New NRDC Report Looks at Small Network Equipment Energy Use

Last month I wrote that the Environmental Protection Agency was nearing completion of its first ENERGY STAR® spec for small networking equipment (see: ENERGY STAR Nears Completion of Small Network Spec). Since then a couple of things have happened.

On July 1 the finalized test method for the new spec was released. A summary of updates and well as the entire Test Method can be found on the ENERGY STAR website.

In addition to the Test Method, a new report has just been published by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) that underscores the need for the spec.

The report, entitled: Small Network Equipment Energy Consumption in U.S. Homes , details the amount of energy used by small networking equipment (SNE) in U.S. households. According to the report, SNE consumes over $1 billion dollars of electricity annually.

The data for the report was gathered using an earlier draft of the aforementioned ENERGY STAR test method. The NRDC measured the power use of 60 products. The following chart (figure 1) illustrates how current SNE compares with other household electronics.

Source: NRDC

The report then examines potential savings from using more efficient SNE products. Such products include gateways with combined modem and routing functionality and Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) devices. It's estimated that replacing existing equipment with more efficient models could save $330 million (2.8 billion kilowatt hours) per year (see figure 3).

Source: NRDC

Once in place, the new ENERGY STAR spec should help consumers determine which models are more efficient and which Internet providers offer energy-saving network equipment in their subscription packages.

Download the report form the NRDC website.