Halving worldwide electricity demand for residential cold appliances through appropriate policy packages

Panel: 6. Appliances, product policy and ICT

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Claus Barthel, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Germany
Thomas Götz, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Germany
Antoine Durand, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Germany
Lena Tholen, Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Germany

Abstract

Refrigerators and freezers (subsumed under the term ‘cold appliances’) are among the most widely used electrical appliances in the residential sector all around the world. Currently, about 1.4 billion domestic cold appliances worldwide use about 650 TWh electricity, which is 1.2 times Germany’s total electricity consumption, and cause CO2 emissions of 450 Million tons of CO2eq.

Although the specific electricity consumption per volume of cold appliances has decreased during recent years due to technical progress and policy instruments like labelling and eco-design requirements, total worldwide energy consumption of these appliances is on the increase. Scenario calculations were carried out for 10 world regions by the Wuppertal Institute. Results show that about half of the energy consumption could be saved with the most energy-efficient appliances available today, and even higher savings will be possible with next generation technologies by 2030. According to the analysis, these savings are usually very cost-effective.

All these aspects are part of the new website “bigEE.net - Your guide to energy efficiency in buildings” which aims to provide information about technical options but also about policies to support the development of energy-efficient appliances.

To initiate and foster market transformation of energy-efficient appliances it is highly advisable for policymakers to generate appliances-specific policy packages. Since each regional market has its specificity (e.g. energy prices, typical appliance affecting the cost effectiveness of efficient appliances), the barriers for the market transformation of single product groups are also specific and need to be addressed by appropriate policies and measures. Elements of measures to build appropriate specific policy packages for refrigerators will be presented in the paper, and the refrigerator package from California (USA) demonstrates the successful implementation of a sector-specific package.