appliances

Why is the White House sitting on efficiency standards?

New efficiency standards for buildings and appliances have inexplicably been awaiting approval by the Office of Management and Budget for months now.

This electrical socket spits out your power-sucking plugs

The PumPing Tap does not like wasted power. It's an electrical socket with a spring-loaded ejector seat, which pops plugs right out if they're slowly sucking energy when not in active use.

The idea is to combat vampire power, the massive amount of energy slowly sapped by idling gizmos, like microwaves that aren’t cooking or chargers that aren’t charging anything. The PumPing Tap (which is still in the design stage, sadly) monitors the flow of energy, and if you don't use a device for 10 minutes -- ptooie! -- it's unplugged.

Instead of buying kitchen gadgets, why not share?

If you’ve ever looked at a wedding registry, you might have a sense of how many uni-tasking kitchen appliances there are on the market. Most kitchens have more gadgets than they can hold, and most people aren't using their canning equipment/bread machine/cider press very often. So wouldn't it make more sense to share? In Portland, […]

State by state, appliance standards save money, create jobs, and protect the environment

This post was written by Rachel Gold, policy analyst for research at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy and a contributing author at the ACEEE blog. Since the 1980s, energy-efficiency appliance standards have been saving consumers money and creating jobs throughout the U.S. These standards translate into savings when new, energy-efficient equipment is purchased, […]

TV vs. Computer: The energy use showdown

Given a choice between spending an hour watching TV or surfing the Internet, which should you choose, assuming, of course, that your goal is not entertainment but consuming the least energy possible? This handy graphic provides the answer: It's surfing the Internet: At .09 kilowatt-hours per hour, your computer consumes the least energy of any […]

Now you’re cooking with gas: Ask Umbra on energy-efficient stoves

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, My wife would like to remodel the kitchen. This frightens me, personally, but I look it as an opportunity to buy some more energy-efficient appliances. Right now we have an ancient electric stove. Would replacing it with a natural gas stove be more efficient, or should we […]

Think energy efficiency isn’t working? Think again

Imagine a press release with this message: We’re not using more household energy than we used to — and the latest data won’t be available until next year. If you read that, I’m guessing you would join me in yawning and moving on to the next story. That is what the Energy Information Administration (EIA), […]

How Americans defeated efficiency with consumerism

The Energy Information Administration's Residential Energy Consumption Survey, released yesterday, shows that average household energy usage has remained remarkably stable over the last 30 years — even as appliances have gotten way more efficient. Why? Well, we just have a pantload more appliances. (Seriously, look in your pants RIGHT NOW. Do you have a gadget […]

Smart appliances are coming! (Some day)

The time when your refrigerator can have an intelligent conversation with the local utility's smart grid could finally be on the horizon.