. Energy is way too cheap for the market to have much of an effect. Why else would the US need gas mileage standards?

Fair point. But I suppose as with other issues, there is the option of creating widespread awareness of the issue so that people at least have the ability to make the best choice. If you do that and find that the underlying problem is still there, maybe it's time to regulate.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[jo_ham]

The post below me makes a succinct point. No one (or at least, not enough people for it to be significant) look at the power consumption as a primary attribute for a TV set.

They're not going let the power consumption be the deciding factor between two competing screens. Maybe it's starting to be in the back of people's minds, but in the vast majority of cases, a TV draws so little power in the grand scheme of things (regardless of what the true value actually is) that they don't even consider the cost of electricity to run it, thus manufacturers don't have to worry about it, unless they have some mandatory figures to aim for.

It's not difficult to engineer the panels to be low power (within sensible limits), it just might cost a little more, that either adds to the retail price, or is eaten as a cost by the manufacturer. Either way, it's more beneficial in the grand scheme of energy saving on a national/global scale.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so they're not banning plasma as a technology, only most of the plasmas that are already available. What if I just don't give a fuck about the power consumption of my flatpanel? It's not that much in the grand scheme of things. Gas for my car costs way more. Gov needs to stay the fuck out of my business. I'm glad I don't live in the EU and I welcome the flood of cheap, inefficient, older-model plasma displays that people living in Eurofailistan will no longer be permitted to buy because they don't meet some arbitrary standard of power consumption. Cheap plasmas for everyone not living in a retarded nanny state!

Not that I care much anyway because I prefer LCD which does not suffer from burn-in, but that's beside the point.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything that reduces the atmospheric CO2 that can be attributed to David Letterman, is progress.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Enleth]

Well, assuming that I understand the summary correctly, one of the most important points of this regulation actually IS improving the level of mandatory information - the rest is just throwing out the most blatantly inefficient devices, and I wouldn't be actually surprised if those same devices tended to be badly engineered in general, so it's possible that nothing of value will be lost anyway...

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Eivind]

Energy-costs aren't high enough that it makes a difference to the end-consumer, in many cases.

Let's look at the maths for a fairly typical consumer wanting a new 50" TV, watching it for an average of 4 hours/day.

Alternative A: Plasma, $2000, 450W. Alternative B: LCD, $2500, 200W.

Now, 4 hours a day for a year is around 1450 hours, so A will consume around 650Kwh and B will consume around 290Kwh. The difference is 360Kwh, where I live this power will cost you about $40.

In -principle- he'll have saved back the 500 extra he paid for the TV in 12 years, assuming he keeps it that long...

But it just plain doesn't register in the wallet anyway. If we say he -does- keep the TV for 10 years, then the total bill for TV these 10 years looks something like this:

A: $2000 + $70(power)*10 + $40(cable)*120 = $7500

B: $2500 + $30(power)*10 + $40(cable)*120 = $7600

In this particular example, the plasma even ends up being the cheaper alternative. Even if plasma and lcd cost the same, the plasma would still cost only $400 more over the 10-year period, or put differently $3 more each monthh.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Z00L00K]

I see plasmas as a technology that's going to pass since it will be superseded by other technologies. LCD and LED are growing and getting better for each generation.

So plasmas will go the same way as CRT:s and back-projection devices.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[TopSpin]

CA wants a ban on energy guzzling Plasma as well ...and no, LCD isn't immune.

I'm reading a number of /. posts from folks who feel this matter should be 'left to the market.'

LOL

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[shmlco]

Not to mention that plasma TVs are typically 70-80% cheaper than same-size LCD screens.

By mandating low-power screens they're also mandating higher prices for consumers... and manufacturers.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[mobby_6kl]

As someone who lives in a EU country, I think my frothing-at-the-mouth is completely justified, as this will limit my purchasing choices. Apparently the EU fuckers are at it again, having already dealt with the huge threat that are the patio heaters.

I'm not surprised the EU isn't completely hands off in terms of the energy policy and regulation so that's not what I'm complaining about, but outright banning TVs that aren't quite up to their arbitrary standards is retarded. Labeling system? That's fine, there's been a similar system for appliances so expanding it shouldn't be a problem. However, nothing prevents me from buying a Rolls-Royce Phantom or a Lamborghini Reventon (at least not yet, let's hope they don't get any ideas) so preventing me from buying a TV they don't approve of is silly. Especially if it's not used nearly often/long enough to be a significant part of the power bill.

Of course, there's also probably EU's favorite non-tariff trade barrier angle, as most TVs aren't made in the EU but instead in China or another Asian country. Banning some of their exports will certainly show them who's who.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[im_thatoneguy]

There's also the commons.

I own a bigscreen TV. And I have no clue what so ever what sort of effect it has on my energy bill.

And even if I did know, I would still be willing to spend the money... after all it's a bigscreen TV it's not a frugal purchase, it's like buying a sports car. :D

That all being said if everyone was willing to spend the money but that expenditure had a detrimental effect on the commons (In say the need to build another nuclear reactor, the need to improve transmission lines, etc) I should be stopped for my own good.

"Why should I spend more on an energy efficient TV when Bob across the street saves $500."

This is a beef I have with commuters. I'm always hearing demands from people who live 50 miles from work that I need to spend 20 billion dollars on highway improvements. Meanwhile I spend an extra $400 a month to live close to work and drive less than 10 miles and don't touch an interstate.

Commuting to work 80 miles round trip has additional costs than just the energy consumed. The tax payer also picks up the tab for high way improvements, expensive on/off ramp and traffic solutions etc. It's the same with any energy expenditure. The costs don't always get passed along with the energy bill-- even with propper education. And you can be certain that if Joe Next Door is saving money and not doing the 'right thing' there is a serious disincentive to do the right thing yourself.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[j1m 5n0w]

I'm no free market radical, but this does seem like a good example of something that is best left to the market.

I would agree with you if consumers were provided with sufficient information to make informed choices, but they're not. In markets where consumers are unable to determine the quality of products (where quality in this particular example is energy efficiency; consumers are generally well informed about other quality metrics like brightness, resolution, size, etc...), only the worst products survive. See The market for lemons to understand why.

The time and money no doubt involved in this regulatory process might be better spent on improving the level of mandatory information disclosed in relation to all electrical products so that consumers can (voluntarily) make an informed decision.

I totally agree with you there. The right way to proceed is to mandate that any device that plugs into an electrical socket should be clearly labeled with it's peak and idle energy usage, and then let the markets decide.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears you are from the UK and take exception to the EU, maybe you should take your falling pound and leave instead of pissing in the soup.

Regards, another winging pom.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Weedlekin]

It should also be noted that it isn't just some current plasma displays that will be affected: various existing LCD and back projection systems (and a lot of other electronic devices) will also fall afoul of the proposed legislation because they draw too much power in standby mode.

It's also a fact that despite the bleating about the "green" benefits, most EU members are likely so support this legislation for far more pragmatic reasons. The EU's been taught some nasty lessons over the last couple of years that have highlighted how dependant they are on external energy supply factors that they have absolutely no control over, and the steadily rising domestic power consumption figures in nearly all member states have made them more vulnerable to those factors over time. It therefore follows that a reduction in consumption should result in a reduction of the EU's overall vulnerability to external energy supply factors, and this is one of the main reasons why it's likely that the proposed legislation will be enacted.

Another important factor that will help to ensure support from most member states is so many of them having ageing or obsolete power generation systems that were too economically expensive to replace en masse before the current recession, let alone during it. The distribution grid in many countries is also badly in need of upgrading, which adds significantly to the costs of meeting future energy requirements if they continue to rise like they've been doing over the past decade.

With the above in mind, it's easy to see why EU member countries would welcome any legislation that could help to reduce domestic energy consumption by even a small amount, especially when the costs of complying with it are borne by device manufacturers rather than them.

Free market proponents should note that domestic energy consumption figures in most EU countries have been rising continually for quite some time under free market conditions, and have been projected by both the power industry and various EU statistical analysis bodies to continue rising unless various measures are taken to reduce demand.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[ShakaUVM]

This is a beef I have with commuters. I'm always hearing demands from people who live 50 miles from work that I need to spend 20 billion dollars on highway improvements. Meanwhile I spend an extra $400 a month to live close to work and drive less than 10 miles and don't touch an interstate.

The people living further away are paying 36 cents + 8% in taxes on every gallon of fuel they spend. It's a tax that scales with usage, and is reasonably fair in that regard. The vehicle registration tax (or I guess it's called a fee here in California, since that way they can raise it without a 66% majority vote) is a little more unfair, though I guess it's closer to a property tax that scales based on the value of your car.

I think the EU's ban is rather silly. I support the EnergyStar stickers that show people how much they'll be paying a year in energy costs for an appliance, since that will indeed encourage people to buy more efficient appliances, but just banning them is silly. If I'm willing to pay the money to power my appliance, and the power company is making a profit off me, who exactly is losing? In France, it'd even be coming from nuclear power, so the hippies worrying about CO2 emissions and the like have nothing to worry about.

Seriously, it's the magic of the invisible hand that issues like that are taken care of.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Decado]

One of the problems is that having low energy requirements could potentially limit the chance for new technologies to develop. If for example plasma TVs cannot meet the new requirement they may well be scrapped, but potentially if they can remain on the market it is possible that in 5 years time that technology will have developed to the point that plasma TVs use much less energy than the LCD TVs.

A system which prevents any technology from co-existing also prevents that technology from developing which is a bad thing.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

On the other hand, if there weren't people with 80-hour commutes, your $400 extra would have been $4000 a month, or you'd live in a very tiny appartment indeed.

Believe it or not, "living close to work" is what has been done for most of history, and was abandoned (mostly) for good reasons. And those that abandoned the close to work thing never looked back.

And if you think hugely densely populated areas are good for the environment ... I suggest you go visit some historical sites where that was tried.

There's a balance to be made here. Yes, perhaps an 80 mile commute is over the top, but everyone living close enough to walk or bike (or even short commute) would be a disaster in itself.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the same market which is unable to produce an electronic device that doesn't draw power even when it's supposed to be off? It took Government action such as this to force manufacturers to even consider looking at reducing energy consumption. Yeah people love to save energy where they can but no-one's going to do without a product on that basis. Well the majority won't.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[zoefff]

There is a direct and increasing incentive for consumers to buy lower energy use products. Therefore there is a direct incentive to reduce the energy use in these panels. Therefore the market is likely to either produce lower energy use plasmas, or LCDs or other similar technologies which have plasma-like quality.

Well, a lot of consumer behavior, when buying products, is determined by the initial price, not at all the price to operate a product. Therefore frankly I don't believe that you should leave this to the vendor, because they listen voluntarily to consumers and only to law if mandatory.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[The Lord of Chaos]

If I'm willing to pay the money to power my appliance, and the power company is making a profit off me, who exactly is losing?>

Joe Next Door loses when electricity rates go up in reponse to the increased electricity demand. They likely won't come down until years after a new generation plant is built to pay off the cap-ex. So your increase in demand is being subsidized by your Joe Next Door paying more for the same amount of electricity, or by his reduction in electricity use to maintain the same agregate demand.

Seriously, it's the magic of the invisible hand that issues like that are taken care of.

In this case, the pressure to improve power efficiency would have been delayed while waiting for the invisible hand to stop scratching its ass.

On the broader issue of global warming, waiting for the invisible hand to correct the market is a non-starter. By the time market pressures build enough for people to notice, the damage has been done. The damage needs to be done (ie population reduction due to decreased food production) for there to be a market pressure.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[zoefff]

But why would lcd tvs not become more energy efficient at the same time? Beside that, you'd have at least a hunch (or a prototype) that the new technology is capable of becoming energy efficient and would spent research money to the most promising technology. And that is 'just' because it is one of the many boundaries of your playing field, besides cost, form factor, etc.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[LordSnooty]

And that's why Government must force the issue because people just aren't going to change their behaviour in order to cut back on consumption of an invisible resource that appears to be constantly replenished.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Knuckles]

"living close to work" is what has been done for most of history, and was abandoned (mostly) for good reasons.

Actually it was abandoned mostly due to a naive belief in progress by decision makers in the early modern age, a belief that has since proved to be inappropriate. Athens Charter

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[citizenr]

I should be stopped for my own good.

now that is funny, you want me to harm you for your own good?

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Knuckles]

If patio heaters were used for patios, you might have a point. In reality, however, most northern cities are full of them atm, heating, well, the outside.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[xaxa]

everyone living close enough to walk or bike (or even short commute) would be a disaster in itself.

How so? Everyone living 5-10 miles from work and cycling/walking would save a huge amount of energy for transport. I don't see the problem?

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[TapeCutter]

"The EU is not actually thinking about banning a particular technology"

Who'da-thunk the first post on a nerd site would ruin the whole thing with facts.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[wkk2]

10 years? Without lead solder I doubt they will last that long. Going after standby power seems more productive.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Hognoxious]

You also need to allow for when the different outgoings take place. If he had to borrow the 500 extra, there'd be interest to pay. Or if he had it, there's interest or other income he could have earned from investing it.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Shadowmist]

Maybe you don't give a damm, but that's the problem, a lot of our energy and environmental issues are caused by the summ actions of a large segment "which doesn't give a damm." Thar large segement is the major contributoer to energy comsumption, global warming, and the continued dependence of energy suppliers which really don't have reason to like us much. Since you can't be bothered to "give a damm", for the sake of human civilisation, some folks in charge have better. Because the realities of peak oil, their economic and political effects don't really care whether you "give a damm" or not.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[GauteL]

"This is a beef I have with commuters. I'm always hearing demands from people who live 50 miles from work that I need to spend 20 billion dollars on highway improvements. Meanwhile I spend an extra $400 a month to live close to work and drive less than 10 miles and don't touch an interstate."

Unfortunately, it isn't as simple as you argue.
Most roads are full of people for whom it is simply not practical to move for many different reasons. For instance:
a) Your wife works in Town A. You could only find work in Town B. One (or both) of you will have to commute.
b) You got a one year contract in Town B. Moving to Town B for one year, may not be practical, so you stay in Town A and commute.

There can be loads of other reasons why moving closer to work isn't a practical option, and the roads are full of people with this problem. Thus the only sensible option for the government is to provide solid infrastructure, so this can happen efficiently.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[JasterBobaMereel]

They are not banning plasmas - they are banning very inefficient devices of all types, these tend to be some of the older designs of plasmas...

They are also forcing manufacturers to label new TV's showing how much energy they use so people have a choice ....

They would also prevent the sale of any new technology if it were very inefficient, but that is a good thing surely?

Looks all good to me .... another "EU bans xxxxx" which turns out a) they are not and b) it is a sensible decision....

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Chrisje]

Beautiful post, shouldn't have been done AC so I could have given it some points.

It is indeed a thought I have had many a time about the UK. Why don't they just fuck off if they hate the EU so much? However, given the falling pound I welcome their existence in the EU as it gives me a low-cost destination just across the pond. When I say pond I mean the North Sea, as I'm a Dutch resident.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[ilo.v]

it's the magic of the invisible hand that issues like that are taken care of

Exactly! Do you want people to buy more efficient electrical appliances? Easy, just tax electricity more. The people who use the most will pay the most. The invisible hand also guarantees that changes will happen where they will do the most good.

Caveat: be careful when you "play God" economically. This approach works so well, it can also drive people to favor wood burning stoves over electrical ones, etc. You have to watch for unintended consequences and adjust the relative tax of these less desirable alternative energy sources as well.

Why don't policitians take this approach more? Easy. It's because they aren't really interested in saving electricity. They are interested in keeping legislation on the agenda that makes like of headlines (like this ... front page of Slashdot!) and causes lots of wealthy lobbyists to donate money to them. This kind of thing is perfect. Lots of headlines, and some wealthy companies trying to pay you to block it or water it down. All while not actually changing anything that the Teacher's Union / Chamber of Commerce give a d&#n about.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[professionalfurryele]

There are other problems with this though.

While the strategy you describe should certainly be our primary means of reducing energy consumption, it is in effect a sales tax on energy. Sales taxes are a form of regressive taxation because they take proportionally more from the poor.

So there are a number of options. We could adjust tax rates to compensate. Increase gas taxes while lowering income tax to try to retain the status quo. This will work for people who are actually taxed, but it will do nothing for people on fixed incomes, or who do not earn enough to pay tax anyway.

One could adjust the tax rate so that there was a negative tax rate below a certain threshold, just make darn sure it is not anywhere near enough to live off, otherwise the number of people on welfare will sky rocket (heck, it will increase anyway).

Of course the problem then becomes if the measure works. Now you have effectively lowered the tax burden because people are using less gas, reducing government revenue. This probably means you will have to find money elsewhere.

The above is not a bad idea, but doing too much of it will be highly detrimental. The economy is not some simple machine with a button labelled "leave more to the market" which you can just hit over and over again to solve any problem.

What the EU is doing is in addition to the above (we already have relatively progressive tax rates in Europe and high gas taxes). The added transparency that results from labelling TV will aid consumer choice, while requiring a minimum standard of energy efficiency removes the worst offending TVs from the market. By doing this in addition to changing tax rates the EU is reducing the impact on people who are less well off.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[jellomizer]

You Pay an extra $400 a month to live close
vs.
80 Miles at say 25 mpg estimate so that is 3.2 Gallons per trip then we Multiply that by 20 (For week days) that is 64 Gallons a month. 64*4.00 (I am still using high gas prices) is $256.00 Dollars.

Ok now we put that 20 billion dollar improvement, so lets first estimate how long these improvements will last I will say 10 years. So that is 2 billion a year / 12 month in a year so that is $166 Million a month, now lets say this road gets 2 million drivers a month. So that adds $83 a month*20=$1660 to the $256 so that is $1916 a Month, If the people who drive on that road only paid for the improvements. Which I think proves your point.
However lets assume your state has 10 million people. So in actually Everyone is paying $16.00 a month for this road. So still for each person individually it is a better deal to live far out however it costs the people on the whole a much more.

