Your new TV may soon be a consumer relic
- Your say: Should TVs have an energy rating?
MOST current plasma TV models would be banned from sale in Australia as early as October next year under onerous mandatory energy requirements recommended in a report commissioned by the Federal Government.
The consulting firm Digital CEnergy, which prepared the report for the Government's Australian Greenhouse Office, also recommends a second tier of even tougher restrictions that would then ban almost all current LCD models from the market in April 2011.
The report was commissioned in response to a fact sheet released earlier this year by the Government's Equipment Energy Efficiency Committee that said TV power consumption was increasing at an alarming rate as consumers upgraded from low-power cathode-ray TVs to energy-guzzling plasma and LCD behemoths.
It found TVs were fast overtaking fridges, heaters and air-conditioners as the major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions from households.
Digital CEnergy presented its recommendations last Wednesday. The industry is being invited to comment on the 166-page report. TV manufacturers contacted by the Herald said they were still assessing the recommendations.
They include the implementation of a star-based energy rating scheme similar to that mandated for most consumer whitegoods from 1992.
Star rating stickers on TVs would encourage consumers to think about energy consumption before buying. Manufacturers would be under pressure to develop more energy-efficient TVs.
A Nielsen telephone survey of 1400 Australian adults, conducted in March, found 85 per cent favoured mandatory energy-efficiency labels on TV sets.
But Digital CEnergy's recommendations go a step further, calling for strict mandatory minimum requirements that would "exclude from the market the worst performing televisions".
The firm presented its proposed ratings system at meeting of industry representatives and others. TVs that failed to achieve at least a single star would be eliminated from the market.
According to Digital CEnergy's own tests of 116 TV sets, all but four of the 20-odd plasma models would be eliminated under the first-tier ratings system proposed for October next year. But nearly all of the LCD models tested achieved at least one star.
A proposed tightening of the system by April 2011 would make it even harder to achieve a single-star rating. This would exclude from the market not only all current plasma models tested but most LCD sets as well.
Digital CEnergy did not say which TVs it examined.
Jez Ford, editor of Sound & Image magazine, attended the consultation last week. He said manufacturers were concerned there would be too little time to respond with updated products.
"As a consumer I should be able to choose a superior product and not have it removed from the market just because it pulls an extra light bulb's worth of power, and so it's a consumer choice issue as well as just an unrealistic deadline issue," he said.
The Australian Greenhouse Office did not respond to requests for comment.
