By keeping it in service, it's making somebody poorer. Especially since the person receiving the free 30 year old power hungry refrigerator and keeping it for a decade is the least likely to afford a replacement.
Somebody already disadvantaged will eventually be stuck with structurally higher bills and find it harder to save due to this.
Those that's not your problem it's more a government policy problem.
(ok, in this case they gave it to someone that needs a temporary 'fridge during renovations, so it's kind of a moot point, they aren't just giving it to "poor people")
In one case, during the high summer, I didn't notice one was slowly getting warmer. I had constant bowel problems, because I was eating rotten mayonnaise. This was compounded by the fact that I bought fancy spicy mayonnaise, which I'd never tasted before, which masked the rotten flavour.
So -- my lessons learned, never by LG horrible fridges again, and keep an analog thermometer, which I bought for $5, in the fridge.
(General FYI, LG has had more than one class action law suit because of their compressors, and, they even make it very hard to obtain replacements. Evil bastards.)
My point is, you should take care with any fridge, new or old.
(edit: some clarity on mayo)
Note:
https://www.sciencealert.com/sniff-tests-wont-save-you-from-...
You cannot smell or taste all forms of bad food. At all.
In the freezers I also employ either the "freeze some ice cubes and put them in a baggy" or "freeze a small jar and put a coin on top" methods.
If you see the ice cubes have melted and refroze, then trouble. If the coin is not on the top of the jar -- same thing. Fail proof methods.
* Connecting to the outside world. I didn't go wireless because a fridge/freezer cavity is basically a Faraday cage, because I didn't want to deal with replacing batteries, and because high humidity + low temp = wet, sad microcontroller. And even a "flat" 4-conductor telephone cord disturbed the magnetic seal enough that there was a noticeable gap. I ended up buying a 4-contact, 1mm pitch, 200mm flat flexible cable to run across the seal. I separated the contacts with a utility knife, soldering them to other cables on both sides. I also heatshrinked the conductors individually and the whole junction together for strain relief. Then I superglued it into place. And 4 conductors is enough for ground, supply voltage, and either TX/RX or 1-Wire+unused.
* Getting a reading that matches what foods actually experience rather than the air temperature. The latter fluctuates a lot more when you open/close the door or depending on what the defrost/compressor is doing. I ended up buying waterproof 1-Wire temperature sensors (elecrow sells them for $1.20 each + reasonable shipping), 4 oz plastic bottles, cable glands, and propylene glycol (relatively safe antifreeze, though I wouldn't chug it). I drilled holes in the lids for the glands to run the sensors in, then closed the bottles up while immersed in the solution. Cheap DIY buffered temperature probe.
I currently measure buffered temperature, air temperature, and humidity, but really only the buffered temperature matters.
My thoughts are, these things are special built, and only wake every few minutes or so to burst send. Batteries tend to last a couple of years (but with the lithium ones!), and I get beeeeps from the receiver if it dies.
(Not knocking your solution, it gives you more flexibility)
For the readings, I only really care about catching compressor failure within hours, as opposed to say, days, so for a freezer that's normally set to -18, I figure I'll just do something like "alert if temperature remains above -14 for >2 hours." Of my 4 fridges/freezers, only one has auto-defrost, so I guess I'll have to take that into account there.
You'd need to be careful because many other manufacturers are using LG made compressors in their products.
GE and it's spinoff brands tend to do better.
What, is it chock full of exclusively ribeye steaks and smoked salmon?
That feels like a crazy number. I keep a lot of nice vacuum-sealed protein in my freezer but even then I'd say the value is $300 max.
How do you get to $1K?
Lamb is 3x the price of beef, for example. Name brand bacon is not too bulky and thin, 10 bucks for 500g. Some fish is expensive too. It adds up surprisingly fast.
When I was living well below the poverty level, I used whatever resource that was available as long as it was legal. I was given a chest type freezer that was made somewhere in the early 60's, but was in good working order, since it was owned by a person in the HVAC field. It wasn't very efficient, but I needed the freezer space. (Since we didn't have air conditioning, I could afford the electric usage.) Most poor people make decisions based on whatever works, not if it's the best option, because of the lack of money.
> as a stopgap until they get further with renovation work
I assume they know what they are getting into.
I had to renovate a kitchen a while ago and I got into the habit of living without a fridge or a freezer. It came as a surprise that this was possible, and the article is interesting because I now know how much money is saved. I can compare this to food wasted due to a lack of refrigeration, and, I am still seeing the advantages of no fridge. Such heresy!
