Those who spend hours watching lights flickering across their flat screen TVs should turn their gaze to their electricity meter.
Large flat screen TVs, particularly plasma screens, swallow energy at a rate three times faster than old-fashioned cathode ray TVs.
In California, TVs suck 10% of the energy used in houses, so the state is gearing up to mandate that electronics retailers sell only energy-efficient models beginning in 2011. The state plans to tighten the measures two years later.
California's 34-year-history of tough energy standards has allowed the state to hold its per-capita consumption flat while the rest of the nation's power usage has grown 50 percent during the past three decades. The rules are expected to cut $8.1 billion from the Golden State' electricity bills over a decade, saving the need to build another power plant, according to Marc Lifsher of the L.A. Times.
Some TV companies and associations are for it (think the Liquid Crystal Display, or LCD, manufacturers, since many of their products are already more efficient). Other companies and industry groups -- who dispute the notion that saving energy benefits consumers -- are against it.
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