However a common mistake a lot of people make. Is trying to Justify using X to justify Y So you save energy and resources living close to work, so there is feeling that you should be allowed to use the saved energy to use more power hungry equipment. But that is like saying on the average Americans have $10,000 in bad debt. I only have $2,000 so I should find a way to spend $8,000 to be caught up.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[ilo.v]

Sales taxes are a form of regressive taxation because they take proportionally more from the poor.

No, no, no. You're making this too complicated. Electricity is electricity, the poor have no more right to waste it than the rich. If you are worried that familys on the dole won't be able to heat their house in the winter, than use some of the money gained from the electricity tax to increase the dole. Discouraging electricity use, and supporting people who can't/won't work, are two separate issues.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

This is a beef I have with commuters. I'm always hearing demands from people who live 50 miles from work that I need to spend 20 billion dollars on highway improvements. Meanwhile I spend an extra $400 a month to live close to work and drive less than 10 miles and don't touch an interstate.
Do you grow your own food, and produce everything you need within walking distance of your domicile? If not then you benefit from good highways. Your paying more to live closer to work means you aren't spending as much time to commute ergo you have more free time to do whatever you want. So until you can become an island unto yourself, kindly recognize how much commerce flows over the highways and be thankful you get to enjoy the fruits of such commerce.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Anonymous Coward]

And the extra power consumption turns into heat and assuming you have thermostats that will cut your heating bill during the cold part of the year

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[ilo.v]

The added transparency that results from labelling TV will aid consumer choice

Absolutely! Transparency is almost always a good thing. Nn increased electricity tax can't work unless consumers can tell which choices use more electricity.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[JTL21]

Standby power under 1W is already scheduled to be an EU requirement I believe. Some TVs are already down to 0.2W standby power, at this point the effect of standby power becomes very marginal.

~1/100 of on power.

Standby 22hrs/day at 0.2W, On: 2hrs/day at 200W.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Cowmonaut]

I'm not sure how your post is getting modded up informative. It's not like it makes a whole lot of sense. I don't even know where to begin since I don't think there is one thing there that makes sense aside from large urban centers not being good for the environment, but even that isn't precisely accurate.

Let's start there: Large urban centers are not good for the local environment. Potentially, they could have little effect on the global environment. Currently that's not the case but given more efficient technology we'll lower our impact. We just need to expand public transportation. More electric or hybrid engines put in buses and trains (which most urban centers are working on improving already) with more destinations will reduce the need for people to own their own car. Actually, already a lot of people in places like NYC don't even own cars but they do use Taxi's in addition to subways/trains/buses.

Let's take a look at your "closer to work" arguments. Let's see, going back far enough you had peasants who lived in town and walked out farm the lands outside the city/village. Moving forward to the Dark Ages, craftsmen tended to live in their shops. There have always been commutes for miners, though sometimes from nearby camps rather than from the a town or city.

Really, people have been living close to work for a while because they had to walk everywhere. Once the steam engine was designed is when people started spreading out for the simple reason of why move (which is usually expensive) when you don't have to? Horses were a sign of wealth for much of the early periods of man. In the cultures where every man had a horse, they tended to be nomads anyways.

So really I want to know what "many reasons" and how it was "largely abandoned" for them. The only explanation I see is economical. It is easier for the common person to pay 5 cents a day to get to work than spend 50 dollars in one shot to move. Particularly when they have mouths to feed.

Because of this, we've made technology that makes it easier for us to not live near our work. Because again, its easier to make a better engine than redesign a city.

Which by the way, is a small reason people started moving farther from their work as well. Different zones have different needs for placement. Industrial zones for example usually need access to a main road or the river so they can move freight. Restaurants and similar commercial endeavors you want near where people work or on their way home. The homes themselves just need some space and to be distanced from the industrial zones and so forth.

Beyond that I can think of nothing. You seem to have implied that there were too many reasons to list in your post. So what are they? I can think of a whole two: transportation and development. Both subcategories of economics in this case.

Oh... And how exactly would everyone walking/riding their bike to work be a "disaster"?

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[cayenne8]

So, what is the deal in the EU? I didn't see any mention of it on the first page of the article, but, are they having some sort of electrical energy crisis over there?

What all the drastic measures? I mean, who cares how much power a TV costs? It isn't THAT bad....I wouldn't see even a bump in my power bill, so I'm guessing they are having some sort of crisis over there with electric power?

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Chaos Incarnate]

Preventing the sale of any technology is not a good thing. The market should be deciding if efficiency matters to them, not the politicians.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm. When I bought my 32" LCD some years ago, the power consumption comparison was more like 150-200W for a CRT, 25-75W for a LCD and 1KW for a plasma. Now plasmas seem to have improved a fair bit (400-600W) while LCDs have got worse (though they've also sprouted dynamic backlights and all sorts of other features) so now the comparison is less clear cut. Having said all that, my Sharp 32" LCD TV can use as little as 30W while being used in the evening with its OPC (adapts the backlight to the room's ambient light) feature engaged - no plasma or CRT can touch that.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[dwarg]

Wow, you just advocated the power of the invisible hand (free-market infallibility) alongside the need to raise taxes to move said invisible hand.

It's actually a very well reasoned approach but I don't think your ideology is extremist enough to gain any traction... Thanks for playing though.

You then blame a conspiracy by the politicians to drive lobbying dollars into their pockets, which isn't too crazy when it comes to conspiracies. But for your grand finale it appears you conflate the Teacher's Union with The Chamber of Commerce and elect to censor your own use of the word "damn."

This might be one of the most fascinating posts I've read.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the EU's ban is rather silly.

The entire point of this thread is that the EU did not ban plasma displays.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[timeOday]

A system which prevents any technology from co-existing also prevents that technology from developing which is a bad thing.

Market forces "punish" insurgent technologies far more often than regulations do! A new technology may have more long-term potential, but if a mature technology is cheaper and works better right now, the new tech dies unless some company is willing to make a long-term investment. This happens all the time. That's why we're all still paying separately for telephone phones should just be peripherals on the Internet (everybody can't switch all together), why the x86 instruction set won't die (clunky, but with decades and billions' of dollars worth of optimization in silicon). Essentially the economy is an optimization algorothm and it gets stuck in local minima. There's really no way around it.

In any case, it's a somewhat odd argument in this case since Plasma TVs caught on before LCDs did. In other words, they're he more mature technology in the Tv market, now eaten away by LCD.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[commodore64_love]

>>>Sales taxes are a form of regressive taxation because they take proportionally more from the poor.

"If you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe it." A regressive tax is a tax where people (for example) pay 20% income on their first $20,000, 10% upto $100,000, and 5% on anything above that. It is the exact opposite of a progressive tax.

Sales tax (and gasoline tax and bridge/tunnel tolls) are examples of FLAT taxes, because everybody pays the same amount regardless of income.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[SupremoMan]

10 years? Without lead solder I doubt they will last that long. Going after standby power seems more productive.

I'm interested to know what about LCD makes them unlikely to last 10 years? I have had a CRT Monitor for 9 years now, and it works just fantastic. My g/f had an LCD that died after 1 year, and I also have an LCD I have used for about 4 years. So how long is the expected lifetime of LCD monitor/tv? Does it scale with size? Are bigger LCDs more likely to die than small ones?

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[smoker2]

So the availability of nuclear technology should be decided by the market ? Sticking crap in milk should be ok as long as people buy it ? Lead in paint is fine ? Lead in petrol is fine ? Cars that struggle to reach 10 mpg are fine ?
How many other things show your comment to be crap ? We all have to live in this world, so standards must be set. The "market" thinks it's ok to trojan CDs, pollute the world with deceitful advertising, lie and cheat their way to the biggest financial meltdown in history. But hey, let them do what they want - it's not like any of that is going to affect other people right ?

What are politicians for then, if not to make rules regarding everybody ?

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[acohen1]

Not to mention plasmas have 4x to 6x the contrast ratio because they aren't filtering out the backlight using crossed polarization filters. An LCD straight away wastes most of the light it produces.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[aliquis]

Yeah, let us decide how much energy to consume, it's not like they will regulate it all, they could start with regular light bulbs in that case.

Also if you have electric heating a high energy consuming TV or light bulb doesn't make of a difference (in the summer it do.)

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Alinabi]

There is a direct and increasing incentive for consumers to buy lower energy use products.

That market driven incentive exists for cars in the US, but it is completely ineffective. People still buy big trucks and SUVs. They are status symbols. The same thing would happen to the TVs.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[mrchaotica]

On the other hand, if there weren't people with 80-hour commutes, your $400 extra would have been $4000 a month, or you'd live in a very tiny appartment indeed.

No, if we hadn't designed all the infrastructure for automobiles (which is what enables those 80-mile commutes), then we would either have a larger number of smaller cities, making people's jobs distributed rather than centralized, or (more likely) we'd have much better public transit systems like Europe does.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[AviLazar]

[rant]

Well, my last TV a Sony Trinitron, I bought around 97 to 99 (not sure exactly) and kept it until last year when my g/f got an LCD (I also have an LCD and we don't need more then two tv's in the house). So unless it breaks I plan on keeping this sucker for a LONG LONG time. I will make the costs

Other then that, anotehr reason to get LCD over PLASMA are burn-ins. For those who play console games - this is a no brainer - unless you want to have perm burn-ins. For those that do not - you will still get burn-ins. I had a Panasonic Viesta (think thats the model) and after 8 months the top left blue box that appears when you turn the tv on or switch input types (it hangs out for about 5 seconds) burned in. This is a feature of the tv and pops up rarely - but it burned in. Other things that burned in - the little play triangle from a dvd player....which I rarely use. Also another image that only appears for a few seconds.

When I called Panasonic and asked them why a feature of their tv burned in, the tier 2 technical rep said "I cannot confirm or deny this is a feature of the TV". For crying out loud, it *IS* a feature of the TV, and it is one that *cannot* be turned off! Luckily for me I had circuit city extra warranty. I went to them they gave me store credit and I got an LCD. I play COD4 all the time and so far no burn-ins.

The difference between plasma and lcd is that LCD does not use true black and white - the only time I notice that are in very dark scenes (night) and you get the white haze. It doesn't bother me

For those that DO go for a plasma, my recommendations:

1) Do not play games or use features that linger
2) Once per week load up a picture (memory stick JPG, playstation/xbox stream from your computer, etc) of pure white. Let that sit for about 10 minutes. Yes it's annoying, but Panasonic says this will remove any ghosting. According to Panasonic ghosting is prelude to image burns which can be remedied.
3) Do not put anything that is repetative on your tv for long. So avoid playing video games, or hanging out on your dvd/cable menu screens (e.g. DVR screen setups, cable tv channel guide, etc)

Or - just do the smart thing (and environmentally friendlier thing) and by an LCD. You may not recoup the costs in a short period of time...but whats an extra couple hundred bucks when you are considering the environmental factors. If everyone went for the environmental reasons, and took that small loss of money then our kids/grandkids will have a better life....and you will have a better product.

[/end rant]

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Spy Hunter]

If the goal is to use less energy overall, the correct policy to implement would be a tax on energy. It's quite likely there are ways to decrease overall energy use that would be much more effective and efficient than changing what type of TVs we buy. A tax on energy would cause the market to start searching for those better ways to save energy. The largest energy consumers would be the hardest hit by the tax and the first to start conserving, which is exactly the right way to save the most energy with the least cost to society.

Politicians meddling with the business of TV manufacturers (about which they know very little) is about the least efficient way I can think of to actually conserve energy. Constructing a bureaocracy to regulate TVs wastes money unlike an energy tax which would actually increase government revenue (which could then fund conservation efforts). Targeting TVs instead of the largest energy consumers severely limits the amount of energy that could possibly be saved; an energy tax can be scaled up or down to reduce energy usage by almost any amount desired.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[mrchaotica]

Do you grow your own food, and produce everything you need within walking distance of your domicile? If not then you benefit from good highways.

First of all, shipping food around is much more efficient than shipping people around. Second, it's not his fault the dumbasses in charge back in the '50s decided to hugely subsidize the Interstate system and kill off the railroads (which are much more efficient for cargo transport than trucking is).

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Anonymous Coward]

The GP is talking about the use of lead-free solder in new electronic devices, as mandated by various localities (if memory serves, primarily the EU and California). Lead was added to solder to prevent "tin whiskers" that grow over time and which lead to electronic failure.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to put all the values in the same time frame. Five hundred dollars today is worth more than five hundred dollars ten years from now. Assuming a meager 5% interest on the $500, it would take over 30 years to reach the break even point.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[mrchaotica]

In -principle- he'll have saved back the 500 extra he paid for the TV in 12 years, assuming he keeps it that long...

As long as it's not shoddily built, that's not a bad assumption. TVs aren't computers, you know. They don't go obsolete (except for the B&W->color switch or analog/SD->digital/HD switch, but those only happen every couple of decades). My parents, until recently, were still using their TV from the early '80s (and now I'm using it!). That's a good 25+ years out of the same set. And even bleeding-edge technophiles who do go through sets every few years don't throw them away, they sell them to others who keep using them.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[hibiki_r]

And yet, poor people pay more sales tax relative to their income than the rich, if just because their expenses are a higher percentage of their income.

So, while they are flat in principle, when push comes to shove sales taxes are pretty much irrelevant for someone making half a million a year, and are a significant part of the budget for someone making 35K.

Would you consider a sales tax that only applies to vehicles that cost over 50K to be a measure that taxes all people equally?

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Anonymous Coward]

> The people living further away are paying 36 cents + 8% in taxes on every gallon of fuel they spend

That hardly pays for the environmental damage done by the pollution. So it's not fair at all.

> If I'm willing to pay the money to power my appliance, and the power company is making a profit off me, who exactly is losing?

That's obvious: future generations and mostly people in the third world that are disproportionately affected by climate change.

> the hippies worrying about CO2 emissions

I have a Ph.D. in physics and about half of my friends have advanced degrees in scientific areas. None of them are "hippies", yet all of them worry about greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. The only friend of mine that is a global warming denier is a self-admitted redneck from Alabama. And he gets most (all?) of his information from "reliable" sources like Rush Limbaugh and right-wing Web sites.

> Seriously, it's the magic of the invisible hand that issues like that are taken care of.

You must be U.S. American because you treat capitalism like a religion. Yes, I am a European. I also realise that "the invisible hand" has no mechanism for dealing with scenarios where one entity benefits from doing damage, but other entities have to deal with the fallout. Unfortunately environmental damage is the most egregious example of this. And no, I'm neither a communist nor do I think that capitalism is necessarily bad. I just think that governments need to create regulations to mitigate some of the flaws of unbridled capitalism.

Ultimately though, I think that nothing will save mankind if we don't deal with the worst pyramid scheme ever: human population growth and economies that are based on nonrenewable resources.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[FooAtWFU]

But if poor people spend a greater portion of their income on things affected by sales tax than rich people, then it is regressive, in reality, even if it's not under the law. This is perhaps why in many states there is no sales tax on basic staples as Food.

Whether or not a given sales tax is regressive is a function of all sorts of spending patterns, which are not trivially analyzed.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[turbidostato]

"Seriously, it's the magic of the invisible hand that issues like that are taken care of."

Seriously, you are right.

This means the buyer is perfectly informed (hint: it is not. No matter how many "energy stars" you apply, the long run economics on such a diluted good as electricity in a house are far beyond what's reasonable expectable from a buyer) and that all cost/benefit ballance is exactly between seller and buyer (hint: it is not. Electricity is a strongly subsidized/governmentcontrolled bussiness that needs *hugh* support structures for its supportability. I. e.: even if a new rich can stand for 1MW/year at his home the nation still has to provide electric grid for it; since electricity is of strategic value for any nation you don't want it enterily on private hands. At least *I* don't want it exclusively, regulation included, on private hands).

So, yes, you are rigth regarding the value of the "invisible hand". It's only that the "invisible hand" is of very limited application here.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Mighty_K]

Sales taxes are a form of regressive taxation. This is a fact.

Your definition of regressive is not quite accurate.

A regressive tax is a tax where people pay a larger percentage of their total income toward the tax as their total income decreases.

With sales taxes, even though the tax rate on purchases is the same for everyone, if poorer people spend a larger proportion of their income on these purchases, then the tax will be regressive.

Bridge and tunnel tolls are also regressive. If a person has to commute across a bridge, and pays $1 each way, at the end of the year, this will be a larger percentage of a poor person's income than of a rich person's.

On the issue of gasoline taxes alone, the NYTimes published a quite revealing map of the percentage of income spent on gas across the country.

You can see that in the incredibly-poor Mississippi River delta, the residents spend 16% of their total income on gasoline. In much of the northeast, the figure is under 5%. If you click back and forth between the 1st and 3rd tabs, the percentage of income spent on gasoline is almost a perfect correlation with total income. This shows that according to the definition, a tax that depends only on the amount of gasoline purchased is regressive.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>Sales taxes are a form of regressive taxation because they take proportionally more from the poor.

"If you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe it." A regressive tax is a tax where people (for example) pay 20% income on their first $20,000, 10% upto $100,000, and 5% on anything above that. It is the exact opposite of a progressive tax.

Sales tax (and gasoline tax and bridge/tunnel tolls) are examples of FLAT taxes, because everybody pays the same amount regardless of income.

Technically you are right. But, what the other poster probably meant is the following: Imagine that people in a certain place need to spend X$ on housing, food and other bare necessities (we're talking first world "necessities" here). Then if someone makes 2X$ (the "poor" person) and someone else makes 20X$ (the "rich" person), the person making 2X$ is taking a much larger percentage hit. This is still true even if the rich person spends a lavish 3X$ on their "necessities".

So, I'd say you are both right, but you are only right in a technical sense that, IMNSHO, is not very meaningful.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[DinDaddy]

"The vehicle registration tax (or I guess it's called a fee here in California, since that way they can raise it without a 66% majority vote) is a little more unfair, though I guess it's closer to a property tax that scales based on the value of your car."

Based on nothing like the value of your car. They do a straight 10% per year depreciation. Last I looked, my car had nowhere near 50% of it's purchase price as a value when it was 5 years old.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[turbidostato]

"So still for each person individually it is a better deal to live far out however it costs the people on the whole a much more."

A very American approach. As if we were money machines instead of human beings. It's a better deal because it's cheaper, full stop. The hell with nonsenses like live quality or sustainability for our grandchildren.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Anonymous Coward]

They would also prevent the sale of any new technology if it were very inefficient, but that is a good thing surely?