It depends on what you eat, but I don't have time for most things that need to go in the fridge. If it isn't in the fridge at the supermarket then it doesn't need to be in the fridge at home is the general rule. Oddly I have lower food waste with no fridge, but there are annoyances such as not being able to buy a big bag of (say) carrots, and having to resupply twice a week. On the whole though, my food is a lot fresher than when I had a fridge, plus I have upped my nutrition game to not have this food morgue of things that 'want to kill me'. I joke, but there were a lot of ready meals, sticky puddings and much else that might as well been 'raw trans fats'. I went from this to a jute bag, which seems to keep most vegetables fresh enough for long enough.
What is also interesting about fridges is how quickly they turn into some cave of mold even if they are kept nice and clean. Turn that electricity off, take everything out, and, unless you keep the door open, some true horrors will be found in there a week later.
In the article this was not a like for like efficiency test by any stretch of the imagination. Over time it is the door seal that goes and, if that isn't tight then it will just be sucking moisture out of the air to make a huge ice block, hence compressor on the whole time.
The next problem is that some fridges have vents with fans in them, sometimes forward facing at the base. These get to collect lots of dust, hair and other debris, making them ineffective.
Despite these test methodology issues, in the real world people will be replacing an old fridge that has a dodgy seal with a new fridge that works as the manufacturer intended.
Regarding your point of the poor, do you have any idea how many people in the UK do not have a fridge, or access to one? Allegedly it is in the millions, which I find hard to believe, but have not dismissed out of hand. There are so many people living in sub-standard rented accommodation in a shoebox sized 'studio flat' (or worse). Proper housing is required before these people can get a fridge. The UK is allegedly a first world country, but with huge inequalities when it comes to property and income.
I suspect that in much of the world not having a fridge is no big deal, if you are living off the land rather than processed foods and processed animal products then why would no fridge be hardship?
It is amazing how many assumptions there are regarding fridges, the need for them and whether life is 'disadvantaged' without one. Until relatively recent times nobody had fridges yet we somehow survived, albeit with some mortality issues.
You’re presumably thinking of the “Affinity Laws”, which, according to Wikipedia (and plenty of other sources), “apply to pumps, fans, and hydraulic turbines. In these rotary implements, the affinity laws apply both to centrifugal and axial flows.”
This is, IMO, one of the worst kinds of science writing. Wikipedia, and plenty of other sources, make little mention of when the do and don’t apply or, relatedly, why they’re true and why they can’t always be true.
They generally apply to situations where a pump is pumping fluid through something like a filter or a long pipe where the pipe is a closed loop or at least the ends are at the same elevation (e.g. a swimming pool pump, except when pumping from a pool into a higher hot tub). So you have no actual work being done by moving fluid, and you can run the pump slower, and thus move less fluid per unit time, thus reducing friction in a manner that the pressure that the pump needs to overcome goes all the way to zero as the flow rate approaches zero.
But the affinity laws are not really anything fundamental about pumps, and they certainly do not override conservation of energy.
Now consider a refrigerator. The compressor is pumping refrigerant from an (approximately) fixed low pressure to a fixed high pressure. (The fluid goes back from high pressure to low pressure via a capillary tube or expansion valve or similar lossy device -- it gets its pressure increased in the gas phase and decreased in the liquid phase.) There's some friction, but after subtracting friction, the pressure is independent of flow rate, and thus the work done per unit flow is independent of flow rate, and the pump power scales linearly with flow as opposed to super-linearly as the affinity laws suggest.
Also, the compressor is a positive-displacement pump, and the affinity laws don't even pretend to apply to these.
(A well pump is another common system where the affinity laws will lead to nonsensical results. If you want to size a well pump properly, you need to know the height that you're raising the water, the output pressure you need, and the range of flows that you want. And then you look at the actual measured performance curves of the pumps (and their drives) that you are considering, and you pick something appropriate.)
All that being said, variable-speed fridges exist, and they're kind of nice in that they try to run continuously and quietly instead of alternating between full-power (and loud) and all the way off. And they are probably a bit more efficient because there's less friction and because the motors are likely to be more efficient three-phase designs instead of the not-actually-amazing single-phase motors you'll find in older fridges.
Modern continuous variable speed compressor fridges drive me absolutely crazy. They sound like two ceramic plate rubbing together with some maddening flutter.
