New year, new energy standards for fridges

The new congressional budget might give incandescent light bulbs a reprieve from new federal energy conservation guidelines, but new standards for large appliance energy efficiency remain intact. These new guidelines, made possible by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act and set forth by the Department of Energy, outline the maximum amount of allowable energy in kilowatt-hours per year (kWh/yr) for residential refrigerators, freezers, and fridge-freezer combos. On September 15, 2014, these standards will be changing -- both for regular and Energy Star-certified appliances. That may seem far off, but some overachieving manufacturers are already selling their redesigned models in stores.

The DOE estimates that this update will save roughly 5.6 quads (that's 5.6 quadrillion BTUs) of energy as well as $97 billion in energy bills for models shipped from 2014 to 2043. It is also expected to eliminate approximately 295 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. That's roughly equivalent to the yearly greenhouse gas emissions of 57.8 million vehicles.

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Manufacturer response
Since select manufacturers have already begun updating models in anticipation of the September deadline, some of the fridges in stores now were built according to the new energy guidelines (while others still have the old standards). That can get confusing because the energy labels aren't intuitive at all. The new products might even show a higher energy usage than past models. Why? The new standards rely on new measurements and updated electricity cost rates (using the national average of 12 cents per kWh). For that reason, it's a bit difficult to compare the new standard to the old standard. But, you can sift through appendix A of subpart B to learn more about the equations used to calculate the new energy standards for refrigerators and refrigerator-freezer combos and appendix B of subpart B for freezers. And, you can distinguish models with the old standard from models with the new standard by the yellow EnergyGuide label -- they look slightly different.

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