Prior to the light bulb, the candle (or open flame of any sort) was the preferred lighting technique. I doubt the first light bulbs were very efficient: expensive, didn't last long, too-little-light-for-the-cost, etc. If you only look at the 'here and now' in a static fashion - a sin politicians are famous for - you WILL miss out on future opportunities. Meter the cost of running a TV, show the annulized cost with the rest of the specs, and jack the taxes on electricity. You know what wastes more electricity than a plasma TV? One that is on versus the plasma that is off. I jest. People that want to waste electricity have more options than you will ever have rules for. If there isn't some pain on the bill, they'll just leave on more lights until there is. Garden lights, walkway lights, security/perimeter lights, night lights, lite brights, you get the idea.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[turbidostato]

" It's quite likely there are ways to decrease overall energy use that would be much more effective and efficient than changing what type of TVs we buy. A tax on energy would cause the market to start searching for those better ways to save energy."

It seems UE thinks exactly like you. That's why their are not considering banning plasma TVs (but how the hell takes the time to follow the links, right?) but banning TVs over certain wattage.

Which is nothing but applying an infinite tax on TV sets over such wattage and will certainly result in producers to start searching for manufacturing TV sets that will save energy at least under certain wattage, exactly your proposition.

"The largest energy consumers would be the hardest hit by the tax"

Oh! you mean taxing directly on the Watt, I see... So you consider a Watt used on a hospital diagnostic scanner should be taxed just the same as a Watt used on a 50" TV for the superbowl? Please consider that it might happen that not everybody thinks the same.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be right if the energy cost of a large TV was noticeable in end users' wallets. But it's not.

Which means it's not important enough to worry about.

It's the usual thing about internalizing energy costs. Energy is way too cheap for the market to have much of an effect. Why else would the US need gas mileage standards?

Personally, I only support those because of emission controls. I want my air to be breathable, and smog kept to a minimum.

You might argue that the same thing applies to any energy expenditure. However, I say that if the power plant is putting out large emissions, the regulation needs to be aimed at the power plant. It's not like there isn't a perfectly suitable alternative in the form of nuclear power plants.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite true. Sales tax is based on consumption, so it is not a flat percentage of income. It's flat in regards to consumption, but consumption varies a lot based on income. This kind of tax could be considered regressive since lower income brackets tend to spend a higher percentage of their income, whereas upper income people have a tendency to save and invest more. Since you don't pay sales tax on savings and investments, you effectively lower the percentage of sales tax you pay relative to your income.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[nospam007]

He's a car salesman.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[ilo.v]

Wow, you just advocated the power of the invisible hand (free-market infallibility) alongside the need to raise taxes to move said invisible hand.

The invisible hand of the free-market isn't infallible, it is just a highly efficient tool to guide human behavior in a certain way. I may or may not approve of the balance point that the free market creates, and have no problem altering that with laws and taxes where appropriate. The free market would dictate that the best (cheapest) way to take care of elderly patients with Alzheimers is to shoot them in the head. No one wants that.

you conflate the Teacher's Union with The Chamber of Commerce

The contrast was intentional. I'm trying to give an example from both the right and the left, to show that the problem is present regardless of political ideology.

...elect to censor your own use of the word "damn."

Sorry. I was just raised that way. The habit doesn't seem to hurt anyone so I haven't tried to break it.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[xaxa]

So, what is the deal in the EU? I didn't see any mention of it on the first page of the article, but, are they having some sort of electrical energy crisis over there?

We have/had a natural gas crisis, when Russia stopped supplying gas to Ukraine, and so Ukraine decided to not allow gas to be piped through their country to various EU states.
I don't know of any electricity problems -- there are a lot of natural gas power stations, but generally these are for peak time output rather than base load.

The EU knows it's too reliant on foreign energy. Reducing our own energy use is perhaps the easiest solution.
(And it seems to me the directive is more about stopping future pointless wastage of energy. It's not as if they're banning the use of energy-thirsty TVs, just forbidding the purchase of new ones since alternatives are available.)

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[MBGMorden]

I too have noticed LCD's to be less reliable over a given span. My parents have an old console CRT TV in the back room nearly 30 years old that still works. The volume knob is broken (though it thankfully died as a reasonable volume level), and the on/off switch eventually gave out after which I replaced it with a $3 toggle switch from Radio Shack, but it still is going strong. They have another CRT in their bedroom that is about 15 years old, working fine. Their CRT computer monitor is about 12 years old and still working.

As to myself, in my living room have I have a 32" CRT TV that I bought when I was as freshman in college 10 years ago. Still working fine too.

Now, LCD's: I got my first one 8 years ago. I'm on #4 now. Three of them have died or become unusable for some reason or another (dead backlights, burnt out chips, etc). While I love them compared to a CRT, they certainly haven't shown the same longevity as the old displays did.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[fugue]

Joe Next Door loses when electricity rates go up in reponse to the increased electricity demand.

That makes sense, but it's still reasonable for rates to go up. Joe Next Door also needs to be efficient. What's the correct price for power? One that involves full cleanup costs from production. If we were producing completely clean and harmless power, then there would be no reason to use less of it. And if we're not, then we should continue to raise prices until we are. Joe Next Door is not exempt from that process.

Of course, getting the price of power generation back to the cleanup effort is somewhat complex and rarely done in practice (when taxpayers pay for oil spill cleanup, is that from a gasoline tax?). But I'm talking about what should happen, not what does.

For example: in Boulder, CO, the water rate is nonlinear: the first 8000 gallons or so (sorry for the archaic units; that's the way things still work here) are at a base rate, the next 5000 at a higher rate, etc. Superlinear electricity fees strike me as a fine idea. Of course, what I'd really like to see is superlinear gas prices at the pump (to take into account the extreme hazard of allowing SUVs on the road--global warming is just one of many costs there (eg. the USA alone could reduce the number of traffic-related deaths by at least one World-Trade-Center-Bombing-Unit PER YEAR if we got all the SUVs off the road, and hybrid SUVs won't help at all)). But superlinear pricing has other problems--in the SUV example it would reduce sticker shock and increase congestion at the pump when people started filling up twice as often, and the Boulder water example does not take into account the efficiency gains of living with roommates, etc.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Lumpy]

Hope not.. My 42" plasma uses 2.2 amps when on and playing a bright movie. the DLP set it replaced would use 4.2 amps.

The 37" LCD in the bedroom uses 1.8 amps.

Plasmas dont use that much unless you have a 10 year old monster.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[maxume]

Is fairness best measured in units of currency? If you measure fairness in terms of percentage of income, or in terms of percentage of impact on quality of life, it is really easy to demonstrate that different styles of taxes are regressive.

You might not agree that those are reasonable measures of fairness, but that doesn't mean you get to define fairness for everybody else.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[dwarg]

Awesome. I wasn't trying to be critical, I was genuinely fascinated by your post and agreed whole-heartedly with your point about using taxes as an incentive to move the so called invisible hand. I was also trying to make a joke about the extremist philosophies that are running rampant these days (free-market infallibility vs. the government should solve all our problems) which kind of muddied the issue. Their seem to be fewer of us in the middle trying to find common ground.

Thanks for clearing up the bit about Teacher's Unions and The Chamber of Commerce I was genuinely confused by that. But it makes sense now that you explain it.

As for the swearing, that's great. I've never heard my father swear once and I've always been impressed by that. I'm trying to attain that level of discipline with my first child on the way.

Keep posting.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[bnenning]

In addition to the monetary costs, it should be noted that happiness studies consistently find that happiness is strongly and negatively correlated with length of commute. It really is nice to not have to spend 10% of your waking life navigating back and forth between points A and B.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[bnenning]

Which is nothing but applying an infinite tax on TV sets over such wattage

And the nonlinearity of such a "tax" defeats the purpose. If the limit is 500 watts, the manufacturer gets to 498W and is done. With a constant energy tax, manufacturers and consumers always have incentives to reduce power consumption.

So you consider a Watt used on a hospital diagnostic scanner should be taxed just the same as a Watt used on a 50" TV for the superbowl?

Yes, the same way that the tax on a gallon of gas should be the same whether you're driving to a homeless shelter to volunteer or to a bar to get wasted. The environmental damage is the same regardless of your intentions.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[mindstormpt]

Of course that only limits inneficient appliances to rich people, problem solved!

Except our atmosphere doesn't care for how much money you have, and doesn't keep a special cozy compartment to store the emissions you can afford. So, if there's an equally good alternative (such as LCD screens, or high efficiency plasmas), then why should we keep allowing the sale of the inneficient ones?

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Spy Hunter]

So you consider a Watt used on a hospital diagnostic scanner should be taxed just the same as a Watt used on a 50" TV for the superbowl?

Yes. Not because I hate hospitals and love TVs, but because when you start extending that logic to other industries it quickly becomes unsustainable.

The amount of government bureaucracy required to separately evaluate and regulate every type of energy use would border on totalitarianism, and furthermore would be far less efficient than a simple tax on energy sources like oil, which instead of costing money would actually increase government revenue, which could then be used to subsidize hospitals, fund conservation efforts, etc.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[TheLink]

Q: How many free market economists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Free market economists don't change lightbulbs - they write their papers in the darkness while waiting for Adam Smith's Invisible Hand to do it.

No surprise that most economists don't know how things really work - especially when significant amounts of stuff is done by the Invisible Hand (which most economists typically explain with a lot of "hand waving").

BTW: It's funny how many atheists believe in the Invisible Hand :).

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[wagnerrp]

Now why aren't LCD TVs as reliable as LCD monitors. I have a 9yr old IBM, that aside from a few dead lines due to an ill fated Windex incident, still works fine. My 5yr old Sony has had no problems since I bought it.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[TheLink]

"Once per week load up a picture (memory stick JPG, playstation/xbox stream from your computer, etc) of pure white."

Isn't that like burning your entire screen so that you can't see the fainter burns of small parts of your screen?

Like repainting a white wall light grey so that you won't see a light grey blemish?

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[sycodon]

This is a beef I have with commuters...blah blah blah

This is the beef I have with city dwellers who believe everyone should live in cramped, overcrowded apartments and walk to work.

People may not be able to afford the extra $400 a month, which is a dubious figure to begin with.

People may not want to live in or near the city.

People may have other circumstances that require them to live outside the city and commute.

You don't know. The Government doesn't know and in fact it's the business of neither of you.

Have you considered the costs of city living?

* All the food has to be shipped in on big nasty diesel trucks.
* Power is usually generated outside the city and ugly transmission lines are used to bring it in.
* The large asphalt and concrete islands called cities raise the temperatures locally, causing higher demand for energy for cooling.
* Crime rates are usually higher, which means more taxes for everyone for state prisons.

Perhaps you should consider living in the country?

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[mobby_6kl]

Yeah, that was an excellent and insightful post by AC there.

Except that I'm not from the UK. Why do people even think that, is it because I linked to an article from The Register? Or do you honestly think that the only people who can have a problem with certain aspects of certain parts of EU's policy are bitter right-wing Brits? For now, I'll just take it as a compliment on my skillful use of the English language.

In the countries which joined during the last two enlargements (10 in 2004 and 2 in 2007), sizable parts of the population which held a referendum voted against joining the EU. Usually far from a majority, but certainly not something you can ignore and claim that the only dissent comes from the UK. Then of course are those who were for joining the EU, except that I don't think everyone unquestionably supports every single EU policy ever, so add all those people too. I can't be bothered to do the actual calculations, but considering the size of some of these countries, this adds up to plenty of people.

I guess you have too much at stake, with your country soon to become the set to the Waterworld sequel with all the associated problems. However, if the UK does fuck off, who is going to subsidise your tulips, tomatoes, and prostitutes?

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[bnenning]

That market driven incentive exists for cars in the US, but it is completely ineffective. People still buy big trucks and SUVs.

SUVs are a direct result of bad regulations. We passed fuel economy laws that said "all cars sold must get X miles per gallon". Except Detroit wanted to build big cars and people wanted to buy them. Solution: the Canyonero isn't a car, it's a "light truck".

Consumption taxes are a far better solution, but politicians much prefer hiding costs in mandates rather than acknowledging them.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[astinus]

They would also prevent the sale of any new technology if it were very inefficient, but that is a good thing surely?

Surely not. How efficient were automobiles when they first rolled off the block ~100 years ago? How efficient was the first computer display monitor? How efficient was Edison's light bulb?

Looks all good to me .... another "EU bans xxxxx" which turns out a) they are not and b) it is a sensible decision....

Banning should only happened when there is a demonstrable harm. "Driving other people's prices up" is a natural function of supply and demand, not an evil force that necessitates government intervention. Why should the market constrict to fit energy infrastructure, instead of forcing the expansion of the demonstably insufficient existing capacity?

If the EU doesn't like its inability to scale with growing power demands, and will just ban new things that force it beyond status quo, then they should explicitly state its intention to halt progress of all kinds instead of doing piecemeal bans.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you'd buy a more energy efficient tv, the nuclear hippies in france could sell cheap power to some coalburning hippies somewhere else and your kids wouldn't have to melt from acid rain...

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[ShakaUVM]

>>Joe Next Door loses when electricity rates go up in reponse to the increased electricity demand.

KWH prices scale based on individual consumption. If I go through a crazy amount of power in my house, the power company ends up charging me 10x the price per KWH that Conservationist Joe is paying next door. The reality is that the wasteful consumers end up subsidizing the conserving customers, who could be paying at or below cost. All the extra profit (should) go into capacity building, though with NIMBYs and broken environmental laws...

>>On the broader issue of global warming, waiting for the invisible hand to correct the market is a non-starter

No, you just need to price KWHs for whatever CO2 standard (or other hippie standard) you want. IIRC, zero-CO2 emission electricity is around 12c/KWH (about 3-4x the price of dirty coal plants, obviously depending on market), so you price your average power rates at that level, if it's important to you to do so. The invisible hand takes care of the rest. Consumption will fall somewhat, and if anyone wants to go buck-wild running their 60" Plasma TVs all year, then they're not destroying the environment, are they? More power to them. Literally.

They can't destroy the environment, and the power companies make a nice profit off them. Everyone wins.

It's a lot better than regulating the size or types of TVs sold in stores.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Arterion]

I agree with you. If the government wants to intervene, under the argument that they subsidized power costs, the best approach would be to apply an extra tax to devices that don't meet certain requirements. Banning them outright is stepping on personal freedom in a way that I just don't agree with.

I can understand asking consumers to pay for their power usage. I can't understand just banning the devices outright.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Arterion]

Surely an automobile is inefficient, but what is the cost of public transit vs. the cost of food? A lot of energy goes into growing the food that supplies you with energy that you are calling "free". Growing food is a very inefficient process.

That fact that we can blow more energy making food on it than we get back from the food is the only thing that's allowed the population to boom. In other words, if the ERoEI on food dropped below 1, you have a famine (or a Malthusian Catastrophe). Nowadays it's not that way because we can create energy in other ways. We don't rely on manual labour to grow food.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[turbidostato]

"And the nonlinearity of such a "tax" defeats the purpose. If the limit is 500 watts, the manufacturer gets to 498W and is done. With a constant energy tax, manufacturers and consumers always have incentives to reduce power consumption."

That's a good reasoning... already demonstrated *not* to work. What's the magic of a tax? After all, it's just a price tag on the bill and the very existance of power-hungry TV sets already demonstrates that your proposed incentives on the producers to reduce power consumption do not exist or it would be already working. Banning TV sets over certain wattage certainly may not make producers go after the 498W tag (as per your example) but it makes certain they'll go under 500W which is much better than current situation based only on the amount on the electricity bill which gives us 850W TV sets.

You should understand that UE intentions are not to reduce overall electrity consumption (if such were the point a linear tax may do the trick) but to reduce *undesired* electricity consumption (as in we don't want industries generally taxed on this making our products less competitive than others') so taxing and/or regulating certain markets/products is a natural outcome.

"Yes, the same way that the tax on a gallon of gas should be the same whether you're driving to a homeless shelter to volunteer or to a bar to get wasted."

Suprise! it is not. At least on my country on the EU "general purpouse" gas is not taxed the same than the one for heating or the one for agriculture.

"The environmental damage is the same regardless of your intentions."

True. But the environmental damage is not an absolute value: it is already ballanced against intentions. Some purposes are above environmental damage, some are not, and on some others are acceptable up to certain limits.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[turbidostato]

"The amount of government bureaucracy required to separately evaluate and regulate every type of energy use would border on totalitarianism, and furthermore would be far less efficient than a simple tax on energy sources like oil"

I don't know how it works on the USA but in EU oil already has different taxes depending on type of usage at least on three groups that I know of: "all purpouse", heating and agriculture and there's a strong movement to add a fourth: transportation. On a general approach I don't know how simple are in the USA ax regulations but in the EU you are already taxed differently if you buy your home or you rent it; if we are talking about personal incomes or corporate; if your activitiy is "for profit" or is not; if your activity is declared of special interest or not; if it comes from bussiness activity or it is a heritage and the count goes on and on. Even on indirect taxes such VAT it is not the same the general tax (16% in my country) than the special interest one (4% in my country). Anyway, remember I think that in this case max wattage regulation is good enough and it has not your stated problems: it is simple and cheap to enforce.

You are of course free to think that European social style is bordering totalitarism just as much as thinking USA democrat party is "lefty" but most people in Europe (me included) seem to think otherwise.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[xaxa]

There are other benefits to people walking/biking than just reduced CO2 -- better health is the main one, and reduced wear on infrastructure (roads need regular repairs due to wear, bike paths don't). Less air pollution and less congestion too. TFL, the government body Transport for London, calculated that everyone swapping a car for a bike for their daily commute to work just 3 days a week would save TFL £60-ish in reduced wear on the roads, and save the National Heath Service £160-ish because they'd be less likely to have an illness caused by obesity later in life. I think government departments in Norway have even started paying employees who cycle to work a similar amount of money in recognition of this.

A huge amount of energy goes into extracting, refining and distributing your oil anyway.

And people need to eat, and active/inactive people don't eat vastly different amounts of food either.