Some also add incredibly annoying high pitch whines. That seemingly nobody seems to notice but me. In the same vein as coils whine from power supplies and other modern electronic.
Old bang bang fridges are loud, on lower frequency, and with a sound that is more consistent and stable. Not varying one second to the next, which I find easier to ignore.
I have started looking at how reasonable it is to move the compressor of my expensive and low quality 2025 fridge across the wall into the garage (refrigerant capture and refill, brazing new lines etc).
That drove me crazy for about a week trying to figure out what the noise was coming from... Pinhole water pipe leak? Cat stuck in the flue? Once I realized what it was, I didn't mind it much. It is better than loud old compressors suddenly kicking on and burrr'ing away then stopping.
The outlet are grounded with a thin non insulated copper wire secured to the nearest water copper pipe, itself also bounded to the iron gas pipe (this is 1950 electrical). I am not sure I can call this a solid earth ground.
Thank you for the info!
VFDs can produce nasty waveforms, and there are cases where “grounding” could be a big deal, but I think that the wiring of the ground terminal of the power supply is only relevant at all when it’s involved in the connection between the drive and the motor. So, for example, if you have a VFD that is far away from a motor, then you would want to make sure the VFD and the motor’s grounds are connected to each other and maybe even that the VFD’s supply neutral (average of the phases) is reasonably close in voltage to ground, keeping in mind that there may not be an actual neutral wire connected to the VFD, and that the motor’s ground is well connected to the VFD’s ground. By modern standards one should use actual VFD cable and terminate it properly.
https://www.southwire.com/medias/sys_master/related-pdfs/rel...
It would be worth looking into commercial refrigeration as well, you can get a refrigerator with a remote condenser and I’m sure you could find used equipment. Either way you’re going to have to run refrigerant piping and plumb in condensate drains.
However, in preparation for writing this comment I discovered Quiet Mark, which seems promising. https://www.quietmark.com/
Central heating on the other hand... I'm definitely never buying a boiler without opentherm.
(A fridge is producing a temperature difference between the hot gas exiting the compressor and the cold liquid/gas mixture coming out of the expansion valve. The former will be quite a bit hotter than the outside air and the latter will be quite a bit colder than the air inside the fridge. The smaller the value of “quite a bit” the higher the Carnot efficiency would be.)
I’m just a dumb electrical PM who knows enough to be dangerous, and I only know how things like heat exchangers, pumps, and fans work on a very basic level so this is illuminating.
Properly sized multistage A/C systems are a much better idea.
You are correct about soft-starters being a lot simpler and requiring less maintenance, as it’s more or less just another contactor inside a regular across-the-line starter with some extra control wiring to handle the extra contactor. Adding an inverter, rectifier, and solid state electronics does make the complexity much higher.
Here's the full clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioyU_sZufC8
Now, if the author would like to break their New refrigerator and report back, I’ll take it as an interesting result.
But at the end of the day the question is what is the likelihood the old fridge will be in a semi-broken state.
I'd argue that in general, refrigerators are one of the few devices that came out of the energy efficiency mandates as better products.
Very little has changed in fridge tech in 30 years besides them getting cheaper and breaking easier.
The Montreal protocol (1987) put us back into the dark ages with coolants for a while (both with CFC ban and later phase outs of HFCs). I suspect if you tested a refrigerator from 40 years ago they would give modern ones a run for their money...
It was obviously a worthwhile sacrifice for the ozone layer though.
There are better insulations out there, but they cost money and are harder to work with. For example, we could theoretically vacuum seal a fridge, but that'd require an airtight seal and likely a stainless steel structure around the fridge.
2.6 kWh/day = 2.6 kWh/24h = 108 W, on average.
There are some like ComEd that you call out that can apply the model to residential rates, though my (now dated) experience is that they are rarer.
That's at least kinda reasonable. I'm always amused when I see TV energy labels that state
xx kWh/1000h
A 75% drop is nice and much improved.
VA (takes power factor into account) is relevant for sizing transformers, breakers, wiring, etc but usually only affects your bill if you are a large industrial customer.
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/modern-appliances...
I will also point out that the way inflation has tended to work is that you can still buy high quality appliances and other consumer products (e.g., tailored clothes and built-to-last leather shoes), but when you do the inflation math you have to spend a lot to get the equivalent product from decades ago.
