This morning’s New York Times features a story about the ever-increasing power consumption needs of all the various electronic gear and gadgetry found in the contemporary U.S. household.
The story also discusses the challenges facing efforts to mandate efficiency standards for this type of equipment. While reading the article, I was struck by how often, in stories of the “government trying to do something” variety, we find a paragraph like this one:
The federal effort lagged during the administration of George W. Bush, and the Energy Department missed a string of deadlines set by Congress. But the Obama administration has vowed to make maximum use of existing law, speeding up the adoption of 26 standards on a host of products that include microwave ovens and clothes dryers. Tougher lighting standards, embraced by both the Bush and Obama administrations, are due to take effect in coming years.
I was not, however, surprised to find a fear-mongering quote from an industry PR flack warning that any attempt to mandate power efficiency for consumer electronics would lead to higher prices, less innovation, blah blah blah. While it is to be expected, this sort of stuff is nonsense.
Short of a federal mandate, efficiency will remain a boutique feature, available only to the small range of the market willing to pay substantially higher prices—in other words, the same people willing to wait in line to pay a lot of money for a Prius. It’s only when they’re force by the government (as they have been with refrigerators, washers, and other appliances) that equipment manufacturers will figure out way to roll out more efficient devices to the wider market without substantially raising prices or cutting back other features.
Mind you, I’m writing this from my house, where I have two routers, a switch, five computers, a network-attached storage array, and a media server.