Food (or the waste from growing food, e.g. wheat stalks) can be converted into energy too, either by simply burning it, or turning it into alcohol first.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[KDR_11k]

If the new technology can become more efficient then improve it until it is, don't throw it out there in a rough state where it's worse than the stuff that's already on the market.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[KDR_11k]

Of course it's more work for your AC in the summer and I think ACs are less efficient than heating when it comes to temperature adjustments.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[The Snowman]

I own a bigscreen TV. And I have no clue what so ever what sort of effect it has on my energy bill.

And even if I did know, I would still be willing to spend the money... after all it's a bigscreen TV it's not a frugal purchase, it's like buying a sports car. :D

I bought a 1080p 46" LCD. I have no idea how much it costs me in electricity, especially given that I watch it about 2 hours per week. Forget energy costs, the retarded part is that I spent $1,600 on something I rarely use.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[bnenning]

What's the magic of a tax? After all, it's just a price tag on the bill and the very existance of power-hungry TV sets already demonstrates that your proposed incentives on the producers to reduce power consumption do not exist

As far as I know there have been no attempts to tax electricity use to account for the negative externalities. This effectively artificially lowers the price, which of course results in overconsumption.

Banning TV sets over certain wattage certainly may not make producers go after the 498W tag (as per your example) but it makes certain they'll go under 500W

And then consumers will find more ways to "waste" cheap electricity, and you'll have to keep expanding the list of items to regulate or ban. Great for government busybodies, lousy for freedom, the economy, and the environment.

You should understand that UE intentions are not to reduce overall electrity consumption (if such were the point a linear tax may do the trick) but to reduce *undesired* electricity consumption

In other words, social engineering rather than actually protecting the environment. At least they're honest enough to admit it.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[ashfields]

Joe Next Door loses when electricity rates go up in reponse to the increased electricity demand.

So your increase in demand is being subsidized by your Joe Next Door paying more for the same amount of electricity, or by his reduction in electricity use to maintain the same agregate demand.

With this ban, I would be subsidizing Joe's cheap electricity.

[the electricity rates] likely won't come down until years after a new generation plant is built

In this case, the pressure to improve power efficiency would have been delayed while waiting for the invisible hand to stop scratching its ass.

The increased pressure would likely speed that process up, not delay it.

On the broader issue of global warming, waiting for the invisible hand to correct the market is a non-starter. By the time market pressures build enough for people to notice, the damage has been done.

The market exists in people's heads. Are you aware of global warming? Are you ready to spend resources (sacrifice consumption) to curb global warming? By spending your resources this way, you are buying Less-Global-Warming.

The damage needs to be done (ie population reduction due to decreased food production) for there to be a market pressure.

But you are buying Less-Global-Warming in anticipation of that event, so the market does work.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Spy Hunter]

I think that in this case max wattage regulation is good enough and it has not your stated problems: it is simple and cheap to enforce.

Sure, one regulation taken by itself never seems too burdensome. You'll need to run a certification program, probably with a testing lab to verify power consumption claims. You'll need people to run the tests. Maybe you already have a lab and qualified people, so you only need to pay wages. You'll need enforcement at customs to prevent imports of non-certified TVs. Maybe it'll cost $100,000 per year (a very conservative estimate). It's a drop in the bucket compared to the government's budget, right?

But this one regulation isn't going to solve global warming alone. Televisions are a tiny percentage of overall energy consumption. To solve global warming with this approach would require millions of regulations; regulations for every industry which uses energy, which is all of them. You're going to end up spending $trillions on a gigantic bureauocracy. Furthermore, you're going to need an army of experts to constantly keep these regulations up-to-date with the latest technology in each industry, or you risk stifling innovation with outdated regulation. There will also be no end of loopholes to deal with. This regulatory approach is fundamentally flawed; it's just not scalable.

I don't know how it works on the USA but in EU oil already has different taxes depending on type of usage at least on three groups

Yes, I believe US farms pay a different rate for oil also. What's your point? You're not going to solve global warming by dividing the world into three (or four, or a hundred) oil price groups. You need to evaluate every use of oil, of which there are millions, and rank them all in importance. The job is far bigger than any government; the only way to do it is with market forces. Increase the price and people will decide for themselves what's important and what they can live without.

Imagine regulations deciding how long people's showers could be, or how long they could use their hair dryer, or the temperature they could set their thermostats to. An energy tax could easily affect all of these things through routine market forces; individually regulating them is absurd. This is why I say separately regulating each type of energy use would be totalinarianism; I really mean every kind of energy use. Millions of regulations, one for each way you use energy throughout your day. If you really wanted to achieve through regulation what an energy tax would do, this is the kind of absurd regulation you would need.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[amRadioHed]

No, you just need to price KWHs for whatever CO2 standard (or other hippie standard) you want. IIRC, zero-CO2 emission electricity is around 12c/KWH (about 3-4x the price of dirty coal plants, obviously depending on market), so you price your average power rates at that level, if it's important to you to do so. The invisible hand takes care of the rest.

You are saying that the market works iff you raise prices of dirty fuel to the same level as clean fuels. The power companies are obviously not going to do this themselves, if it benefited them they would have done it already. That means the government would have to require these changes. That means regulation is required. That means the market does not work.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[ckedge]

> because everybody pays the same amount regardless of income.

He didn't say "amount", he said "proportionally". You've said NOTHING different than what you quoted him saying, because you used totally different terms to say the exact same thing.

Poor person pays 5% sales tax on half of everything they buy, they spend 100% of what they earn, they earn 20K per year, so they end up paying 2.5% of their income on that "flat" tax.

Rich person pays 5% sales tax on half of everything they buy (or more, for sake of argument let's say on everything they buy), but they only spend 30% of what they earn, they earn 200K per year, so they end up paying 1.5% of their income on that "flat" tax.

Rich person has spent PROPORTIONALLY more of their income.

(and I think you've got the two terms reversed, regressive and progressive, but that's not important)

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Eivind]

I do know some TVs are used for decades. But on the other hand, I don't think it's a good bet that the -average- lcd or plasma bought today will be used actively for much more than 12 years.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Eivind]

Sure, but on the other hand, if you live somewhere warm it'll add to the heatload an ac-unit has to handle, so this concern comes in the "it depends" category. My point was just that economics alone won't lead consumers away from plasmas, even though they do use a lot more power.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Jasper__unique_dammi]

What you are not mentioning is externalization. The cost of political tensions over resources like gas, oil, and nuclear products. (Well, not coal at this point.) Nor are the emmisions paid for.(Well, only somewhat with emmisions trading.) Also, as order people said, often people don't look at power costs well enough. (Although there is a rating for how much energy a product uses.)

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[turbidostato]

"Sure, one regulation taken by itself never seems too burdensome. You'll need to run a certification program, probably with a testing lab to verify power consumption claims."

It's exactly on reverse. *One* single regulation is burdensome: as you stated, you need a shunt on the transportation paths, you need the people, you need the labs... but you can leverage the costs by having *more* than one regulation. This is no different in USA than in Europe: all kinds of manufactures goes to labs to gain certifications (on electromagnetic emissions, on FDA saviness, on chemical hazards...) having one more for a new product while on its certification stage adds peanuts.

"Yes, I believe US farms pay a different rate for oil also. What's your point?"

I tought my point was obvious. My point was that even on the Land of the Free (market) taxing per usage, not per consumption is also a common thing, that it seeks a purpouse and that it enacts it properly.

"Imagine regulations deciding how long people's showers could be"

Imasgine your grandma' having wheels instead of legs... it would be a bicicle! But the fact is we are not talking about neither your grandma nor about showers.

"This is why I say separately regulating each type of energy use would be totalinarianism; I really mean every kind of energy use. Millions of regulations"

Your are absolutly right... it's only that nobody is talking about millions of regulations. You rise a concern anyway it that these kind of regulations need to be reassesed from time to time in order not to become millions.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Spy Hunter]

you can leverage the costs by having *more* than one regulation.

Read my post again and you'll realize that I already accounted for that. I gave a figure of $100,000 for implementing this TV regulation, but that assumes a testing lab exists, testing personnel are already there, and customs people are already checking all TV shipments. Otherwise the cost would easily be in the tens of millions (to build a lab, hire testers and administrators and customs inspectors).

You seem not to understand the scale of the problem. It's ultimately irrelevant whether the cost per regulation is $1 trillion or $100,000. Either way, the sheer number of regulations you would need to make to cover *every* part of the economy with equivalent effectiveness to an overall energy tax would bankrupt any government.

taxing per usage, not per consumption is also a common thing

The examples you gave split markets into three or four huge pieces at most. This proposed TV regulation is quite different: it targets a tiny section of a small piece of the economy. My point is that to cover the entire economy with regulations of this tiny scale would be both paralyzing to the economy and prohibitively expensive for government, and furthermore, would actually be *less* effective than a simple tax. Then you say:

nobody is talking about millions of regulations

... well then you're not talking about actually solving global warming. Instead you're talking about unfairly targeting tiny sections of the economy for burdensome regulations while everyone else gets a free pass to use energy as inefficiently as they like and global warming continues unabated.

What you're talking about a lobbyist's dream scenario! You'll see companies jumping all over each other to support regulations designed to save small amounts of energy while coincidentally driving their competitors out of business. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this legislation has received support from companies invested in LCD production and the opposition is funded by plasma manufacturers.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

"the waste from growing food" is obviously the (minimum) 98% of power that is lost in the process of photosynthesis versus what a theoretically optimal solar panel could achieve. (practical solar panels can achieve 48%, or 24 TIMES more energy than plants, from the same sun)

And then you've simply got a bit of sugar, that has to be transported, converted, etc, before it becomes actual edible plant material.

And meat ... let's just not talk about the efficiency of producing meat. It's just maddeningly sad.

That obviously means that humans themselves are maddeningly inefficient beings. From the energy that hits the earth surface, we can (maybe) use a trillionth.

A car, even a fossil-fueled car, is far more efficient than a human running the same distance. That's one thing progressives and greens will never admit to. Cars will use about 30% of the energy they consume for locomotion. A human will never get even 1% efficiency out of food.

The entirety of nature is frightningly inefficient. Al Gore will never admit to that, obviously, but plants' energy use is a total disaster, and animals ... let's not talk about the efficiency of animals ... it's just depressing (useful work versus solar energy that powers it)

Humans are amongst the most efficient animals, but that doesn't mean much at all.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

The truth is that Europe's public transport system does indeed edge out America's. But it's also a total disaster, unreliable in the extreme, and that's in the countries where it's relatively well organized.

Those countries where they operate "somewhat better" are, and this is not at all a coincidence, the tiny european countries. In the larger ones, like Spain or Italy, public transportation is equally a disaster.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[ShakaUVM]

>>That means the market does not work.

No, the point is this: greens are assigning a cost to coal power (CO2 emissions) that is not currently being billed for. Therefore the equilibrium price is set a certain way for dirty power. If society agrees, or the government mandates, a price point for clean energy, then it'll all magically work out in that scenario as well.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[JasterBobaMereel]

Electric light was brighter, cleaner, and safer than candles (or Gas lighting which is what it actually replaced) it might not have been cheaper but it was better ....

What they are proposing is banning the equivalent of filament light bulbs now the more efficient energy saving bulbs are available and as cheap ...

If I am paying thousands for a big screen TV the running costs are a minor problem and will be ignored, the kind of people who have garden lights etc. are also the kind of people who think nothing of the cost the only way to force these people to be efficient is to ban the most inefficient versions (older designs of TV, inefficient bulbs, etc ...) which manufacturers only make because they are easy to produce and cheap to make (so they make more profit) ... this is what governments are for

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Right ... it's all a conspiracy pushing "false" beliefs. Now why didn't I think of that.

In reality obviously people like to be in densities where you have about a square meter of personal space. That's real fun. Where the streets are barely walkable.

And the amount of energy that such an arrangement needs is just trivial. This whole claptrap about cities needing about 1000x or more their own area cultivated for food, and that's ignoring the obvious energy an oil needs, is just that : "claptrap".

The sewer system carries the absurd amounts of waste such cities produce into the municipal black hole, where there are zero environmental concerns.

Also the building materials for building the city in the first place are without environmental costs. Copper, Iron, ... we don't need those ugly mines, God makes it rain down from heaven (but perhaps in a bit smaller chunks next time, big guy, I lost 2 good friends last time).

No obviously it's all just a conspiracy and living in huge density is just all fine and dandy, and much, much better for the environment than suburbs.

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[Knuckles]

Um, you may want to read a bit about city planning and its history. Criticism of the Athens Charter for naive modernism is not only wide-spread, but has been generally accepted in the profession for decades.

As to your points:

Overdone density sucks, yes, but cities can and some do have modest density and short distances at the same time. (Not to forget that many people do actually like to live in cities; reasons to e leaft as an exercise for the reader. You might need to get out of the US and its deteriorating infrastructure and get to see cities elsewhere, though).

The streets are barely walkable because separation of work and living leads to suburbanization leads to cars leads to cities that are made for cars and not pedestrians. It's not like that everywhere (again, get out of the US).

Energy: it's not so much the cities that need energy and several times their area cultivated for fodd, it's people who do not produce their own food. A person working an office job needs the same food regardless of where she lives, and since she does not cultivate it herself, someone else has to some place else.
It's laughable that someone arguing for separation of living and work areas and thus cars and thus endless commutes talks about energy.

Sewer systems. I don't know where you live, but the cities I lived in did have decent sewer systems and environmental concerns. Pollution is probably easier to control if people live in a reasonably bounded area instead of spread out of the whole country. It's no surprise that sewer systems were *invented* in cities and where in use long before the country population got around to let the next river take care of it.

Building materials, copper, iron: again, what are you arguing for. Are you arguing we are supposed to live in the countryside in wooden huts without electricity, connectivity, etc.?

Re:Not banning plasmas.

[JasterBobaMereel]

When the first Automobiles rolled off the production line there was no more efficient alternative
When the first Computer display monitor there was no more efficient display technology
When the first lightbulb was produced there was no more efficient electric lighting technology

Again they are not blanket banning plasma screens just the most inefficient that have an alternative, these are the ones that the manufacturers are selling simply because it is cheaper for them to produce these older less efficient models than the newer more efficient ones and so they can sell them at a lower price, most consumers do not factor in the running costs (even if it is mandated that it is shown on the product) they just look a the purchase price ... the EU is simply forcing the manufacturers to sell only the more efficient models of plasmas or an alternative ...

Why not just tax energy use?

[pin0chet]

It's never made sense to me why governments think that micromanaging things like what lightbulbs can be sold or how much power TVs can consume is a smart method for curbing energy use.

If your goal is to improve energy efficiency, economists have figured out a remarkably simple and efficient method: tax electricity use. A 25% surcharge on each kilowatt-hour used would cause people to buy more energy-efficient products, meaning companies would shift resources toward building less power-hungry devices. A simple energy tax has the same ultimate effect as regulating efficiency across myriad consumer electronics, but without the need for a massive government bureaucracy.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Anonymous Coward]

In germany we do have some experience with taxing energy.
The problem is that you need to create lot of exceptions for the energy hungry industries (at least the lobbiests make you to do so).

So if you put (another) 25% tax on energy and tax everyone by 1% less, so that on average the tax stays constant, then you will raise the tax in some sectors by 20% (e.g. aluminium production) while you will lower it in others by 0.9%.

That said, I don't like the micro-management either. They could make laws to make power-consumption more visible in advertizing.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[zymano]

good idea or just remind people that plasma = mercury and going nuclear.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Rakishi]

The point being? If an industry requires a lot of electricity than people buying less of it's products (due to increased costs due to extra taxes) will LOWER electricity use. It's the system working properly assuming the goal is actually to lower electricity usage.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Yokaze]

Why energy hungry industries argue for tax exemptions is, that they still need to compete with companies in countries, where energy is not taxed as heavily.

> They could make laws to make power-consumption more visible in advertizing.

My suggestion would be, that the total costs of a device for an average use over a fixed time (say 10 years) must be displayed including energy, water, expected repair- and replacement costs for an common average use. Preferably at the same font size as the nominal price.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[timmarhy]

this is a case of epic fail.

ALL your primary manufacturing industries are hi energy. less people buying their products means they will go belly up or have to cut back on RND, meaning slower progress on lower power units. your cutting your nose off just to spite your own face.

When anyone annouces government taxes as the answer you need too apply this primary filter - given a resonible amount of time can industry solve this itself? considering the huge advances in low power electronics in the last 20 years alone, i'd say the answer in this case is YES.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, Do we have not any other problem these days? What about an Unemploiment? Bankcrash? Depression? Terrorism? Corruption? Education? ... etc.etc.etc.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[novakyu]

In germany we do have some experience with taxing energy.
The problem is that you need to create lot of exceptions for the energy hungry industries (at least the lobbiests make you to do so).

Why not just tax/price industrial power differently from residential power?

To some degree, they are being priced differently as it is anyway.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[zmollusc]

To greatly lower energy use for the whole nation, build a 'B' ark for the government and their parasitic consultants, lobbyists etc.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[WarwickRyan]

In Netherlands at least, they already do this.

Yet when I walk into an shop selling light fittings, all I can see is designs based on multiple halogen bulbs.

So I've got two lights which between them use 15 x 40w halogen bulbs! That's 600w of lighting goodness.

So yeah, banning such lights would be an excellent idea.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[a4r6]

You invalidated your post with the first line.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[timmarhy]

yet another epic fail.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Xest]

Because not all products offer cheaper alternatives. You'd effectively be raising the price 25% on things where there is no other option.

One example is that I have a heated greenhouse here in the UK, it's heated because I grow exotic plants, including cultivation of species that are critically endangered in the wild which I sell on cheaply to help discourage sales of habitat collected plants which I can undercut because the risk of smuggling carries a higher price than the price I can charge growing in bulk and transferring legally (well, at least in Europe, stupid CITES regulation does more harm than good outside Europe in this respect).

I already use an electric heater, I already use solar power where possible but the only alternative is to simply fall back to mains throughout October - March. There really is no cheaper alternative, natural gas is more expensive due to the fact you have to leave a gas burner on all the time, whilst electric heaters only need to come on when the temperature drops below a set level so electricity is the cheapest, most efficient option.

