NRDC Backs EPA’s Alternative Energy Star ‘Recognition’ Tack On Game Consoles
The Natural Resources Defense Council supports the EPA’s decision to pursue an alternative Energy Star model for game consoles but wants effective limits put in place on energy use and branding and promotion guidelines for manufacturers, the group said. Because of the limited number of products in the market, the agency is opting not to use the Energy Star label to differentiate high efficiency consoles models but is weighing an alternative that involves EPA “recognition” of manufacturers “who commit to adopting the finalized efficiency criteria for their systems."
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Consoles should go into low-power sleep mode when not in use, NRDC said in comments on the EPA proposal. The auto-power-down (APD) feature should be on even when the devices need to remain connected to the network while inactive, it said. Consoles should ship with the APD feature enabled and not require the user to go into a menu to turn the feature on, said Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at NRDC. “APD is important as these devices continue to use near full power if left on.” A PS3 or Xbox 360 that’s left on “all the time” could use “1 to 2 refrigerators worth” of electricity per year, he said.
The EPA should also set limits on the power use of consoles during “game play pause,” the group said. Consoles should adopt power scaling technologies that only use “as much power as the task at hand requires,” it said. “When in pause, there is no reason for consoles to use as much power as in active game play, as is currently the case.” Consoles also should be required to support “bi-directional” power management capabilities, the NRDC said. That means switching off either the console or the TV results in automatic power down of the other unless overridden by user action. “This avoids significant energy waste when users switch off one device but leave the other ‘on’ unintentionally."
The EPA also should ensure that consoles reduce the power used to play a movie via disc or streaming, Horowitz said. Today’s boxes use around 70 watts to play a movie while a standalone Blu-ray player consumes around 10 W., he said. “This is increasingly important as one can now use these devices to stream movies via Netflix and other providers.” The EPA must limit the “amount of positive publicity” that device makers get for “simply pledging to meet” Energy Star performance requirements, NRDC said. Clear guidelines must be set and enforced on how console makers can promote their “participation” in the Energy Star program and what branding they can do in advertising and on packaging, it said. The agency should prescribe a robust qualification and verification testing process for consoles, NRDC said.
The EPA hasn’t settled on any definite plan for game consoles but is working with device makers to “find out what is the path forward,” Paul Karaffa, Energy Star program manager, told us. “Game consoles are special in that there is a lot of savings [potential] there but at the same time they do not necessarily fit into the Energy Star product mold.” The Energy Star program usually identifies the top 20-25 percent of a product market, he said, but the game console market has a “such a small number of products” that you “want to make sure that you can make good everybody.” What the EPA is aiming to do is to “recognize” energy efficient consoles “without giving consumers a false interpretation of what we are providing.”
Meanwhile, California has set in motion a process that could result in mandatory energy use limits for game consoles. Sony told the California Energy Commission that it should leave game consoles out of new electronics it wants to regulate because the company along with Microsoft and Nintendo are working with the EPA to design a national, voluntary approach to addressing the energy use of the devices.