Energy Boy Gets Some Muscle - International Standby Conference Highlights (Part 2)

June 11, 2008 - To paraphrase the central theme from that popular baseball movie, Field of Dreams: Publish a standby power efficiency spec and they will come.

But what do you do if they don’t? That was a question that Mr. Yung-Rae Kim from Korea Energy Management Corporation’s (KEMCO) had to answer a few weeks ago, during his presentation at the 2008 International Standby Conference held in
New Delhi, India.

Now, anyone who has attended one of the international standby power conferences over the last few years is familiar with Mr. Kim and the work KEMCO has done to reduce standby power waste in electronic products. Since 1999, their voluntary e-Standby program has been promoting standby power efficiency, allowing manufacturers to identify their products that satisfy the country’s standby power consumption spec by wearing the smiling and very recognizable “Energy Boy” compliance label (see logo at right). Energy-Boy got a big boost in November 2004, when Korea’s Prime Minister declared that “by 2010, the standby power of all electronic products in Korea shall be reduced to below 1 W”.

So, you can imagine my surprise when Mr. Kim presented new data, showing that as of 2007, the market share of Energy-Boy labeled products was a disappointing 14%. To be fair, some manufacturers have jumped on the country’s 1-watt by 2010 horizontal program, but not enough to make Mr. Kim and his team feel that the 2010 1-watt goal would be met. Some of the biggest offenders included some familiar high volume energy using products such as DVD players (99% non-compliance), cordless phones (96%), copiers (99%), and radios (100%). Mr. Kim concluded that it was time to take some quick action against the “I don’t care” products.

Instead of taking the “mandatory standard” approach (i.e. setting Minimum Energy Performance Standards ( MEPS), requiring lots of studies, meetings, lively discussions, and advance notice before the MEPS takes effect, KEMCO chose an easier, faster and highly visible approach – bright yellow warning labels that identifies products that don’t meet the government’s 2010 standby energy goal. Starting January 1, 2009, all TVs, set-top boxes, computers, monitors, printers, and multi-function devices (including copiers) that don’t meet the standby spec, must wear the yellow warning label. By 2010, the rest of the products must wear the yellow label if they don’t comply.

Mr. Kim is confident that this additional “incentive” will convert those “I don’t care” products into Energy Boy products and predicts at least 90% of affected products will comply with the 1-watt standby by 2010. As he found out, sometimes it takes more than just providing the field to get people to play ball.

Coming up –Energy efficiency is alive and well in Brazil!