What you're proposing would act as a 25% increase in cost for something I'm doing that is already about as environmentally friendly as you can get. It would have the side effect of ultimately forcing me to raise prices due to the increased cost of electricity and then lowering the attractiveness of my plants over those that are collected from habitat for species that are on the very verge of extinction. I do not make a profit from this hobby, it's not as if I can cut that.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Zoxed]

> If your goal is to improve energy efficiency, economists have figured out a remarkably simple and efficient method: tax electricity use.

This wins on simplicity, but the problem is, for example, someone struggling to heat a small flat with electricity gets a price hike they can not afford, whilst the target Mr-I-do-not-give-a-**** (sorry: I would guess it is usual Mr who buys big TVs, not Mrs) just pays a little more and does not even notice it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_tax/).

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, a country like Germany should switch to a service based economy centered around the banking sector like the US ?

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Monkey-some]

Because it's just plain true !

Clearly you won't see much of a difference on your electricity bill if you use a more efficient light bulb, a more efficient fridge, tv or whatever else. Now imagine all theses "not much a difference" cumulated on your neighborhood, area, town, region, country and you'll understand why those makes really a sense.

People wouldn't buy a "more efficient" product because there wouldn't be really many more "efficient products" but rather a larger lobby (GE, and other major electronic manufacturer) to build more "clean energy sources".

And don't forget that the biggest electricity users are the companies taxing them for over usage could be quite critical as some are rather hungry (you know big machineries and so on...)

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just mix in some dandelion. They won't notice the difference when they're smoking it, and you can keep your prices the same.

p.s. Is it true that pot is an endangered plant where you live? Here it grows like a ... weed.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[xaxa]

Clearly you won't see much of a difference on your electricity bill if you use a more efficient light bulb

I think you can, in some cases. I replaced the 50W halogen bulbs in my flat with 1W LED bulbs. The light isn't quite as good, but I changed 28 50W bulbs, of which about 12 are on for about 6 hours a day. That's 12 * 0.05kW * 6 hours * 30 = 108kWh a month. That's about £15 a month off the bill!

But I agree with your main point.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[jcaplan]

You have just proposed a "regressive tax," which costs you more as a percentage of income the less you make. Worse, many people would not be in a place to respond to the price signal, such as renters who do not own their appliances, such as fridge, washing machine and air conditioners. Worse yet, those who have high incomes do not notice the price signal from your tax and continue consuming as usual. You could raise this tax until you get the usage reduction you desire, but I think you might become a bit unpopular at some point.

What you call micromanagement, I call smart regulation, because it saves me money on power, barely affects the cost of goods, avoids me having to pay a tax on electricity, and is good for the environment.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not unemployed, depressed, a terrorist, corrupt or uneducated.
So the answer to your question would be: no.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not use one or several heatpump(s)? That is a good way lower heating cost.

Another option that gets more economic with higher taxes is to use a better isolated greenhouse, maybe add another layer of glass/plastic or cover it with something during night.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[dangitman]

(at least the lobbiests make you to do so).

Does Germany also have a new standards system for lobbying? For example, you have a lobby, lobbier and lobbiest in ascending order of superiority?

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Xest]

I have to admit I've not really come across heat pumps before. How do they work? Temperatures can get as low as -8C here and the over-winter temperatures I need to reach are around a minimum of 10C to 15C mark over night. I also need to make sure humidity is kept low, as many plants are desert plants, those that aren't I have seperate units for (not hydroponic as such, just closed containers with a gravel/water base).

I already lower the greenhouse volume over winter when the heaters need to be on by running a thermal blanket along the eaves to cut the amount of vertical height over night and also use a bubble wrap covering for insulation all over. During the day, the sun does a good job of heating it up with the somewhat transparent bubble wrap coating and the thermal blanket pulled back and continues to allow light in so it's a fairly decent setup. I think I'd struggle to improve things much more in that area at least, but any methods to cut heating costs further is certainly something I'd jump on as it already costs around £600 ($850 ish US) to heat between October through to March/April. That doesn't exactly break the bank, but it's a cost that I would gladly reduce if I could.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[stdarg]

Out of curiosity, why do you need so many lights on at once? Do you grow lots of plants indoors or just live in a gigantic apartment with about 14 rooms? Plant growing seems to be a good candidate for LED lighting since you can focus on the ranges of wavelengths that promote growth, flowering, etc.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[socrplayr813]

I don't know if I support one side or the other, but if you're going to go with a tax of some kind, why not have it scale with the energy used? The more you use, the more it costs per unit. It could be scaled to match up with an average consumer's bill, which would punish (incentivize?) the heaviest users without hugely affecting (or maybe even helping) lower power users.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[timeOday]

If your goal is to improve energy efficiency, economists have figured out a remarkably simple and efficient method: tax electricity use.

In other words, give all natural resources to rich people. Make 1000 people live in the cold so 1 rich guy can travel in a private jet. Yes, that is a nice, simple market solution. It's not fair though. I have little problem with rich people using more man-made goods - let them pay thousands for a bottle of wine or a million for a car. But things like air and water are not man-made, so being economically productive should not entitle you to waste them. That said, if somebody finds a way to produce them - say, if you put up a water desalination plant - then I see a much stronger argument for having it to yourself.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[xaxa]

4 people living in the apartment, each bedroom had a single light fitting, fitted with four 50W GU10 (mini 230V spotlight) sockets, likewise for the kitchen/living area. As they're spot lights having only two bulbs in the fitting isn't really satisfactory.

12 bulbs on was a guess -- based on two people having the lights on in their rooms, plus the kitchen, on an average night. That's probably an overestimate on the average number of people, but it also ignores when we forget to switch some lights off.

It's not a very nice apartment, but the rent is very cheap (for London...).

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[xaxa]

So, a country like Germany should switch to a service based economy centered around the banking sector like the US ?

Just like Britain did, and look where that's taken us...

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Abcd1234]

If your goal is to improve energy efficiency, economists have figured out a remarkably simple and efficient method: tax electricity use.

The problem with this is, unless you institute some kind of rebate system, a tax like this is highly regressive (which is why, in Canada, certain staple items are exempt from our Goods and Services Tax... to try and counteract the regressive nature of a consumption tax).

That's not to say it's fundamentally a bad idea (I tend to favour taxation in order to compensate for negative externalities). But such a tax would have to be very carefully structured so as not to strongly adversely affect the poor.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Spy Hunter]

Guess what? Reducing energy use hurts the economy. Glad you figured it out. However, you've missed the point. We're not choosing between "tax" and "no tax"; we're choosing between "energy tax" and "government regulation of specific industries like TV manufacturing". Both are harmful to the economy; the point is, an energy tax would be *less* harmful and far more effective than intrusive, micromanaging government regulation.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you consume tons of kWh but can't use them to produce value as effectively as someone else, then please give up and leave those kWh to someone else. All your novel about "why power is important for you" can be resumed into one number: how much you're willing to pay per kWh. Then we decide who gets power based on that number and we don't have to read your novel and anyone else's and compare them.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Spy Hunter]

You are wrong that there is no alternative. If the heating energy prices are truly prohibitive, you could locate your greenhouse in a more suitable climate and ship the plants. If regulations prevent that then the problem is with the regulations, not the energy tax.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Anonymous Coward]

An air-to-air heat pump would be the cheapest option. Works, looks like and can generally also be used as an AC, but is made and optimised to cool the outside air and heat the inside. They give something like 2 to 3 times more heat for every £ compared to electric heaters.

Most models stops working when ouside temperature gets -15--25C, so -8c is not a problem.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Xest]

That's completely counter-productive when we're talking about taxes designed to cut electricity usage to make people be more green. It'd be far less environmentally to send those plants from a warmer climate to the colder climates than it would to just maintain them where they are. Many plants wont survive shipping journeys by sea so would have to be sent by air, which is going to up costs drastically, and increase pollutants used in getting them to the buyer.

I suppose technically you're right I am wrong in there being no alternative, what I should've said is there's no better alternative.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Xest]

But there isn't a shortage of power here so that argument is entirely irrelevant. The problem is about cutting out electrical usage that is wasteful by replacing it with greener options where possible- this is something we can do with TVs, it's something we can do with fridges. The goal isn't to cut the things people use electricity for, it's to cut the electricity that is used for the things people use it for which is quite different.

The parent suggested we should just up the cost of all electricity but this goes against the goal of the kind of laws mentioned in this article, which is to cut existing items usage of electricity rather than to cut the things people use electricity for.

The parents suggestion fits if we're trying to just reduce electrical costs overall including what people use it for as does yours but that isn't the goal of these laws. There is a realisation that going green isn't going to get public support if it means the public have to make sacrifices - taking their TV away is going to piss them off and destroy public support for cutting carbon emissions, preventing them buying an inefficient TV in the first place is a whole different story. It's about making people more green without them even realising it.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Rich0]

Ok, if oil were taxed per its impact on the environment, and electricity were taxed per its impact on the environment, then all you would need to do is whatever is cheapest.

If it is truly more expensive to ship the item then just pay for the electricity and know that you're going it in a manner that is sustainable. If it is cheaper to ship the item, then do it, and know that the jet fuel is less harmful than the coal you're burning right now.

We don't need millions of per-item regulations. We just need the cost of energy to reflect what it really costs mankind. If a barrel of oil costs $100 to sequester the carbon and clean the soot off of buildings, then charge a $100/bbl tax. If it only costs a nickel then charge a nickel and stop worrying about it. This will have a double effect:

1. It will encourage consumers to make choices that are less harmful to the enviornment.
2. It will fund cleanup so that the harmful activities are only harmful in the short term.

Add in the costs related to invading middle eastern countries to secure oil and you'll address the taxes-for-oil-barons problem as well.

The problem is that right now those who benefit from certain forms of energy aren't the ones paying the full price for its use.

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[Spy Hunter]

It'd be far less environmentally to send those plants from a warmer climate to the colder climates than it would to just maintain them where they are

If it's true that it takes less energy to heat the greenhouse than ship the plants, then you have no problem at all! An energy tax would cause the price of shipping to go up more than the cost of heating, and thus your prices would stay lower than your competitors (who *must* ship their plants from their native habitats). Isn't it great how economics works?

Re:Why not just tax energy use?

[bnenning]

Nobody except the hardest-core greens wants to make electricity unaffordable to the poor. But the environment is equally damaged by a coal plant whether the electricity is used by a rich person or a poor person, so both should have incentives to conserve. Other regressive taxes (e.g. sales and payroll) should be lowered so that on balance the tax burden doesn't increase.

Tough call

[mcrbids]

"Let the market decide" is almost religious dogma in the United States. And it's not a completely unfounded idea. People tend to buy things that provide a better quality of life at a lower cost, and companies tend to provide things that are more profitable, so cheaper and better quality wins over more expensive and crappier.

But one thing that many of the "free market everywhere" people miss completely is the idea of the tragedy of the commons. I don't need to try to explain it as it's already explained well elsewhere. But it's one concept that the "free market" Libertarian types completely ignore, at their own peril.

In this case, people are notoriously bad at figuring long term expenses that are sustained and slightly elevated. People will tend to pay $10,000 over the life of a car for a "cheaper" model that costs $4,000 less. They'll tend to buy the plasma TV that costs $300 less than the $2000 LED TV that lasts twice as long and uses 30% less electricity.

And this affects the commons because power is increasingly a rare resource being squandered to provide a 5' wide screen typically viewed 15 feet back that provides the same viewing aspect ratio as a 19" TV at 4 feet at 11x the power. Power that isn't then available for running manufacturing plants, hospitals, and other things that generate real wealth, and require a tax-funded power plant to compensate for.

On the other hand, regulations take a long time to change, and marketplaces can change quickly. A bad law, once past, might take a decade to be redacted or canceled by jurisprudence, but the technology regulated by the bad law may render the law moot in 2 years due to other market forces.

I tend to feel towards deregulation, since I'm American. But I can see that Plasma tech just might be a bad idea!

Re:Tough call

[pin0chet]

There are several fallacies here. First, the idea that watching TV doesn't constitute "real wealth" is false. The very manufacturing plants you admit are valuable exist solely to provide goods and services that consumers demand. No, TVs aren't necessities, but that doesn't mean they aren't of economic value. Value is in the eye of the beholder, and lots of people quite clearly get utility from their television sets. So televisions are just as much a form of wealth as any other good.

Second, power plants are in almost all cases privately funded, at least in the U.S. The money you pay each month to your local electricity provider is going to a privately owned firm, albeit one that likely enjoys rate-of-return protection granted by government. Power is not running out, either. Will the cost of energy today persist as fossil fuels become more difficult to obtain? Probably not, but lots of neat forms of energy become viable once prices rise. By the time oil, uranium, coal, and natural gas resources all begin to dwindle, new technologies will have made new forms of elecricity generation economically feasible.

You claim that people tend to underestimate long-term costs and overestimate short-term gains. The LED example, however, actually shows that people are making the right decisions by sticking with plasma. The amount of electricity required to power a TV is still quite inexpensive--around 3 to 5 cents per hours--and so it'd take years to make up for a $300 price difference. And since pretty much any TV currently sold is going far past its obsolescence, it's fairly unimportant how long a TV will last. 8 years of 12 years are both very long timeframes among the modern consumer.

Re:Tough call

[Anonymous Coward]

Good example, but "free market" advocates are missing on even more basic idea.

Long ago John Smith used a very simple model to describe a certain perfect "market" and called it a Free Market. After fiddling with the model he has shown, correctly, that this perfect market will produce optimal result, and doesn't need to be regulated to do so. He called the effect "invisible hand".

Now, what you need to realise is that "invisible hand" of a "free market" only ever works for markets which are at least similar to the model. if a market is not similar to the model, the effect won't work.

Conclusion from his work? Governments *should* regulate markets if regulation can bend them towards Smith's model. This is the most important lesson here, and all the economists that can't see it are idiots.

Re:Tough call

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a case of the tragedy of the commons but hey, topic-coating your favorite link is a known karma recipe and it will probably work here regardless.

Re:Tough call

[Jason Pollock]

That's because people value time highly.

10k extra over the life of a car. My car's 14 years old. That 4k savings up front? It's a great deal, the extra $400/yr would be lost in the noise.

$300 dollars savings on something that's going to be obsolete in 5 years? Again good deal. at 17c/kwh, it takes a lot of hours of watching to use up that $300. Let's say a plasma uses 50% more power than an LCD. At the high-end, plasma's seem to use 400w.

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6475_7-6400401-3.html

US$300/0.17c = 1765kwh
Extra power needed for plasma = 200wh per hour
1765kwh * 1000 = 1765000wh / 200wh = 8825 hours.

or, about 4 years of 40 hours a week of viewing.

Re:Tough call

[HornWumpus]

Adam Smith.

He never claimed that markets didn't need regulation.

Just regulation to keep the market working. e.g. Government prevention of collusion by market participants.

Re:Tough call

[mezis]

Side note, but anyways: in Europe, a law cannot be canceled by jurisprudence. Short explanation: we don't have a "common law" based legal system but a legislative/codified system, as opposed to the US and UK.

Re:Tough call

[unterderbrucke]

I logged in for the first time in two years, and am posting for the first time in two years, just to point out that you're very, very, very, misguided in how you're approaching this. You're generalizing terms that the parent was using in specific economics-defined ways, which unfortunately have overlap into common English, where they mean much more general things.

Re:Tough call

[MindlessAutomata]

In this case, people are notoriously bad at figuring long term expenses that are sustained and slightly elevated. People will tend to pay $10,000 over the life of a car for a "cheaper" model that costs $4,000 less. They'll tend to buy the plasma TV that costs $300 less than the $2000 LED TV that lasts twice as long and uses 30% less electricity.

The reason for this isn't necessarily because of being bad at figuring out expenses, it's because of a lack of information. People generally don't know power consumption values, and let's face it... power is not that expensive.

And this affects the commons because power is increasingly a rare resource being squandered to provide a 5' wide screen typically viewed 15 feet back that provides the same viewing aspect ratio as a 19" TV at 4 feet at 11x the power. Power that isn't then available for running manufacturing plants, hospitals, and other things that generate real wealth, and require a tax-funded power plant to compensate for.

Ah, a tax-funded power plant? Does this mean the "real cost" of power is being hidden from consumers? One of the problems with so-called "progressive taxation" is that, when people in higher tax brackets pay a greater portion of the service, it distorts the cost of the service. What may, without shifting the tax burden to some other group (or even just disguising it by taking it through taxes) something may appear cheaper than it really is, resulting in people being less concerned over how much they use it.

For example, my university recently rolled out a "free" newspaper program where a card swipe opens up a dispenser that students can take newspapers out of, providing us with 3 choices--take the local one, US today, or New York times, or any combination of the three, it doesn't matter. Now, those newspapers are presumably not being given to the university for free, so students, unaware of the hidden cost, now grab them when they wouldn't have bought them at their news stand price in the first place.

You want people to be concerned about power usage? Make them pay the full cost directly, no shifting the fees to the evil nasty rich people, no disguising in through taxes, or anything of the sort. Or you can add a hefty tax to power, but that's obviously not exactly what I would do.

The people that buy the 300 dollar less TV are probably still going to save money in the long run than the 300 dollar more TV that saves 30% less energy. And, of course, people may need that 300 dollars NOW more than they need it LATER. And I don't even need to get into how fast it'll be obsolete.

And as for this:

But one thing that many of the "free market everywhere" people miss completely is the idea of the tragedy of the commons. I don't need to try to explain it [wikipedia.org] as it's already explained well elsewhere. But it's one concept that the "free market" Libertarian types completely ignore, at their own peril.

Tragedy of the commons is trotted out to libertarians so often they probably have heard more about it than you have. Actually, they get a chance to use the argument, too: when the government owns something, and thus, theoretically everyone and no one owns it, they tend to take less care of it. Take the famous example of a field shared by a bunch of herders--they will all deplete the vegetable life by all trying to maximize grazing. However, if that land was to be split up among the herders, they would each have an incentive to prevent overgrazing as they are only allotted a particular plot of land.

