New Energy Efficiency Standards Take Effect This Week In the US (nrdc.org)

AmiMoJo writes: Eagerly awaited national energy efficiency standards for the little black boxes on the cords that connect many of our electronics--such as smartphones, computer laptops and electric toothbrushes--to wall outlets take effect this week. Known as external power supplies, or the less elegant term 'wall warts,' these power adapters may be small, but they consume a lot of energy. With 5 to 10 external power supplies in the average U.S. household, the new efficiency standards are projected to save consumers $300 million a year in electricity costs and reduce the carbon pollution that fuels dangerous climate change. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) projects that the new standards for external power supplies alone will cut nearly 47 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over 30 years, equivalent to the annual electricity use of 6.5 million homes.

Comments

save consumers $300 million a year in electricity

[Rockoon]

...save consumers $300 million a year in electricity costs...

So $1/year/person. In other words, no savings to speak of.

Fixing market failures is a good use of government

[sjbe]

More government intervention, because consumers ARE STUPID. Plug all your stupid wall warts into a power strip, when you get done charging, turn off the power strip. Idiots...now another stupid regulation.

So I should waste my time monitoring devices that were designed poorly in the first place? THAT is stupid. If we need a regulation to get companies to design products that aren't needlessly wasteful then so be it. Fixing market failures is actually a good use of government.

Example of the Principal-Agent Problem

[crunchygranola]

This is an example of the very common "Principal-Agent Problem" which exists in some form in many, many commercial products and services. Manufacturers and service providers make decisions in effect for consumer that benefit their bottom line, but pass on all sorts of costs to consumers as a result.

In this case cheap energy-wasteful wall-warts that reduce the manufacturer cost but adds to everyone's electricity bill. Market competition does not address this issue since purveyors of electronics are not using "wall-wart power efficiency" in their sales campaigns, or even reveal how much power they waste if the consumer wants to find out (you have to buy it and see).

Only regulation by an organization that acts in the interests of the consumer can address this.

A dollar here, a dollar there

[stomv]

There are energy efficiency standards on all kinds of devices, including:

• Residential furnaces and boilers
• Mobile home furnaces
• Small furnaces
• Residential water heaters
• Direct heating equipment
• Pool heaters
• Distribution transformers, MV dry-type and liquid immersed
• Electric motors (1200 hp)
• Incandescent reflector lamps
• Fluorescent lamps
• Incandescent general service lamps
• Fluorescent lamp ballasts
• Residential dishwashers
• Ranges and ovens (gas and electric) and microwave ovens
• Residential clothes dryers
• Room air conditioners
• Packaged terminal air conditioners and heat pumps
• Residential central air conditioners and heat pumps
• Ceiling fan light kits (other than those with standards prescribed by EPACT 2005)
• Residential dehumidifiers
• Commercial clothes washers
• Refrigerated bottle or canned beverage vending machines
• Ice cream freezers; self-contained commercial refrigerators, freezers, and refrigerator-freezers without doors; and remote-condensing commercial refrigerators, freezers and refrigerator-freezers

(source)(pdf). Sure, the wall wart is small potatoes. Lots of these items are small bits individually, and they all have to pass a cost/benefit test (the cost of the incremental improvement must be less than the financial savings). When you add up all the bits and bobs, the cumulative impact is significant. It's not like DOE started with wall warts. It focused initially on the biggest opportunities, and works its way down the list. It's only because /.ers have lots more wall warts than the common man that it's even newsworthy for us.