In other words, the same quality products generally still exist, the real issue is that a bunch of low price products that didn’t used to exist now do, and average people didn’t own as much stuff as they do now.
If you buy a $2500 Speed Queen or a $10,000 Sub-Zero you’re getting the kind of quality and repairability that used to exist in more appliances.
But when it comes to a $500 washing machine or dryer, when you adjust for inflation that product did not exist 40 years ago.
The other thing I’ve heard about this issue is that the mid-range consumer luxury type stuff is the segment to avoid: built cheaply but with a lot of features that fail and a high cost. E.g., Samsung refrigerators with touch screens on them. You’ll notice that most true luxury built-in brands don’t have a laundry list of gimmick features.
I would say that it’s best to get a fridge that has a simple ice maker that’s in the freezer and water dispenser that is in the fridge interior with no weird rerouting like having the ice/water dispensed from the door (which also reduces efficiency because there’s essentially a hole in your fridge).
As an example the Sub-Zero refrigerator lineup has a simple ice maker in the freezer and then the water dispenser is optional, and it’s accessed from inside the refrigerator.
I guess I'm not sure what the 1997 price was, so can't really make a comparison.
Fun story with the plastic feet, the delivery drivers either didn't know that they screwed into the dryer or pretended not to know. They left them barely inserted into the bottom and then put a shim under one of them to level it. I was standing there and kind of mumbled "can't you screw the others in" but dropped it and did it myself after they left.
But this is usually deceptively explained as being because they are far more expensive to make, when it is really 1) because of economies of scale when they are made in smaller runs often by smaller companies, or 2) intentionally segmented at that price by the same companies that sell the disposable stuff as a high-margin luxury option.
If large companies were forced into a traditional quality standard, the cost increase wouldn't be 5x, it would be more like 1.5x. It might creep up after a while, as the runs became shorter because the products weren't built to fail anymore.
I am ok with generally with having less ability to repair but I do wish more cities and companies and trade in programs for proper recycling.
It seems to be just complaining about "computer circuit boards" in appliances, much the way people did about electronic ignition in cars, despite actually resulting in a huge increase in engine reliability because solid state has so very little to fail.
I mean, maybe people throw out a perfectly working toaster when it can't connect to Wi-Fi anymore, (or take their car to the dealer when their entertainment system acts-up) but that's not an actual reliability issue, IMHO.
If you go for energy label A, some fridges have 101 kWh/annum, which is more than half less! I haven't seen many, and they are usually very tall, but hopefully we can see more and more in the future.
BTW, if I'm not mistaken, the energy label depends on the function. So 250kWh/yr could be (much) lower than E when the volume is smaller.
A lot of degrading quality in household appliances is the result of consumers buying the cheapest products that'll get the job done. Many people would rather risk having to buy two €600 fridges rather than buying one €1200 fridge (freezer sold separately of course).
I can get a full fridge+freezer combination delivered to my home for €380. Of course that won't last as long as the €1200 equivalent from forty years ago, back when that was the normal price for a fridge.
I suspect the power savings would be much less dramatic with a fixed thermostat.
The fridge rolls out into the room on its own wheels.
Worst was sourcing the parts though. Getting the thing out, effectively getting it up on blocks to run it and see the issue was hard work. Getting the specific totally non-standard o-ring size out of the manufacturer was impossible. In the end I resorted to siliconing but I just cannot dump something like that over a 5c part.
Meanwhile, with the exception of ice makers/water dispensers (1/4 PEX), fridges don't have to deal with hoses for the most part. So much easier IME.
That's so they don't tip forward when a rack loaded with dishes is pulled out. There's a fair bit of forward leverage in that weight distribution.
So I'd say they face the same kind of issues.
I just changed the casters on my 42U rack, without moving (or shutting down) any of the machines. Now that required some deliberateness.
Washing machines, on the other hand, tend to have a brick in the bottom to stop them from walking around on their own.
(periodic recommendation: if you buy a Miele, you will pay twice as much for several times the expected lifespan of a cheaper machine. My parents have a Miele dishwasher that's over 30 years old.)
When the parts showed up they came with all the clamps and other replacement hardware that I didn’t even know I needed.
So now my policy is to retrofit all old refrigerators with digital STC-1000 thermostats. A bit more work to cut out some plastic, split the hot wire and tap into a neutral wire (easy enough to follow the bulb) but cheaper, super reliable, and gives very consistent and highly controllable results.