Re:Tough call

[MindlessAutomata]

Guess you never heard of rolling blackouts, then? Explain that to my servers that were down for some 2 days as a result? /Sarcasm

How do you conclude that it must be from increasing scarcity? It very well may be bad infrastructure or the plant simply not properly keeping up with increasing power demands. Perhaps they don't have the equipment to properly provide an entire area with power. Think Sim City--the plant may simply be overtaxed. That says nothing about the amount of fuel available.

Re:Tough call

[MindlessAutomata]

That is, until it ain't cheap. Then f-ck you! Thanks for helping out, eh, raping the commons?

Might as well hire a "Commons Czar" that dictates everything we do result in maximum efficiency and utility for the whole, the commons. He can shuffle around food, power resources (yay!), and even jobs as he sees fit.

Re:Tough call

[Anonymous Coward]

"Power that isn't then available for running manufacturing plants, hospitals, and other things that generate real wealth, and require a tax-funded power plant to compensate for."

Or you can do nothing. The price of power will go up, fall, and settle at a new price point as more power plants are built to cope with increased demand.

Power isn't a 'commons' resource - it's rivalrous and excludable. This means that me using your power deprives you of some of it (rivalrous), and you can keep me from using it (excludable). A 'commons' resource is rivalrous but not excludable.

Oh, and on the point of plasma, someone might think that he's going to be using the TV for less time then the cost of power for a plasma starts to overtake the cost of power for an LCD. As another poster here mentions, the price difference between the two for per-hour costs isn't that much, so you'd have to use it for a very long time - potentially longer than the life of the set itself ! - to get to the point where LCD is cheaper.

We can also consider goods that are non-rivalrous but excludable. If any number of people can share the same good, how could someone prevent someone from using it? Well, they go to the government and petition for excludability. Think about patents. Many industries have hundreds if not thousands of patents and holders each demanding their own per unit royalty. By excluding many non-rivalrous goods, no one can make use of them together, and we all suffer.

Of course, if you were to tell this to your senator and make a case for abolishing copyrights and patents, you'd be laughed out of the room! In governments, the only ones who get their things done are the lobbyists and a croud of about four million bleating lambs. Hence why most laws are boneheaded regulations - or, in some cases, deregulations - to help some small minority at the expense of everyone else.

Re:Tough call

[MindlessAutomata]

So... consumers are short sighted? Thanks for making my point!

Just had to reply to this one as well, as it was too cute. If you think that consumers are short sighted, just wait until you see the US government's national debt :)

Re:Tough call

[mochan_s]

And this affects the commons because power is increasingly a rare resource being squandered to provide a 5' wide screen typically viewed 15 feet back that provides the same viewing aspect ratio as a 19" TV at 4 feet at 11x the power. Power that isn't then available for running manufacturing plants, hospitals, and other things that generate real wealth, and require a tax-funded power plant to compensate for.

By the same logic, people should not partake in recreational strenuous activities like sports because they need to consume more food by expending energy. Then, the land freed up from less agriculture could be used to increase wealth.

In this case, people are notoriously bad at figuring long term expenses that are sustained and slightly elevated. People will tend to pay $10,000 over the life of a car for a "cheaper" model that costs $4,000 less. They'll tend to buy the plasma TV that costs $300 less than the $2000 LED TV that lasts twice as long and uses 30% less electricity.

People who watch movies with their families will buy the plasma but the pro-gamer who spends over 10 hours/day gaming will go for the LED TV. Different people have different needs. On the contrary, I think people are very prudent in estimating long term costs (you didn't give a reason why for your assumption so I don't need to give mine as well).

Everything that has a price is a rare resource. And, not everything is equally rare.

Re:Tough call

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the free market can destroy monopolies. The monopoly can only exist for so long as they can continue maintaining their economies of scale. If they get too cocky, they will make bad mistakes, and then they will stumble as other people pop up to compete.

Remember when Microsoft killed Netscape, and everyone thought they were unstoppable? Nowadays OSX and Ubuntu are making slow-but-constant market share gains, while Firefox (ironically based off the Netscape codebase) is accounting for around 30% of HTTP traffic nowadays. OpenOffice.org (or a lighter equivalent app) can be easily installed as well.

My point is? Monopolies aren't absolute - you can still do the impossible, see the invisible, punch the untouchable, break the unbreakable, fight the power!

This is, of course, referring to the case in which market actors collude to manipulate the market. It does not apply for the case in which market actors collude with the government to manipulate the market - in which your government is corrupt and requires regime change.

Re:Tough call

[Zironic]

The problem is that some things that are a requirement for actually surviving have a very high energy draw. Heating, fridge and stove comes to mind.

Re:Tough call

[Anonymous Coward]

A new fridge will average ~60W. That's less than an EZ-bake oven.

Similarly, a stove peaks at ~1-2 kW, but no one cooks for 24 hours, especially at high heat.

As for heating, it only takes a lot of energy to heat a house because energy was a *lot* cheaper than materials at the time of construction. The heat isn't used for anything, it's just ambient. With thick enough walls, you could heat your home with your own body heat.

It's a tradeoff. You can have affordable housing for a lot of people, or you can have energy miser housing for a lot fewer people.

Re:Tough call

[virgilatmit]

I know the argument that you're trying to set up here between a slightly more expensive, but more energy efficient product, and a cheaper but less efficient product. However, the difference in price between LCDs and plasmas is neglible, when compared based on equivalent size and resolution. If you find cheap plasmas, they tend to be lower resolution (720p/1080i), while LCDs sold now are all 1080p. In fact, the most expensive HDTVs you'll find in the consumer market are Pioneer Kuros, which are plasma.

Moreover, your argument of the equivalent aspect ratio for a 5 foot HDTV and a 19inch TV if one adjusts viewing distance isn't relevant, because what one typically cares about is the detail that one can make out in that picture. I don't think you'll find a high def (certainly not 1080p) 19 inch TV, which is available on the larger sets.

Lastly, power availability is more of an issue for the energy grid during peak hours i.e. normal business hours. If your average TV viewer is at work at that time, then the impact of TVs to the grid is minor.

Re:Tough call

[noidentity]

In this case, people are notoriously bad at figuring long term expenses that are sustained and slightly elevated. People will tend to pay $10,000 over the life of a car for a "cheaper" model that costs $4,000 less. They'll tend to buy the plasma TV that costs $300 less than the $2000 LED TV that lasts twice as long and uses 30% less electricity.

For the car, money saved now can be worth more than possible money saved in the future. For the plasma vs. LED case, the technologies have subtle differences in appearance, and again, there's no guarantee that the LED TV will actually last longer, or that the owner will keep it for its entire life.

And this affects the commons because power is increasingly a rare resource being squandered to provide a 5' wide screen typically viewed 15 feet back that provides the same viewing aspect ratio as a 19" TV at 4 feet at 11x the power. Power that isn't then available for running manufacturing plants, hospitals, and other things that generate real wealth, and require a tax-funded power plant to compensate for.

If power really is a scarce resource, its cost will reflect that. If you want everyone to be more careful with power usage, raise the price. Your min-rant sentence there reveals the real motive: you want to dictate what people do in the privacy of their homes. If you really want to get people to reduce power usage by limiting things they can buy, why stop at the TV technology? How about banning TV sales altogether, on the premise that TV watching doesn't generate real wealth? Or ban water heaters beyond 10 gallons, since long showers and baths are wasteful of energy? What about banning houses larger than some size, since the extra space doesn't generate any real wealth?

Re:Tough call

[Twinbee]

But then would it not be a good idea to simply force the manufacturers to label the power usage by law on each set?

Re:Tough call

[turing_m]

By the time oil, uranium, coal, and natural gas resources all begin to dwindle, new technologies will have made new forms of elecricity generation economically feasible.

Right, but what are the unintended consequences of burning through all of those resources with nothing more than the hope that the invisible hand will take care of everything? Potentially irreversible and hazardous environmental changes, infrastructure reliant upon the false assumption of a never ending supply of energy exploitable at a rapid rate (as opposed to solar), and perhaps truly important uses for large amounts of energy (or power - e.g. try doing Project Orion with anything other than nuclear energy) are a few things I can think off the top of my head. For what? So a few bozos can get some utility from blacker blacks?

Re:Tough call

[Hognoxious]

He never said a TV generates wealth. The TV itself is a form of wealth, something you can use and enjoy.

Re:Tough call

[dangitman]

And this affects the commons because power is increasingly a rare resource being squandered to provide a 5' wide screen typically viewed 15 feet back that provides the same viewing aspect ratio as a 19" TV at 4 feet at 11x the power.

The distance you view a TV from doesn't affect the aspect ratio in any way at all.

Re:Tough call

[TheWizardOfCheese]

Not to mention: third, the initial cost of an item is often proportional to the initial externalities of polution and energy consumption. I don't happen to know whether this is true of plasma and LCD TVs, but it is true in many real-life examples. For instance, most of us instinctively dislike disposable styrofoam coffee cups - we can see and feel in our hands plastic that we will immediately throw away. But one requires many hundreds of styrofoam cups to equal the energy and polution costs of one ceramic mug. True, there are costs associated with disposing of the cups, but there are also costs required to clean mugs for reuse.

Paper cups are often preferred over styrofoam on the grounds that they are biodegradeable, but the advantages of paper over reusable mugs are doubtful. Compared to styrofoam, paper requires truly exorbitant amounts of energy to manufacture.

Re:Tough call

[ebuck]

The fact that we have consumer laws in the USA tends to indicate that even the USA knows that "let the market decide" is not a viable plan unchecked. Let's face it, the market had decided in the past to purposefully poison people for profit. I could provide lesser examples, but when that's the cream of the crop, everything else seems less compelling.

Re:Tough call

[ZorbaTHut]

It's also worth pointing out the investment issue.

Let's say I have two choices: a $2000 low-efficiency TV or a $2500 high-efficiency TV. Over eight years, the low-efficiency TV will cost $500 more in electricity than the high-efficiency TV will. So in eight years we break even, right?

Well, not quite. Let's say that instead I buy the $2000 low-efficiency TV, then take that $500 and toss it in an investment account. Let's say that I make a somewhat-frugal 7% yearly return. Well, it turns out that this after our first year, we've gotten $35 back. We pay our $62.50 electricity bill out of that, and withdraw a little from the account to cover costs, and keep going.

Year 2: $443.08 left
Year 3: $411.60 left
Year 4: $341.85 left
Year 5: $303.28 left
Year 6: $262.01 left
Year 7: $217.86 left
Year 8: $170.61 left
Year 9: $120.05 left
Year 10: $65.95 left
Year 11: $8.07 left

And finally, in the beginning of Year 12, the "thoughtless" people who bought the low-efficiency TV finally wish they'd bought a fancier one.

Of course, with just a little tweaking of the numbers, that can increase - or even invert. If we pay $50/yr in electricity difference, and we can get 10% returns, the expensive TV never breaks even. If we get 11% returns, it's just a blatantly bad idea.

Sometimes, spending less now and more later makes a hell of a lot of sense.

Re:Tough call

[acohen1]

I think the term he meant was visual angle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_angle) which is how many degrees of your visual field the object you are looking at covers. If you think of your retina as a piece of film, then a small screen at near distance can produce an equally "large" impression as a large screen viewed from farther away. Of course there are very few 19" screens with a wide 16:9 or better aspect ratio.

Re:Tough call

[Anonymous Coward]

But one thing that many of the "free market everywhere" people miss completely is the idea of the tragedy of the commons. I don't need to try to explain it [wikipedia.org] as it's already explained well elsewhere. But it's one concept that the "free market" Libertarian types completely ignore, at their own peril.

You might make some sense if you discussed "negative externalities" instead. You'd look more educated and less like a moron. The tragedy of the commons is more limited and specific in scope. The item in common is not typically "the earth". Rather, a pond that nobody owns which is bordered by a dozen houses and one public boat ramp. The tragedy of the commons addresses the issue of a resource used by many but owned by none. Contrary to your "reasoning", power is not an "increasingly a rare resource". Quite the contrary if bothered to do some research. It is not an example of a commons, it is not a place or a thing but a class of product. It is not limited like fish in the ocean or deer in a forest. Please, turn off the tubes and visit a library.

Re:Tough call

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the cost of energy today persist as fossil fuels become more difficult to obtain? Probably not, but lots of neat forms of energy become viable once prices rise. By the time oil, uranium, coal, and natural gas resources all begin to dwindle, new technologies will have made new forms of elecricity generation economically feasible.

Cool. So f-ck the commons, as it disappears, we'll get more desperate. Sounds like a good long term stradegy! (er, strategy? tragedy?)

Energy in general is not likely to suffer from the tragedy of the commons. If you go outside in the daytime you might see a big yellow ball in the sky, that big yellow ball (commonly referred to as the Sun) sends us far far far more energy that we currently use. All it will take to switch to using that energy is for it to become economically viable which will certainly happen if the cost of our currently used energy sources go up.

Now there is the question of the environmental damage from our current energy sources, but limiting electricity usage is only a stop-gap measure to counter that, what needs to happen is to promote the use of clean energy sources and discourage the polluting ones. For my part I buy my electricity from a supplier (or more accurately a re-seller) that only buys energy from renewable sources.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make in this post, is that we are so far away from the limit of energy available to us, it is effectively unlimited, and even if we ever reach the limit, the Sun will still keep on supplying us with energy for a few billion years yet.

Re:Tough call

[Anonymous Coward]

It very well may be bad infrastructure or the plant simply not properly keeping up with increasing power demands.

This is going to be a problem more and more in the future. I tend to read quite a bit of material on the power industry. In the next 20 years the demand for power is expected to increase a lot. The statistics on expected demand growth is used to argue for new nuclear plants. The big issue I have heard from most sources is that we do not have the required personnel and infrastructure to build enough plants to keep up. Companies are only so responsible for inadequate power generation. At some point, the population will be increasing too fast for us to build enough plants to support our current level of living.

Demo Video

[Anonymous Coward]

This demonstration
Pretty cool stuff.

Not the answer

[RockMFR]

The obsession with energy efficiency is so frustrating. Many of the improvements are done by using technologies that require more toxic materials, which just make it someone else's problem in the short-term (e.g., Guiyu). Our energy problems will be solved either by making energy production cleaner, or by decreasing the use of electronics (GASP!). They won't be solved by trying to use less energy to do the same thing.

Re:Not the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all: what energy problem? I live in the EU and my electricity works fine, even thought it's in the middle of winter and one fourth of my country's nuclear reactors are down for maintenance. And we've barely begun to build wind turbines and wave power generators. I call BS on the energy crisis. At least regarding electricity.

And the main reason that we are not building any new nuclear plants is that there are even cheaper ways to generate electricity, such as plants that burn municipal waste, or natural gas plants (although I'm not a big fan of trusting my supply of power to Gazprom).

The electricity companies themselves are not even asking for permission to build new nuclear plants yet. Can't those yanks Penn and Teller do a show on this myth...? Oh, wait. :)

Re:My experience of buying Cheap Plasma in China

[Anonymous Coward]

SONY do not make plasma TVs.

Not frothing-at-the-mouth, BUT:

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the FUCK does the EU think they are that they can speak of "banning" any such thing? I know we're all ostensibly supposed to be trying to conserve electricity, "reduce our carbon footprint" (whatever the hell that's really supposed to mean, BTW; to some that means 'removing as many humans from the planet as possible') and whatever else, but what it REALLY comes down to, is you PAY for electricity. If you use MORE electricity, it costs you MORE MONEY. If you can't AFFORD to pay for high-usage technology, then maybe you think twice about it? I know we all poke fun at and make jokes about the "Nanny State" mentality we see more and more of in this fucked-up world we're living in, but for FUCK'S SAKE people, it's a bloody gods-be-damned TELEVISION SET, let the MARKET decide, NOT LEGISLATION! :p

Re:Not frothing-at-the-mouth, BUT:

[TimSSG]

"reduce our carbon footprint" (whatever the hell that's really supposed to mean, BTW; to some that means 'removing as many humans from the planet as possible')

This brings up an idea I had; should Assassins be allow to form an Corporation to sell carbon set offs? Tim S PS: I consider "carbon set offs" to be wrong thing to do.

Re:My experience of buying Cheap Plasma in China

[Dixcuxx.com]

I just proved that Sony makes thousbands of Plasma TVs by visiting the official Sony website.

Harvey Norman?

[GrahamCox]

Since when did Harvey Norman have anything worthwhile to say about electronics design, or energy policy for that matter? I'm not sure of their international reach but here in Australia they're simply known as "the people with the shoutiest ads". e.g.:

"BRING YOUR TRUCK BRING YOUR TRAILER BRING YOUR CASH!!!! HARVEY NORMAN'S HARDLY NORMAL SALE IS NOW ON!!!!!" etc, etc, ad nauseam.

They have a vested interest in shifting as many Plasma TVs as possible, and who cares about the environmental cost, so *obviously* they would say that wouldn't they? Let's hear from someone with valid, objective credentials, please.

Re:Harvey Norman?

[sleeponthemic]

Totally in agreement with you, except the fact that you miss the most crucial part of their ads - their interest free terms.

Re:Harvey Norman?

[DavidpFitz]

Harvey also has the shoutiest ads in Ireland ....

Have a listed to this - you'll get a giggle.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=d9S4Z7cER0o

Re:Harvey Norman?

[dohzer]

I was shocked when I saw the words "Harvey Norman" on here. For a second I was thinking they must have expanded into Europe and the US. Still... after looking online it appears they have reached further than I thought.

Re:Harvey Norman?

[PepsiMax]

Why is an ad hominem attack considered insightful? I thought this was news for 'nerds'.

Hello

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,

Jimmy from Canada. I find that when people dump all the preconceived notions of society, they tend to be better observers. Therefore in my professional opinion and observational studies of human nature through people watching: A Gay American in that regard does have an advantage over others in observing things, he/she/it feels, sees or studies. As long as the individual or test subject in this case keeps an open mind, much is possible

Jimmy
Drug Intervention

Figures?

[1u3hr]

Having read TFA, in two pages complaining about restrictions on power use, that the only data we were given on the electricity consumption that is the centre of the problem were vague comparisons:

• "Some of the larger models can take as much electricity to run as a fridge freezer they say."
• "a new range of plasma screens that used 40 percent less power than current models."
• "lower than some LCD TV's and significantly lower than a great deal of domestic appliances."
• "new models that have cut power consumption by up to 50%"

For God's sake HOW MANY FUCKING WATTS DO THEY USE? When they studiously avoid giving any numbers in a two page article, one has to assume it is not good.

