The missing energy labels
A look at where online retailers are failing us and how they and the planet could benefit from fixing it.
The gigantic footprint of home energy
We all want to do our bit for climate change but, for many people, it can feel like the only meaningful contribution that can be made is recycling. It turns out that some of the most effective climate-action we can take as individuals is to improve our home energy efficiency — and the good news is that it requires even less effort than recycling.
“If I were emperor of the world, I would put the pedal to the floor on energy efficiency and conservation for the next decade”
Nobel laureate & former US Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu
Roughly 20% of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from home energy consumption. To put that in perspective, if household emissions from the US were treated as the total emissions from a country, that country would be the 6th biggest polluter in the world. I promise this isn’t building towards a lecture on remembering to turn lights off (although you should definitely do that). Instead I’m going to talk about household appliances, which accounts for ~21% of residential energy consumption.
The true cost of household appliances
In almost every household you’ll find appliances sucking energy out of the wall so they can dutifully convenience our lives… or at least be on standby to do so. These appliances have both a purchase price and an energy cost over time that varies depending on its efficiency. Typically, more energy efficient appliances will have a higher upfront cost
But, due to their lower energy consumption they will cost less and less relative to their counterparts as time goes on
An increasing number of countries have established organizations that provide detailed and reliable information on the efficiency of home appliances. This allows people to make better decisions for managing both their energy bills and their carbon footprints. In my home country of Australia, there is the ‘Energy Rating’ system, and in the US we have ‘Energy Star’.
If you walk into a store to buy your new TV or washing machine, you will see a bright yellow Energy Star label stuck to it detailing the energy cost associated with that product. You really can’t miss it, and shouldn’t, as it’s all critical information for your purchasing decision.
Unfortunately when you look online - it’s a different story.
Where online retailers are failing us
It’s no secret that shopping has shifted and is continuing to shift even further towards online experiences. Online retailers are currently failing to reveal the true cost of appliances to consumers. You might see an ‘Energy’ filter option on the search pages in a haystack of other filters. You might scroll down far enough on the product pages to see some info on energy efficiency camouflaged amongst the many other specifications. Ultimately only those that go looking for it will find the true cost of energy appliances online, but that’s not the way it should be. I’m sure consumers, suffering from one of the toughest periods of inflation in living memory, would appreciate some consistency and transparency here. These big yellow energy stickers that we all benefit from should be easily visible online - and the irony is that doing so could result in an increase in profits for the retailers who bother to do it.
How all of us, including retailers can profit from fixing it
In the hope that this post might reach the right manager, engineer, designer or really anyone who works at an online retailer of appliances - I have a hypothesis;
If you experiment with making energy information more prominent, you will make more money too.
Most retailers generate revenue by taking a % of gross merchandise volume (GMV). This means that a retailer will make more money from selling a more expensive item — so aside from the long term for customers and reduced GHG emissions, there is an opportunity here to increase profits at the same time!
Thanks for taking the time to read! I hope you enjoyed and perhaps take this as a nudge to check up on your own home’s energy efficiency.
James