Two such upgraded refrigerators are still working without an issue several years later. Though both required replacing the relay (with a solid state relay/capacitor unit) at about the same time, and one after replacement of the evaporator fan motor due to noise issues.
Electrically, you just need to: 1) connect both wires from the old mechanical thermostat to the "Cooling" terminal block (polarity doesn't matter). Or if your model doesn't have separate heat/cool the "relay" and configure settings for cooling mode rather than heating. 2) Tap into hot and neutral wires (going to the light bulb but BEFORE the door switch) and connect that to the STC-1000 power input (polarity doesn't matter).
Then configure the STC-1000, set a temperature to maybe 4C and set the "compressor delay" to at least 4 min, though I'm happy with 10. The default difference of 3C should be fine.
The plastic cutting varies by refrigerator design, but shouldn't be too confusing.
There is a wiring diagram for the STC-1000 in the manual: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71VSFdFfszL...
...and right on the unit: https://wiringandcircuit.blogspot.com/2025/04/temperature-co...
There are videos of it being installed (not a refrigerator retrofit): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30TvX1Zz1-Y
...and being configured: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQjicdtDVrQ
> [...] German ones can be a bit more of a pain
I did replace my dishwasher a few years ago with a Bosch. Uh-oh!
We too have a Bosch dishwasher so - like you - we'll see how that goes...
We’ve recently moved, and our new house’s crawl space has a Santa Fe dehumidifier in it that seems SO LOUD at night. I don’t think it’s broken - it’s just a compressor and fan with no engineering put into keeping them quiet. If I could get one that was as efficient and well built, but I knew would be quiet, I’d replace it in a heartbeat - but manufacturers don’t advertise noise levels.
Surely I can’t be the only one who’d pay substantially more for an appliance that was guaranteed to be quiet?
It's super easy if you live in the European Union, thanks to the Energy Label [1] which is mandatory on every appliance.
[1] https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/ecodesign-and...
I've never had issues with HF noise out of a refrigerator. It's always been the opposite kind of noise that has been a problem.
OTOH I live in a coastal city in south of Spain and every time I read a label that said food shouldn't be in a fridge but kept in a fresh and dry storage I ask myself where the eff should I store it there is no place like that unless I am running aircon 24/7 which I certainly won't do.
Your mountain home. (I'd hazard a guess that many such products come from the interior versus humid coasts.)
Putting the refrigerator in an unconditioned space wouldn’t be as big of a win as you think because every time you open the door to the unconditioned space you’re letting cold air into the house. Twice per refrigerator visit all day long adds up.
In the winter you actually benefit from having the refrigerator in your conditioned space because the waste heat goes toward heating your house. It would be lose-lose to put it outside of the house in a cold location.
In the winter your fridge's waste heat is warming up your kitchen, so if anything, its a bit of a bonus those months.
The only thing I think we could do with fridges is put in a system that pulls cold air in during the winter but that's sawing holes into brick and yet another thing to worry about in regards to mold, critters, moisture, filters, fans, etc. Its just not worth the effort or cost.
https://eprel.ec.europa.eu/screen/product/refrigeratingappli...
Rated for 113 kWh/year
I left a powermeter on it for one year and got 130 kWh.
It's amazing that the average power consumption is less than 15 Watt.
It was using around 29kWh/month before the leak was noticeable, the new one uses 12kWh/month. The new one is slightly larger than the old. The old model was freezer-on-top style, the new one is a less efficient freezer below model.
Hopefully the new one lasts as long as the old!
But the new fridge will not last thirty. Heck, he's lucky if it lasts ten. Five if he lives in an area prone to electrical surges.
Many fridges have DC compressors and decent enough input filtering, that should be no issue. However, the electronics themselves are another matter.
Most fridges nowadays have defrost cycles controlled by the said processors, with the latter being prone to even software issues. Some fans may not need a replacement, while the fans are cheap and ubiquitous reaching them is another story.
Did I read that right with 30s, as in 1930s?
That's an expected cost of old fridges, so I don't know that it's unfair. A major reason old machines are less efficient is accumulated defects (people too!). If I said comparing a new car's fuel efficiency to my old one was unfair, because my old one has a lot of problems, you might say that's very fair.
If the comparison is meant to show the drop in efficiency as part of age and usage, then yes.
However, if you wanted to _only_ compare design upgrades, you don't want wear and tear to confound the results.
