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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."
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.
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?
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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.
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.
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.
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