by nanne
Fri Nov 14th, 2008 at 07:10:38 PM EST
Today I had the hairbrained idea to plan for buying a new fridge / freezer with my flat-sharing community. As we only have old stuff, and I mean old as in fifteen to twenty years old, I suspect that it uses far too much power. Plus, it is my patriotic duty to consume when the economy goes down, or something.
Of course to get something that uses a lot less power you will need information. So I started a search for Energieeffizienz Geräte. The first page I got was the federal environment ministry. I later repeated the search for Energieverbrauch Geräte (energy use for appliances), which is a more habitual expression. The ministry's page was the top sponsored link, although not in the first ten search results.
The ministry's page has a lot of general information, but it took me four clicks to get at what I was looking for, a detailed overview of low-energy use products on the ecotopten page.
It's easier to use than the energy star page, from what I remember.
We've had some questions here about computer monitors. The page on monitors only lists those who conform to the TCO '03 emission standard. There are quite a few of those at lower energy use than I managed to find in a previous search.
You'll also note the blue column. This shows the annual costs of an appliance over its projected lifetime, five years for monitors, fourteen for fridges -- assuming a certain amount of energy costs. At 22 Eurocent a kilowatt, perhaps a bit high in some countries, but you never know what the future holds. So it's quite simple to find the double benefit you're looking for.
