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Consider the Refrigerator
Dec. 12th, 2008 11:05 amChu may be a bit too pro-nuclear for my tastes but he's pretty decent on all the rest of it.
Note to Detroit: Consider the Refrigerator - New Yorker Blog - 11 Dec 08
"Refrigerators consume a lot of energy; all alone, they account for almost fifteen per cent of the average home’s electricity use. In the mid nineteen-seventies, California—the state Chu now lives in—set about establishing the country’s first refrigerator-efficiency standards. Refrigerator manufacturers, of course, fought them. The standards couldn’t be met, they said, at anything like a price consumers could afford.
California imposed the standards anyway, and then what happened, as Chu observed, is that 'the manufacturers had to assign the job to the engineers, instead of to the lobbyists.' The following decade, standards were imposed for refrigerators nationwide. Since then, the size of the average American refrigerator has increased by more than ten per cent, while the price, in inflation-adjusted dollars, has been cut in half. Meanwhile, energy use has dropped by two-thirds.
The transition to more efficient fridges, Chu pointed out, has saved the equivalent of all the energy generated in the United States by wind turbines and solar cells. 'I cannot impress upon you how important energy efficiency is,' he said."
Note to Detroit: Consider the Refrigerator - New Yorker Blog - 11 Dec 08
"Refrigerators consume a lot of energy; all alone, they account for almost fifteen per cent of the average home’s electricity use. In the mid nineteen-seventies, California—the state Chu now lives in—set about establishing the country’s first refrigerator-efficiency standards. Refrigerator manufacturers, of course, fought them. The standards couldn’t be met, they said, at anything like a price consumers could afford.
California imposed the standards anyway, and then what happened, as Chu observed, is that 'the manufacturers had to assign the job to the engineers, instead of to the lobbyists.' The following decade, standards were imposed for refrigerators nationwide. Since then, the size of the average American refrigerator has increased by more than ten per cent, while the price, in inflation-adjusted dollars, has been cut in half. Meanwhile, energy use has dropped by two-thirds.
The transition to more efficient fridges, Chu pointed out, has saved the equivalent of all the energy generated in the United States by wind turbines and solar cells. 'I cannot impress upon you how important energy efficiency is,' he said."
