CE Makers, MVPDs Expand Energy Efficiency Efforts To Target Home Internet Gear

It could save consumers $300 million annually, said Doug Johnson, vice president-technology policy of CEA. CE and cable industry participants in the voluntary agreement said in interviews that the cost and power savings will be achieved through making home network equipment more efficient, such as running in idle mode. Set-top boxes are similarly equipped, with even less-active modes being tested in the field by cable operators, they said.

The Natural Resources Defense Council found that small network equipment used about 8.3 billion kilowatt hours in 2012, or about $1 billion of power, said NRDC Senior Scientist Noah Horowitz. "NRDC is glad to see that the industry now plans to measure the power used by their equipment, report it, and try to do something about it." The accord, like the earlier one on set-top boxes, envisions annual progress reports by an independent third party and yearly verification audits.

"DOE appreciates industry’s voluntary commitment to improving the energy efficiency of small network equipment, and looks forward to the progress they can make and verification of the impacts at the appropriate time,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary-Energy Efficiency Kathleen Hogan in the CEA/NCTA written statement. The agency declined further comment.

Unlike the set-top box initiative, the new program doesn't include energy efficiency advocates like the NRDC. It and two other groups that are part of the set-top voluntary agreement were invited to the new one, but declined, said Johnson, NCTA General Counsel Neal Goldberg and others. And the new industry-only pact comes after the DOE ended its proceeding to consider energy efficiency rules on small-network equipment, along with set-top boxes, after the 2013 MVPD box deal between industry and advocates. More than 90 percent of U.S. broadband households, or 80 million, are covered by the new deal, CEA and NCTA said.

Participants

The difference between the new pact and the one for set-top boxes is that the equipment one covers devices sold through operators and at retail, while the earlier one covered MVPD set-tops that were mostly supplied by pay-TV companies, industry officials said. Participating in the new pact as MVPDs are AT&T, Bright House Networks, Cablevision, CenturyLink, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and Verizon, and manufacturers Actiontec, Arris, Cisco, D-Link, EchoStar, NetGear, Pace and Ubee Interactive.

The deal "elevates our contributions to energy conservation throughout the industry," an Arris spokeswoman said, saying many of its devices meet the standard. The products it sells at retail will meet the targets "as we implement more efficient components like the latest chipsets and ethernet switches, while meeting consumer demand for more powerful, always-on connected experiences," she said. EchoStar doesn't now offer any products that fall under the new pact, but did join it, said Senior Staff Engineer-Technology and Standards Gary Langille. "If we offer products in these categories in the future we will adhere to the energy efficiency goals and work to continually improve the energy efficiency" of such devices, he emailed.

Ninety percent of Cisco small network equipment sold after Dec. 31 will meet the deal's efficiency levels, a spokeswoman said. The company is updating software to support improved power management protocols, "obsoleting" older versions of cable modems and gateways, and working with customers to migrate to next-generation platforms with lower power consumption, she said. All other participating CE companies, and all MVPDs taking part, had no comment.

The California Energy Commission is in the early stages of considering whether to propose network equipment rules, said industry officials and energy efficiency advocates like Buildings Program Director Jennifer Amann of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. ACEEE also was invited but declined to take part in the new project. CEA and NCTA officials said they hope the CEC will hold off on its proceeding, much as DOE did after the 2013 set-top box pact. Amann said ACEEE wants to preserve the option to seek state or federal rules, and also to join the industry group. CEC had no comment.

Advocate Concerns

ACEEE, the Appliance Standards Awareness Project and NRDC sat out the new pact because of what both sides said was the limited available time to devote to a new agreement in the midst of participating in the set-top box accord.

"It’s very time intensive because we’re basically taking on the role of a regulator in making sure that all of the commitments were being met" in that deal, said ACEEE's Amann. "I certainly want to applaud the industry’s efforts to get this started, but we also wanted to leave open the option for regulatory action or to see where that process went" with the new initiative, she said. An Appliance Standards Awareness Project official had no comment.

The pact is short of specifics, NRDC's Horowitz said, so it's impossible to know how much the reduction will be. "It appears they are only making minor changes. They are not for example committing to develop next generation devices that would have their power scale to the level of data being transferred," he emailed. "That would result in significant incremental energy savings." It's possible that the energy savings are "business as usual," Horowitz said. Industry officials are optimistic the environmental and efficiency groups might come on board. "I’m hopeful that after they see the details of this agreement that we’ll have further discussion," NCTA's Goldberg said.

"This agreement will begin saving consumers energy and money ... long before any mandatory regulatory standards could take effect -- while protecting innovation and competition,” said CEA CEO Gary Shapiro. He said it "will lock-in efficiencies at the dawn of the" IoT. “With Americans continuing to connect more devices to their home networks, reducing the energy footprint of Internet equipment is an industry priority,” NCTA CEO Michael Powell said.

With 90 percent of U.S. homes using three or more Web-connected devices, "improving their energy efficiency can add up to real power and cost savings," NCTA's blog said. The pre-existing deal cut national set-top box energy consumption 4.4 percent in its first year, saving consumers about $168 million, the association said. And the new deal is broader, industry officials said. "You hit the retail shelves here, where you didn’t with the set-top box agreement," Goldberg said. The network equipment deal anticipates the possibility of efficiency advocates joining, and if CEC adopts rules, the pact would be moot, Goldberg and others said.

Energy savings of more than 20 percent are a possibility, though not planned at present, said Debbie Fitzgerald, CableLabs director-client application technologies, in an interview. CE manufacturers in the agreement committed that at least 90 percent of their products sold at retail will meet the targets, she wrote in a blog post. There's interest in energy efficiency at the state, federal and international levels among policymakers and industry, CEA's Johnson said. He called the pact "an evolution of that intention" in 2013 to cut set-top electricity use.