Re:Figures?

[Jason Pollock]

The answer is, "not very much"

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6475_7-6400401-3.html

Re:Figures?

[1u3hr]

The answer is, "not very much"

Are you being ironic? Because that doesn't look like a figure to me.

I know that I could find out easily enough, probably in the link you gave. But why the aversion to stating a number up front?

Re:Figures?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the link lists several dozen different models across several brands and types of displays.

Just click the link.

Re:Figures?

[BBird]

ok -- from the table figures --
(whats -- power on)

mean 256
mode 150
max 610
min 91
stdev 107

Re:Figures?

[Fzz]

Looking at the 50-inch plasma screens, the lowest is 163W and the highest is 609W. That's quite a range. Maybe it really is worthwhile setting legally enforced efficiency standards, because it's clear the industry hasn't sorted the issue out.

Re:Figures?

[Ada_Rules]

Looking at the 50-inch plasma screens, the lowest is 163W and the highest is 609W. That's quite a range. Maybe it really is worthwhile setting legally enforced efficiency standards, because it's clear the industry hasn't sorted the issue out.

Looking at the moderation scores I see some comments get flagged in the negative territory and others go as high as 5. Maybe it is worthwhile setting legally enforced slashdot commenting standards, because it's clear the digerati hasn't sorted the issue out.

Re:Figures?

[AK Marc]

When your moderation affects your neighbor, then you'd have an analogy. However, it doesn't, so all you have is useless rhetorical nonsense. If everyone in the US picked the TV at the lowest end of the scale, we'd save billions every year. A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking about real money. And the real issue is that there is absolutely no way for a consumer to know. The "regulations" should be nothing more than something like the energy star ratings common on most household appliances. This would be nothing more than adding one more appliance to the list, not an end of the world change it keeps being made out to be here.

Re:Figures?

[ebuck]

Accoring to CNET the average plasma uses about 340 watts per hour. Mine uses about 700. The average LCD uses about 210, which is about the same as a read projection TV.

My TV doesn't beat the refrigerator, but it's close. Also, my TV isn't a 50+" model, if I had bought a larger one, it would easily use more energy than anything except perhaps the hot water heater.

Re:Figures?

[Exp315]

Ok, here's a number: I put a power meter on my 42-inch Panasonic plasma, and on my normal viewing settings it consumes an average of 160 watts. I see occasional peaks up to over 400 watts when the screen flashes bright. That's compared to a rated MAXIMUM power consumption of 450 watts. Like Panasonic says, it's comparable to the average power consumption of a similar size LCD screen. Even with heavy viewing, I figure I would use less than 200 kwh a year, so the numbers being given out in these news articles are ludicrously far from reality. The problem here is that non-technical people just don't seem to get it about the difference between maximum and average power consumptions and how it varies between the different technologies. The horrifying thing is that ignorant government legislators continue to propose useless environmental measures based on incorrect understanding.

Re:Figures?

[Craig Davison]

I think you just mean watts, not watts per hour.

Another common unit for power is kilowatt hours per year (1 W = 8.77 kWh/yr).

Re:Figures?

[1u3hr]

so the numbers being given out in these news articles are ludicrously far from reality,/i>

My point was that NO numbers were in the news articles. So you can't even begin to rationally debate the question.

The EcoFascists have arrived

[QuantumG]

It's one thing to care about the environment. It's another thing entirely to use the force of criminal law to impose your conservationist concerns on the rest of society.

Re:The EcoFascists have arrived

[3.5 stripes]

Oh look, a whiny libertarian tacking fascist onto the end of a concept that effects the only thing he values, his wallet.

How novel.

Re:The EcoFascists have arrived

[QuantumG]

Huh? If they made the price of 100W lightbulbs excessive then it would affect my wallet, but they didn't, they banned it.

Re:The EcoFascists have arrived

[Xest]

So you're saying it's okay for them to regulate price, but not to regulate the ability to sell at all?

Regulating the price to that extreme would mean nowhere would stock them anyway so you still wouldn't get hold of them. The net effect would be the same - removal from sale, so what's the problem exactly?

Your outburst just sounds like an excuse to rant at environmentalists. What's wrong, are you mad at them because they're making you pay the actual price of your polluting products (i.e. the cost of the item AND the cost of the damage caused by the pollutants from using it)? Tough shit, everyone else has to live on the planet too. Your right to pollute isn't anymore important than anyone elses right to live on a clean, healthy planet. If you want to pollute, you can pay the cost to clean that up too rather than expect everyone else to clean up after you.

Re:The EcoFascists have arrived

[stdarg]

What's wrong, are you mad at them because they're making you pay the actual price of your polluting products (i.e. the cost of the item AND the cost of the damage caused by the pollutants from using it)?

How is the cost (in dollar figures) of the damage calculated? Is it based on real-world cleanup costs? For the case we're talking about, electricity usage, it seems impossible to calculate because the central tax body doesn't know where I get my electricity from.

Also, environmentalists tend to count this cost many times. When a power plant is built, they want to count the hidden costs. Then when we use inefficient light bulbs, they want to count the hidden costs again!

For example, according to this article, users of electricity from nuclear power plants have paid $14.8 billion into a fund to manage nuclear waste, as of 2007. So it's at least partially paid for. (I have no idea if that's enough to cover it all.) How much do you want to bet that in a typical argument over the "true" cost of nuclear power, environmentalists will conveniently bring up the specter of nuclear waste as one of those hidden costs that need to be accounted for by taxing plasma TVs and high wattage light bulbs?

The most logical thing would be to calculate the future cleanup cost, since in reality no cleanup of any worthwhile scale is going on now. If we assume technology will advance to the point where cleanup costs are small, then it's not fair to have a large tax for it now. If we assume technology won't advance to that point, then we at least need a real estimate based on the foreseeable end of *current* technology.

Look at nuclear waste again. Right now you might say the cleanup cost is very high because the waste needs to be secured and stored for thousands of years. What if we reprocess it instead? Politically, it's not an option for now because of nuclear proliferation woes. But in 50, 100, or 200 years when every country on Earth has nuclear weapons, it will make a lot of sense. Why should we operate under the assumption that nuclear waste will have to be safeguarded for 8000 years, rather than 200?

Re:The EcoFascists have arrived

[Xest]

Yeah, I certainly don't disagree that it's a difficult problem. Moving to more efficient nuclear platforms is certainly my preferred option too.

One thing I do think for sure though is that it's not a cost that should continue to be ignored- certainly that has been the case when it comes to the manufacture, distribution and eventual disposal of these things for example, even if it's a much more grey area when it comes to the actual power costs. I'd say perhaps disposal is the biggest problem of the last 10 years out of all of it- when you look at the dumps in Africa, that have cost little to dump but are causing uncountable amounts of damage in environmental effects and even poor health for the people who live in those areas I'd say it's certainly a big issue still.

Lets not forget their radio emissions...

[Biogenesis]

In addition to being power hungry, plasma TVs also give off a lot of radiation in the HF range, so no doubt a lot of HAMs would be glad to see them go.

Crybaby.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

It's one thing to care about the environment. It's another thing entirely to use the force of criminal law to impose your conservationist concerns on the rest of society.

Oh cry me a river. Hyperbole much? A little regulation on power consumption is not criminal law you stupid fucking whiner.

Re:Crybaby.

[QuantumG]

Dude, they banned the sane of 100W bulbs.

As in, you sell it, you go to jail.

Re:Crybaby.

[jcupitt65]

As in, you sell it, you go to jail.

No they didn't. Check your sources.

The EU has mandated a phaseout by 2012, it's up to member states how they implement that. In the UK, for example, the government and retailers are working together on a voluntary programme.

You can make a comparison with the regulation of fridge and freezer power consumption a few years ago. The EU put limits on how much power they could draw (banning the lest efficient types) and required that fridges and freezers should display their power consumption band (A for very efficient, F for terrible) prominently in the showroom.

People love having numbers to compare when chosing between products, so they now very much favour efficient models. Manufacturers are competing to get better efficiency ratings, something that wasn't given that high a priority in the past. Notice that the US benefits too, since these new efficient models are sold there as well. Thanks to EU regulation, you now have much more efficient fridges.

As a result, the consumer wins. For almost no effort (just a little light regulation) we now have much more efficient appliances, a noticeable reduction in our energy bills, and a drop in national CO2 output.

What's happening here is the same thing, but with TVs. You can expect this type of regulation to spread to other electrical appliances in time. And it's been such a success I can see the US picking up this type of regulation as well.

Re:Crybaby.

[QuantumG]

Actually read the article.

Re:Crybaby.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Dude, they banned the sane of 100W bulbs.

No they haven't. (The EU will ban most 100W incandescents come September however)

As in, you sell it, you go to jail.

Completely wrong. Link to (proposed or actual) jail-time penalties if you think you're right.

OT: Your sig: Watching Idiocracy and posting on Slashdot at the same time is, umm, spooky.

Replying to people who are smugly watching Idiocracy & oozing their sense of self-superiority, when they obviously believe everything they read in the daily mail is, umm, scary.

Re:Crybaby.

[jcupitt65]

I did, the article is wrong and idiotic. Here's the EU press release:

Member States approve the phasing-out of incan-descent bulbs by 2012

100w blubs are not banned, they are to be phased out by 2012, with the details of the phase-out to be determined by member states as they choose.

Re:Crybaby.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Actually read the article.
--
Watching Idiocracy and posting on Slashdot at the same time is, umm, spooky.

You know - one of the best ways to show that you're a member of the idioacry is to uncritically believe everything you read.

Well done.

Re: "Eurofailistan"

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't resist tucking in a bit of the old sour grapes, eh? :)

I'm glad as hell I moved to Europe. Clean streets, low crime, affordable health care, and there's a nice pension waiting for me when I get old. And people are generally much more inclined NOT to try to mind my personal affairs or beliefs than in the so-called "Land of the Free".

You couldn't get me to move back to the US if you paid me. And people have offered to.

I'm in the market to buy - plasma or lcd?

[EreIamJH]

I'm told that in respect of the current generation (7th?) lcd is leading, but if I wait six months for gen 8, then plasma should pull ahead.

PPS: don't care too much about energy usage!

Re:I'm in the market to buy - plasma or lcd?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plasmas use high frequency modulation to generate the color, so they can produce deeper blacks because the light is truly "off". This also allows plasmas to have a wider range of black levels, at the expense of fewer "white" levels. As a result, some people complain that plasmas seem "too dark" and recommend viewing them in a dark room.

LCDs with fluorescent back-lights can never truly go black because they use polarizing filters to block the light. Newer LED LCD's can dim the back-lighting for higher "dynamic contrast." LCDs are effectively the opposite of plasma in color reproduction: they have fewer black levels and more white levels. As a result, many LCDs look "washed out" and are better suited for viewing in bright rooms.

As always, YMMV. Go to a store and pick your favorite plasma and your favorite LCD. Then ask for a demo of both screens side by side, using the same source material. Manually tune each screen to look its best, using a THX DVD or bluray. And be sure to view a wide range of subject material (and at several different resolutions). Pick the one that looks best to you.

Re:I'm in the market to buy - plasma or lcd?

[EreIamJH]

Thanks - yours is the most lucid explanation of the difference between plasma and lcd. Saved me lots of research!

Misguided

[OrangeTide]

Why not go after the big offenders for power usage? Lighting and heating? Or the stupidly wasteful standby modes on many TVs, computers and appliances?

Overly aggressive standards for something that doesn't draw a huge amount of power and should not really even be on for more than a few hours a day, seems a little foolish. People are watching less TV than ever, it's being replaced by computer usage. This is especially true in western nations (probably because historically we've been watching excessive amounts of television, especially in the US, UK and Canada).

Re:Misguided

[RMH101]

They are. In the UK the 100W incandescent lightbulb has been removed from sale to encourage low-power equivalents.

Re:Misguided

[thsths]

> Why not go after the big offenders for power usage? Lighting and heating? Or the stupidly wasteful standby modes on many TVs, computers and appliances?

They do. Standby is handled in the same piece of legislation, which an eventual limit of 0.5W. Lighting also falls under the same rules, with the least energy efficient product (the 25W opaque incandescent light bulb and its friends) bound to disappear from the market.

Heating is dealt with in national legislation, and for example in Germany condensing boilers are pretty much mandated, as is improved thermal insulation.

Re:Misguided

[OrangeTide]

In most parts of the US you can buy 100W incandescent, but the sub-20W CFLs are subsidizes so much that they are much cheaper to purchase.

typical british media, anti-EU rant

[petes_PoV]

They love to present the EU as the creator of "loony rules" and regulations. Then they twist the actual statements to suit their own biases. This content is fed to a gullible and ill-informed public to stir up the rabble.

What's worse is when other lazy journalists pick up on the headlines and make further embellishments, without checking any of the source material. Even when these stories are categorically denied, the lasting impression - from the "drip, drip" effect is to produce an anti-EU sentiment, which suits a few (usually foreign) media owners, to further their own goals.

In the end, we get the media we deserve - but boy, do we pay for it!

Re:typical british media, anti-EU rant

[Maimun]

They love to present the EU as the creator of "loony rules" and regulations.

The EU ARE creators of loony rules and regulations. This whole fight-the-global-warming craziness is just that, craziness. Most likely, there is no human-caused global warming at all, and the EU is fighting windmills here. Europe is facing huge energy hunger, that is evident, but the way out is to build more power stations (preferably, nuclear), not to limit the power of the light bulbs of the diagonal of the plasma TVs.

Re:typical british media, anti-EU rant

[jlar]

"They love to present the EU as the creator of "loony rules" and regulations."

[rant]
And that happens for a reason. We could start with the very basic fact that the EU maintains two parliaments approximately 350 km apart and moves between these two parliaments (one in France and one in Belgium) every month. This would correspond to the US Congress moving between Washington and New Jersey every month. Do you consider such a decision to be sane?

Well more to the point. I am a scientist and I have had the unfortunate experience of participating in several EU efforts to build a EU capacity (Soviet style socialism with centrally issued 5 year plans with the goal of building government owned comglomerates in areas that are currently served by a mixture of private and public players) in different areas. It is clear at least from my experience that the EU Commission viewpoint is focused on expanding the influence of the EU in the member countries and not on what is best for the EU citizens as a whole.

But you are of course right that most EU regulation is not insane. It is simply the amount and pervasiveness of regulation that makes it easy to pick the insane parts.
[/rant]

Re:typical british media, anti-EU rant

[daveime]

The EU, the loonys who brought you the "standard for curvature in bananas", causing producers to destroy perfectly good food because it wasn't the correct shape.

Something, that after 15 years, they saw the error of their ways, and repealed the standard.

Re:typical british media, anti-EU rant

[Xest]

As a British citizen I have to agree.

If there was one change I could make to the regulation of the media I'd say it should be to make them more accountable for what they write.

One example I recall is that the BBC and many other media outlets reported that in the killing of Stephen Pakeerah, a copy of Manhunt was found in the killers belongings and hence there was an inference that it was partly to blame for the fact the kid killed him by beating him to death with a hammer. The police however came forward and corrected the media saying actually, the copy of Manhunt was found as part of the victims belongings completely and utterly destroying the attempt to link Manhunt to a murder by the press.

Unfortunately, not a single media outlet posted this correction. If I had my way I'd make sure the media had to post corrections like this on the front or the back page of the paper where it's clearly visible. Also, I think it's only reasonable they should have had to pay compensation to Rockstar the game's publisher for possible loss of sales or damage to their reputation.

Instead though, they did exactly as you say, they posted what were outright lies and when the truth came forward they just ignored it so that the majority of the public were simply left believing the original, outright false story. What makes it worse for me, is when the BBC reprinted the lie that Manhunt was to blame I sent a formal complaint in. I never heard anything back, but instead saw the same lie repeated a further 2 times in later articles.

The media seems to think it's above the law and in all but a few (i.e. Max Mosley) cases, that seems to be sadly somewhat true. I still don't understand why it's okay for the press to follow someone around, possibly even tresspass to take photos of someone wherever they go yet if your average joe does it it's stalking- how is what the press does in any way not stalking? What they do fits the exact definition perfectly.

Re:typical british media, anti-EU rant

[ambrosen]

Why preferably nuclear? Coal is much cheaper and in plentiful supply for the expected life of the power stations.

Re:typical british media, anti-EU rant

[ChienAndalu]

Coal plants emit more radioactive material and also kills more people yearly from respiratory diseases than people died in Chernobyl.

Re:typical british media, anti-EU rant

[Anonymous Coward]

Why preferably nuclear? Coal is much cheaper and in plentiful supply for the expected life of the power stations.

Because it's a lot less disgusting?

Re:typical british media, anti-EU rant

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been told that the reason for this rule is British lobbying to support former colonies.

Whenever the British government (not just the current one) want to do something unpopular they decide that the best route is to push it through EU and then they can pass the blame when it comes back out again.

Re:typical british media, anti-EU rant

[dangitman]

Most likely, there is no human-caused global warming at all,

Why the hell would you say this, when almost all of the evidence points in the opposite direction?

Re:typical british media, anti-EU rant

[Anonymous Coward]

>Most likely, there is no human-caused global warming at all

Um, I don't think anyone is willing to argument with you on that anymore, not because it's true, it's just tiring to keep going over the same bullshit from years ago. Therefore we'll turn your argument around, how could it *not* be human-caused? How can a century of spewing CO2 in the atmosphere have exactly no effect, as you claim. If there is no effect from us, what is causing the change of levels we see then? Waiting for your proof, until then we'll just play safe.

Re:typical british media, anti-EU rant

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in the UK, or some other parts of Europe. We burnt most of our coal fuelling the industrial revolution.

Energy efficiency wasn't even on the radar back then, let alone a priority.

Actually, here in the UK we have a massive problem coming up. We have a lot of power stations due to be decommissioned in the next few years, and no replacements in the pipeline. The current government won't build coal or gas (too polluting), or nuclear (environmentalist complaints). We're left with a programme of wind farm construction that won't even give us 10% of the power we need.