Is it really normal to want an off the line 2025 Tesla and a 1985 Lincoln Towncar with 376k miles on its second motor with a missing cat that was stolen last month for a quarter mile comparison?
If it's a simple as not driving the old one with punctured tires and replacing those first to get a dramatically different comparison then no i'd say it's unfair.
Replacing a broken thermostat or fixing a rubber seal isn't a huge thing. Why else make the comparison? Who cares about this broken one?
If you're comparing technologies, then you want to eliminate the variable of condition.
If you are comparing the values or efficiency of actual old fridges and new fridges - for example, to decide whether to replace the old ones - then it's false data to assume the old fridges are in the same condition as new ones.
I’ve personally seen it in the appliances I’ve bought where I’ll run an appliance for 15-20 years, but the same model. They will largely look identical but when disassembled, the newer model trades metal part for plastic or the material is thinner.
Ice buildup on the cooling element is normal in old fridges - you need to melt them down occasionally - we used to do this once a year, as ice insulates the element from the inside of the fridge and prevents it from working properly.
I thought this was common knowledge.
However, LED light bulbs are worth buying, the cheap ones (less than $3) repay their price in several months even with our electricity pricing.
And why China has cheap electricity? They don't have much oil.
Could it be that electricity price is based not on real expenses, but simply on "how much they can pay" principle?
Anyway, Western Europe stands out as a dark spot on mostly light-colored map.
Globally, most electricity is not generated via oil anyway. China has cheap energy in part because they have a planned economy and a large usage of cheap energy sources such as solar and coal.
[AI driven] data center power consumption is real and as of right now, it seems like other consumers are subsidizing it.
The cause can be a lot of things, from broken drain pipes to damaged door seals. A well-functioning fridge shouldn't have (much) ice buildup unless you live in a hot and humid area.
Some modern fridges (usually the luxury models) also have features to defrost themselves if they detect that there may be frost buildup, but many fridges still have you do it manually.
I’ve been trying to measure home power consumption with these plugs (and the ones from IKEA) but I’ve been getting suspicious readings for inductive loads.
Should be fine for modern fridges but older fridges may overwhelm the circuitry.
In most real non-resi situations, you'd probably isolate the hot leg and put a good CT (current clamp) on it and read that. The great thing about that is you haven't added anything in the power path for the device, like a shunt which is what most smart plugs use. Current clamps are good for a lot more current (though I guess a proper shunt could do it too). The easiest way to do this in your setting is to find a good UL-listed electrical box with cable glands, a short piece of DIN rail, a male and female plug pigtail, some proper THHN wire and wirenets and a Shelly 50A EM Pro, and just graft the EM Pro into the box and wire it up with it's CT. You've now got something signficantly more durable and probably safer (and correctly specced for the load). I've done other things like using an HV Labjack and some good CTs or other one or few off designs. There's lots of stuff in the commercial/industrial space that does this well but it tends to be $$$. Again, for the sake of my own family, I wouldn't use non-UL stuff (most plugs and things that go in gangboxes that are "smart" aren't UL listed, and MAYBE are ETL) as you who knows how much or how well it's tested.
Hall effect would also be possible, but more expensive.
Ha! Good luck with that.
The last time I bought a brand new freezer... it died in under 5 years... can't remember the brand... some asian import to Canada here.
I went out and bought a used kenmore I think it was off of Marketplace... >15 years old and it lasted longer than the brand new one did... at 1/4 the price!
These were both chest freezers and besides it's compressor being slightly louder, I doubt it used much more energy at all. If anything, it was probably insulated better, and used less I would imagine. It was much heavier, at least.
abraxas•3mo ago
stereo•3mo ago
Estonia joined the EU in 2004, and I don’t know what the energy labelling on appliances was like before then.
zikduruqe•3mo ago
https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade...
"Eliminate energy efficiency standards for appliances. Pursuant to the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 as amended, the agency is required to set and periodically tighten energy and/or water efficiency standards for nearly all kinds of commercial and household appliances, including air conditioners, furnaces, water heaters, stoves, clothes washers and dryers, refrigerators, dishwashers, light bulbs, and showerheads. Current law and regulations reduce consumer choice, drive up costs for consumer appliances, and emphasize energy efficiency to the exclusion of other important factors such as cycle time and reparability."
https://tonko.house.gov/uploadedfiles/project-2025-fact-shee...