Whether you watch minimal television or you're plugged in a few nights a week for "your shows," any viewer today would be hard-pressed to sit through an hour-long sitcom without being wooed by sleek commercials showing off energy efficient appliances and the benefits of an upgrade.
Kenmore, Whirlpool, Maytag, GE... the latest Electrolux commercial shows a busy mom's ability to plan a birthday party whilst storing an ice cream cake in a temperature-sensitive drawer, saving energy, time, and a defrosting dessert mess.
The World Economic Forum released a report last week called "Energy Vision 2010: Towards a More Energy Efficient World," detailing the trend of American homeowners and appliance purchase and use, particularly with refrigerators.
The report revealed that while most people are upgrading their refrigerators to more energy efficient models, they actually hang on to their old fridge and keep it running in another part of the house, say the garage or the basement, as a secondary fridge.
As many as ten percent of households that buy an "upgraded" model keep their older model. This growing trend increases energy usage overall and doesn't support the notion of buying the energy efficient model in the first place. The buyer would have been better to keep the older model refrigerator and just use one model in their home.
The report goes on to note that while the average refrigerator in American homes uses only 25% the amount of energy (while being 20% larger) than the older ice box generation of thirty years ago, the number of households using two refrigerators has increased — and the second model is nearly always older and less efficient than the primary fridge.
The U.S. Department of Energy's latest "Refrigerator Market Profile" for 2009 reports that 26% of households have a second refrigerator and this number will only grow, as it currently creeps up at a rate of 1% annually — adding up to about a million secondary units in homes each year.
According to Consumer Reports "Greener Choices" ratings, the updated energy efficient appliances save anywhere between $50 and $100 in energy costs a year. But those savings are essentially "canceled out" by the added energy costs keeping an older secondary fridge for beer and frozen foods in the basement. The DOE's report pins the energy savings for one household between $420 and $750 over the lifetime of the older fridge.
For the nation, that number pans out to savings of 25 million megawatt hours of electricity — around $2.8 billion.
So what is the logic behind upgrading to energy efficiency and then essentially undoing the efficiency with dueling food energy-zapping appliances?
There's the aesthetic school of thought:
The chartreuse model that was in your house when you moved in just doesn't mesh well with your new granite counter tops and modern chrome appliances... and the government is giving rebates for purchases of high-efficiency (and best of all, matching chrome!) household appliances. Seems like a no-brainer. Time to upgrade and ditch the 70s décor.
There's the shop-and-shelve school of thought:
Growing up, my family had two refrigerators for as long as I can remember: one in the kitchen and another in our basement. The basement fridge was home to my father's extensive domestic and imported bottle beer collection, and — depending on the season — holiday leftovers; the freezer was almost always full with whatever cut of beef happened to be on sale that week at Costco.
These refrigerators are known as "beer and deer" fridges in parts of the United States where hunting is popular and meat from the latest expedition needs to be stored post-butcher shop.
In a time when grocery bills have skyrocketed and sales are fewer and farther between, people buy in bulk... and then need a place to store packages of 38 chicken thighs and wings. The logic that most people follow in their mass food storage is that they're saving money on groceries... But perhaps they should do a quick recount of how much of those grocery savings is being rolled over to their monthly utility bill.
There's the easier-to-keep-than-haul school of thought:
The shiny new Energy Star model is delivered to your home... the kids are building a fort out of the large cardboard box... and the old model is in your living room.
When will you have time to borrow or rent a pick up truck and bring it to the nearest public works department appliance round-up? Or when will you find an hour to create an ad for a website or a classified to try to recoup a few bucks and have someone haul it from your home?
The easier option: plug it in downstairs or in the garage. Stick some bottled water in the fridge and some frozen foods in the freezer to free up space in the new model currently on stage in your kitchen. Voilà! Time saved, space gained.
But energy is neither saved nor gained.
To battle this growing trend, some state agencies and local utilities are offering financial incentives and free pick-up services so that secondary fridges are picked up when the new units are dropped off. Some retailers have gone so far as to not issue rebates for new models until they have proof from the consumer that the old model was disposed of responsibly or recycled.
Ecos Consulting develops energy efficiency programs for utility companies and government agencies. Chris Calwell, a senior research fellow at Ecos, shared his insight on the refrigeration situation:
The growth in refrigerator size, number of refrigerators in use and prevalence of second refrigerators is swamping much of the gains we've achieved by improving efficiency...
This doesn't mean the efficiency efforts have been in vain or were not worth undertaking; it means that we should continue improving efficiency and undertake a series of parallel efforts to recycle old units, discourage upsizing, and measure the right things if we want to turn absolute consumption downward.
The best case scenario is to unplug that older model full of frozen future meals humming downstairs. Downsize your shopping experience to fill the space you have with one unit. You may have to rethink how much ice you really need made during the day and what other things you can store in the space of an ice tray.
And when purchasing a fridge, consider configuration: a unit with a top-mount freezer usually offers more usable refrigerator and freezer space, and uses 20%-25% less energy than a side-by-side model.
As I've told my dad, a beer tastes just as good — arguably better, when you consider total price per bottle — when it's stored at room temperature, then put on ice in a cooler that doesn't require an electrical outlet a few hours before consumption, as it does when it's been cooling for months in an expensive-to-run '89 Maytag in his basement...
Brigid
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