Foreword

Appliances and Global Climate Change: Increasing Consumer Participation in Reducing Greenhouse Gases

Eileen Claussen, President, Pew Center on Global Climate Change

It makes a big difference which home appliances U.S. consumers buy. Residential electricity consumption -- much of it from major home appliances -- accounts for about one fifth of U.S. energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. New energy-efficient appliance models that use as little as half of the energy as their predecessors are available on the market.

Yet previous studies have shown little consumer response to the marketing of energy-efficient appliances. Although consumers stand to save money over time from smart appliance choices, energy-efficient products and programs to encourage their use have had limited success in the marketplace. This report prepared by Everett Shorey of Shorey Consulting, Inc. and Tom Eckman of the Northwest Power Planning Council takes a look at how consumers decide which major home appliances to buy, and suggests ways in which policy makers could encourage the use of energy-efficient products.

The authors draw upon previous experience from government and utility-run programs aimed at influencing consumers to purchase energy-efficient products. In doing so, they highlight the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches and analyze the economic and environmental ramifications of consumer purchases of appliances such as washers, refrigerators, and air conditioners. The authors find that a program's effect depends upon the particular consumer choice in question. The consumer may be considering an upgrade, early replacement, or retirement of an appliance. Each of these involves different economic tradeoffs, and thus different opportunities for policy intervention. The efficacy of a policy also depends upon where the consumer is in the process of purchasing an appliance. Different kinds of programs are required to get the attention of a consumer who is not even thinking about buying an appliance, as opposed to one who is doing research in Consumer Reports, or already out shopping in appliance stores. The authors find that future public policy and incentive programs will be most effective if they avoid a "one size fits all" approach, and instead adopt messages and communications mechanisms targeted at different categories of consumers, and different kinds of decisions.

This Pew Center report is the second in a series aimed at identifying practical solutions to address climate change. The Solutions series provides individuals and organizations with tools to evaluate and reduce their contributions to climate change.

The authors and Pew Center would like to thank the members of the Center's Business Environmental Leadership Council and David Goldstein of the Natural Resources Defense Council for their review and advice on previous drafts of this report. In addition, we acknowledge the input from appliance manufacturers, retailers, utilities, and government programs that contributed information and insights to this study.