Unnecessary intervention

I don’t like it when government decides to micromanage my energy consumption.

As Thomas Jefferson so eloquently first noted, some truths are self-evident. These are statements that are so obviously correct that to attempt rebuttal is to invite ridicule. Most today would agree that a 21st Century list of incontrovertible truths, inconvenient or otherwise, would have to incorporate two current necessities: (1) we have to find viable alternatives to burning fossil fuel, the main source of global warming, and (2) we need to summon the societal will to reduce the amount of energy we use.

There is less agreement in determining the role of government in bringing all this about. For me, while government policymakers should be encouraged to develop a framework to support public- and private-sector energy efficiency, I don’t want to see legislative bodies trying to mandate how I reduce my everyday energy footprint. Simply put, I don’t like it when government decides to micromanage my life. Yet that is exactly what the California Energy Commission is trying to do in its effort to prohibit the sale of big-screen TVs that do not meet its proposed energy-efficiency standards, a heavy-handed attempt to trim overall TV energy consumption by 33% in 2011 and by an average of 49% in 2013.

California seems to really like the idea of mandatory requirements. As part of its effort to cut greenhouse gases 30% by 2016, the state was recently tooling with the notion of determining which car colors are acceptable. From practical experience we all know that in hot weather dark-colored cars require more A/C than lighter-colored models. By using a reflecting film coating, the California Air Resources Board determined that 20% of solar energy could be reflected away rather than enter the car as heat.

Two little difficulties cropped up. First, automakers could not create a true black color paint incorporating the necessary pigments and coatings. Their best efforts have been described in the press as “mud-puddle brown.” Second, it turns out that the “cool paint” did little to reduce heat on the inside of the car, since solar energy mainly comes in through the glass, not the roof (Duh!). So in a moment of temporary sanity, California appears to have dropped the whole “cool paint” idea.

Apart from telling me I can’t be trusted to behave responsibly on the issue of selecting a TV based on its energy consumption, I have some problems with the California Energy Commission’s TV proposal:

• I can reduce brightness and contrast settings, which are fixed at energy-hogging retail showroom display levels at the factory, and cut the energy consumed by a flat-panel TV by as much as 25% without any government intervention. To help you change the setting, many sets have a “home” mode that’s selectable when you first turn on the TV.

• Industry can achieve significant energy savings without the proposed rules. Consider what engineers have done in just the last couple of years. Current plasma panels—typically less energy efficient in full HD mode (1,920 x 1,080 resolution) than their LCD counterparts offer a display efficiency of around 2 lumens/W, but work has been completed that boosts this figure to 5 lumens/W, with a concomitant drop in power consumption. Panasonic, for example, has new plasma TVs incorporating “Neo PDP” technology that halves the power consumption of the plasma display at the same level of brightness. This is good news to me since I’m a big fan of plasma technology: the inherent advantage of self-illumination gives plasma superior characteristics in several key picture quality categories including reproducing motion and displaying images that tend to be more uniform than those produced by an LCD. (Full disclosure: My TV is a CRT, one of the last 1080i, 16:9 models).

• The government’s voluntary Energy Star program is already working well. To bear the Energy Star logo HDTVs now must meet tougher Energy Star 3.0 specifications. To qualify as Energy Star compliant, a 42-in. plasma HDTV can consume no more than 208 W. More than 43 flat-panel plasma TV sets have qualified for these new, tighter standards, according to the Plasma Display Coalition, an industry group representing TV manufacturers.

• The California Energy Commission itself admits that its proposals will only save consumers $18 to $30 per year per television in their power bills.

Why not just let the market decide? If left alone, I’m confident most cost-conscious consumers will select TVs that use the least electricity.

Murray Slovick