Fuck you, dick.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's one thing to care about the environment. It's another thing entirely to use the force of criminal law to impose your conservationist concerns on the rest of society.

You are a fucking moron. My "conservationist concerns" are about MY fucking planet. The one I live on.

Go find your own space rock. Then you can shit on it and fuck up the air and piss in your own drinking water or whatever the fuck all you want. But when you're shoving CO2 into MY atmosphere and polluting MY environment and fucking up MY climate with your fucking TV, you seriously better think twice.

Fuck you,
The Rest of Society

Re:Fuck you, dick.

[QuantumG]

Ya, and such an attitude can be used to justify anything.

Not necessarily

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that would increase costs to the company (hires would need more than $4000 a month to work there).

So companies wouldn't clump together like they can and do at the moment.

Irrational legislation...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the fuck do we need legislation on the energy usage of a television? My neighbour has three large screen LCDs - his kids will often be upstairs watching TV or playing Playstation while he watches downstairs. Three LCDs versus my 42 inch Panasonic plasma and I'm the bad guy? (My kids watch TV in the family room or not at all - it helps me restrict their viewing and teaches them sharing and compromise...)

Re:Irrational legislation...

[NoisySplatter]

Well now you've done it. Just wait for the legislation limiting you to 60 inches of diagonally measured screen space per household. A government auditor will call you shortly to set up an appointment.

Re:My experience of buying Cheap Plasma in China

[SenseiLeNoir]

Sorry, but you are both wrong and right in equal measures.

Sony does not MAKE Plasmas, they may SELL them (and only in certain markets), but they do NOT make them (usually made by third party OEMs with a Sony sticker on).

And, at least here in the UK, for the last year or so, they have stopped selling new Consumer Plasma TVs (only LCD, and OLED), and that is according to Sony's own web site.

Yes, I am aware that SOME shops advertise "Sony Plasma TVs", but either they are extremely old models, imports or just plain false advertising. For example, look at this model, advertised as a Sony Plasma

http://www.plasmas-direct.co.uk/plasma_tv/sony_plasma_tv_screens/sony_plasma_tv_kdl40v3000.html

A quick look on the web shows the KDL40V3000 is an LCD screen.

EU does not ban, it informs people, pushes manufs.

[Moskit]

When energy efficiency comes into play, EU usually does not "ban" something, but it tries to inform people so they can make beter choice (=support "free market at play" argument). The second method is to establish some minimum/maximum value (such as for emissions from vehicles) to push manufacturers research better options. EU own wording is:

The energy demand in households accounts for 25% of the final energy needs in the EU. Electricity used for domestic appliances in households show the sharpest increase. Higher standards of living and comfort, multiple purchases of electric appliances and the growing need for air-conditioning are main reasons for this trend to prevail. Energy consumption by consumer electronics and new media as Internet is also steadily growing.

The response is to act in two complementary ways:
      * Energy Labelling of household appliances: Seen that the market of household appliances such as washing machines, dishwasher, oven, air-conditioning systems etc. are highly visible to the consumer, the intention is to increase consumer's awareness on the real energy use of household appliances through a liable and clear labelling in their sales points.
      * Minimum Efficiency Requirements: Compulsory minimum efficiency requirements will encourage producers of household appliances to improve the product design in view to lower the energy consumption at their use.

Electric appliances in EU are labelled according to their energy consumption. When you go to buy refrigerator or washer, you will find such standardized label on the device. Many people use these labels (or in effect device energy efficiency class) to choose better. Following page shows such label:
http://www.greenlabelspurchase.net/ha-eu-energy-labelling.html

Actual EU legislation is here:
http://ec.europa.eu/energy/demand/legislation/domestic_en.htm

Now, to put things in perspective: average electricity usage per year is 4000..16000kWh in US (source: Wikipedia), ~3000kWh in UK (source: electricity company), ~1600..2200kWH in PL (source: electricity company). In Poland this would calculate to 300-500USD (depending on exchange rate, which varies wildly).

According to studies done in Poland, TV is the fourth largest household electricity consumer. The first is refrigerator (33%), 2nd lighting and small appliances (25%), 3rd washing machine (10%). This assumes that you use gas for cooking.

Classic 21" TV (max ~55W) uses about 7-8% of energy consumed per year (in UK/US this might be much more), so you end up paying around 30-50USD per year just for TV electricity. Using large LCD (42", max ~200W) almost quadruples that number (yes, I know that depending on settings LCD might use less energy). Using Plasma (max ~400W) makes the situation even worse (yes, there are some optimization techniques claimed by manufacturers). You end up paying 4-7x as much for new TV as you used to.
Given these calculations it is clear that EU has started to do something about TV efficiency, as more and more people buy LCD/Plasma.

And computer? it's under 3%. Less than an electric kettle.

Re:My experience of buying Cheap Plasma in China

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I am saying, SONY never made plasma TVs and has only ever made LCD TVs.

First they had WEGA which were CRT and LCD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEGA

Then they had BRAVIA, the current range which are all LCD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRAVIA

Lots of people call any flat panel display plasma due to market confusion of the difference as to many people they are both thin TVs with no discernible macroscopic differences.

I Thank God I do not live in the EU

[kimvette]

This kind of thing is something government should stay out of. One cannot install a 100W light bulb? Now they want to ban plasma? I've gone CFL where possible and I have been changing some of the incandescent lamps with CFLs at my new office, but there are still applications where incandescent is the only solution; dimmable CFLs are still available in only very limited form factors, whereas incandescents are always compatible with dimmers.

Likewise, plasma televisions/monitors are still superior to LCD for various applications. Now, I *like* LCD far better (the backlight of an LCD can be changed, LCDs do not suffer from burn-in, etc.) however even though I am a fan of LCDs I cannot deny that there are still applications for which plasma screens are superior - black levels and color purity for example. Now, Samsung has brough LCDs a long way with zone-based variable LED backlighting (zones can even be turned completely off resulting in decent blacks) but the cost of those screens is 2x to 3x more expensive than plasma, and due to the medium used for LCD (the diffuser panel) you still get lighting from adjacent back lights.

Also, are they really concerned about power consumption, or is it really about corruption; corporate lobbying? I have a 36" CRT (a Sony) in my bedroom and it draws under 100w PEAK (volume and brightness cranked all the way up is 93W, which I found surprising - I expected it to be around 300W), according to my kill-a-watt meter. According to that same meter, 32" and 46" LCD screens draw over 170 watts. If power consumption is the concern, ban all the new sets and bring back CRTs (ugh!).

If you want to regulate power consumption regulate the real hogs - headache-inducing over-lighted businesses. Department stores can get by with half the lighting. Heating and HVAC in businesses; we turn down the heat at night and when we're not using our conference room (it's rather large - downright huge - and on its own zone) I turn it down to 50*F (although my partners turn it up to 60*F). Heat should be turned DOWN when offices are not occupied. The HVAC in our new office isn't designed properly so we've worked with the property management and suggested a design for zoning off other offices, and they brought in several HVAC engineers and techs and are going to be implementing our suggestions, which should cut the electric bill in half - AND improve heating and cooling of the entire floor.

Also, nix all decorative lighting on office buildings, monuments/sculptures, and so forth, and install more efficient street lighting which does NOT emit any horizontal or upward-directed light. This will bring a side benefit of bringing back dark skies, so we can see the same sky our ancestors saw just four generations ago. I live in New England and I have never seen a truly dark sky.

Around here (Greater Boston area), the single biggest polluter and energy user is the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority) - it has been identified by the EPA as the worst polluter and the operator of the dirtiest (and most inefficient) vehicles within the last two years. The diesel engines they use are outmoded and emit a LOT of visible smoke, and even the hybrid vehicles (some of the buses, etc.) are ancient technology using dirty engines.

There is a lot of waste of energy by big business and government. If government wants to regulate minor things like residential lighting and televisions and PCs, perhaps government should set an example by not wasting energy on decorative (and night sky-polluting!) lighting.

Now, I've never been to Europe (I have no real desire to go there except perhaps to visit relatives I haven't seen in a while) but I see footage of London, Paris, etc. all the time on television, and lots of recent photos on Flickr, etc. and electricity wastage on decorative lighting there looks every bit as bad as Times Square.

Now, unless you can prove to me that all the decorative lighting is privately owned and operated by solar or wind power, not made "green"
  through "purchasing" "green" power off a shared grid, which is BS and nothing more than PR that idiots buy into) then government needs to clean up its own act before regulating residential appliances.

Energy is not cheap

[wireloose]

This is NOT about how cheap energy is to one consumer. It's about total effect of having millions of televisions running at once. Reduced consumption on the grid. Evening is a big power consumption time at home, and the big uses are typically lighting, heating/cooling, and entertainment. Can't really do much about cooking, people have to eat. Lighting energy use is being pushed downward by movement toward CFL and eventually LED sources. Heating/cooling conversions are a huge expense and change in that area comes more slowly. Entertainment is the next easiest target. In a city with 1 million people in it to reduce their average evening power consumption by .5KW/hr, you've introduced an energy needs reduction of 3MWHrs for the course of the entire evening (5pm - 11pm). Reducing dependency on foreign energy sources helps any nation's economy.

Lets talk about printers

[Anonymous Coward]

The EU are only looking at TV's because of the sudden boom in large screen TV's now available which gives Joe Public something to mouth off about "Big TV's, loads of power consumption, naa naa naa..".

There are millions of other issues to look at more serious than TV's, such as my bloody printer. I bought an all-in-one printer from Brother that demands to be switched on 24-hours. Even in Sleep mode this used 3kw of power per hour. While in this mode it is silently using all my ink up, not sure where it all goes to, but left alone my ink will run itself out. I switched it off to go on holiday for 2 weeks and now my printer's black ink cartridge is blocked up. I cannot get to the nozzle. Brother say it is cheaper to buy a new model. What?? My scanner works perfectly. My Card slots work perfectly. The other colours, all work perfectly. Oh well, I'll just chuck it away then. What? Oh I can recycle it? Whoohoo! I'll send it all the way to China then, they can send it back as raw materials, we can send it back to China to be made into some other crap..

And why has the government given billions to the bank because they fucked up. I fuck up all the time, but nobody bails me out. Ok, so it was to encourage lending. "Here take this money, if you lend it to Joe Public you can pay us back later. "
"Thanks gov. That means if we don't lend it anyone, we don't pay it back. So, why not buy our shares back since the price is so low at the moment. Whoohoo, we're all gonna be, er, richer! Now, about that lending problem we still have..."

And while I'm at it, as a Northerner living South of the great UK divide, why is it that Southerners are arrogant tossers that can't even acknowledge you when walking down the pavement? It pisses me of, they see you, ignore you, and if you don't move out of their way, they either bump into you (they always say sorry), or they initiate a last minute shoulder twitch designed to almost miss you and at the same time cause you GBH. Tossers.

No, I don't want an account or to log-in, but this does not make me a coward. Ok? Ok? Why does everyone want me to create an account, what the fuck good does that do? Huh?

Mr. Grumpy (UK)

Wait a minute, I haven't finished yet...

How about heat?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen a lot of comments here indicating that most consumers would barely consider energy usage when buying a TV. Perhaps it is hotter where I live, perhaps energy is more expensive. My experience is that LCD has already won, and the biggest reason quoted is energy.

Personally I can't see the point in buying a TV that requires an air conditioner to run at the same time. Your energy bill gets screwed twice over.

Same as a fridge Re:Not banning plasmas.

[ET3D]

Interestingly, the estimate for energy cost of TV's, as mentioned in the article, is "around 822 kilowatt hours a year". That's about what a refrigerator takes (more than mine takes, and mine isn't small). Since refrigerators do all come with a label about power consumption (at least here), and other household products also do, it makes sense to label TV's also.

Restricting the TV's sold may be overzealous, but certainly labeling them is a good idea. An educated buyer can make decisions. Currently the power consumption is not clear up front, which is why it's taken less into consideration.

What if gas taxes don't cover all of the costs?

[bigtrike]

If the gas taxes don't cover all of the taxes of increased vehicle usage, then you're actually subsidizing driving, which tends to encourage people to do it more.

I would suspect this is the case, as that $0.36+8% would cost you about $0.015/mile, while your typical self sustaining toll road, which cannot receive federal funding, seems to cost 5-10x that amount. The rest of the money must then come from general taxes, and is therefore encouraging driving via government handout.

In Europe, Nuclear power is heavily subsidized to keep the air clean, so excessive power usage is actually costing the rest of the taxpayers money.

The invisible hand only works when the cost of goods is the actual cost to the public.

Re:What if gas taxes don't cover all of the costs?

[Arterion]

What you call a "government handout" should be thought of as an investment. For every dollar the government subsidizes in transportation costs, how much of that money is recouped indirectly? The more people that are driving, they more they are going places to either work or spend money, both taxed. More driving means more cars and more maintained work, which is taxed. More driving means convenience stores sell more products like soft drinks and snacks. More driving means trucks are hauling more products...

I doubt most people get in their car, drive around for a while, then just go home. Sure, sometimes people do it, but it's probably less than 0.001% of all miles driven.

I'm going to guess the return is more than a dollar. It's the same idea behind public education. Sure it's a big expense, but the return is greater than the cost. It actually generates value. The same is true of a lot of subsidized or "handout" programs. I've even seen studies that show it's cheaper for a city to give housing to homeless folks than to let them just be vagrants.

It's too late

[ebuck]

Or worse, they discover after it's too late. I looked into the matter after I noticed that my power bill took an unexpected increase, and that the TV in the room seemed to always run incredibly hot.

Man I was shocked! My new TV consumes more than four times the power of my desktop computer, monitor, and speakers combined. It consumes more than double the power of the old large screen it replaced.

EU and Energy

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the many Americans (and Brits for that matter) reading this and bitching about free market economics haven't spent the last few weeks freezing their nuts off because Russia turned off the gas taps. Wanting to legislate ensure that the EU can maintain it's energy production and efficiency in the future is a good thing. The cheap energy ride is over folks. It's just starting to hit home in Europe, how long till Americans have to start making these decisions too?

That change is coming

[WindBourne]

The idea of regs or cap/trade will not work. Something else always comes along. Worse, both of these will simply shift jobs elsewhere. The west is going implement carbon taxes on goods. That will not just equalize products like these, but will also allow countries that have cleaner energy become cheaper to produce at.

TV's today. Computers tomorrow?

[ForrestFire439]

How would you all feel if the EU started making these mandates about your computers. What if they banned, say, dual graphics card setups and high end processors and mandated that no computer could use more than 200 watts? How would YOU like being forced to buy a crippled computer with an Atom processor and integrated everything? This type of legislation has that feel-good "save the planet" appeal but things are a little different when it's YOUR ox getting gored.

Re:TV's today. Computers tomorrow?

[cdrguru]

Look, it might seem overreaching but the problem in the US is that virtually zero generating capacity has been built since the 1970s. The environmental impact studies, the endless public debates, the studies of how downstream heat might affect the enfironment and so on have pretty much meant that nobody is willing to build new large generating plants.

We have built lots of "peaker" plants designed to get us through periods where loads are very high in small areas. This doesn't solve the problem.

The problem is we're just out of capacity in the US. This is going to mean in a short period of time that walking into a room and turning on a light is going to be a completely foreign experience to the next generation. Too many people, too much consumption and zero build-out for environmental reasons. The end of this is that electric power is something the rich have and the poor do not. The impact on computers in the home will be significant, as wile the impact to data-oriented businesses. It may indeed be cheaper and more reliable to employ someone to use an abacus by hand than to pay for the electricity to operate even a small calculator.

Sounds wonderful for employment in the future. Lots of low-cost labor once again instead of technology eliminating all low-pay jobs.

I don't believe it is possible to conserve our way out of this mess. When it reaches the point where California turns off the lights people will probably wake up. Unfortunately, even without all the environmental studies it would take at least five years to build a modern large generating plant. We don't have five years.

EU might be different. They might be able to "conserve" their way to the future. I doubt it, but it might make then feel good about it for a while. In the US no amount of switching to CFL bulbs while running the air conditioner is going to help. Turning off the TV isn't going to help. Buying "green" appliances isn't going to help. Turning off everything and living with candles will soon be the norm.

Re:My experience of buying Cheap Plasma in China

[Anonymous Coward]

holy shit, a fourty-two foot plasma tv?

Re:Poison

[maxume]

That's just a local minimum though. Eventually...

Re:TV's today. Computers tomorrow?

[maxume]

What the hell are you talking about?

Current electric rates are plenty manageable for most people and largely based on the price of coal. The price of coal is not going to skyrocket forever (because the demand curve becomes much more elastic when the price actually becomes noticeable, versus the status quo where increases in price go virtually unnoticed), and any significant increase in demand will eventually result in an increase in rates, which will lead to expediting new construction.

I guess there might be a period of a few years where peak rates are quite high, but in the long term, energy prices tend to go down (think about the effort it would take in 1700 to supply yourself with the equivalent of 100 dollars (in 2009 dollars, which is a couple of days of wages for most westerners) of gasoline, or compare the percentage of income spent on energy in 1970 to the percentage of income spent on energy in 2008 (which may be the new reality, or may be an above average outlier).

Re:TV's today. Computers tomorrow?

[bnenning]

And don't even get me started on Xboxes and PS3s. 150 watts (not even counting the TV) just to play games? Complete waste, we can ban those outright. We've already decided that people's personal preferences are irrelevant when it comes to cars and light bulbs, so who cares if you'd rather play Halo than Tetris?

Hyperbole

[sycodon]

The question is, who sets the standards?

People who seem to think that a large screen TV is as dangerous as contaminated milk?

Re:Hyperbole

[KDR_11k]

In a democracy? The elected representatives.

So TV food???

[Anonymous Coward]

Quote (FTA): "Some of the larger models can take as much electricity to run as a fridge freezer they say." #end quote

I don't know about you, but I'd trade my refrigerator/freezer for a plasma TV and pack my food in salt and can my own vegetables. Easily worth the price of a PLASMA TV. If my salted food spoiled, I'd gladly toss it and drive to McDonald's to get my meal. If only McDonald's delivered...