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There are over 80 countries in the world that currently use some kind of energy label for electric household appliances. In Europe, as an example, a lot of appliances are obliged to have an energy label when shown for sale, including online. Energy labels give relevant information to the consumers to help them make an environmentally beneficial choice when buying a new appliance. However, the desire for an energy efficient appliance does not outweigh the wish for good performance. Therefore, some energy labels provide information about the performance of the appliance based on international performance measurement standards (hereafter: "international standards"). Indeed, within the one appliance, increased performance can often mean increased energy consumption, so a balance between these parameters needs to be made by product designers and users. Unlike measurements that are traceable to Systeme Internationale units through metrological traceability chains, there is no natural reference data for performance measurements. Therefore, some international standards use a reference machine to relate their testing results to. The comparison of test and reference machine eliminates variances, for example, due to the auxiliary materials used and the influence of manual preparation or assessment methods. Three international standards that are currently using reference machines are examined closely in this paper. It is assessed how the reference machines and their testing results are treated, whether the reference machines are comparable with their corresponding test machines and if the use of a reference machine can be considered beneficial for the testing procedure. Additionally, three key questions are developed that will indicate whether 13 other international standards for electric household appliances could also benefit from using a reference machine. The paper concludes with six recommendations for standardisation groups and energy policymakers that will help with deciding whether a reference machine should be implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy and environmental standards, like ISO 50001 and ISO 14001, have a significant influence on the sustainable performance of companies worldwide, while international sustainable building rating systems are often the chosen method to quantify and benchmark performance. This research aims to comprehensively evaluate and assess the performance of these standards in relation to both the LEED and BREEAM assessments. Based on a clearly defined methodology, each standard topic and assessment criteria are comprehensively evaluated and discussed in detail. The main outcome of this research is that through a combination of these standards, a minimum of a LEED Gold or a very good, four-star BREEAM certification is achievable. Furthermore, the highest potential areas for improvement in companies with mature standards are highlighted as well as recommendations for companies with less mature standards and projects in the design and planning phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As data centers proliferate, their energy intensity deserves close attention. Always-on operations and growing usage for cloud and other backend processes make servers the fundamental driver of data center energy use. Yet servers' power draw under real-world conditions is poorly understood. This paper explores characteristics of volume servers that affect energy use, quantifying differences in power draw between higher-performing Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) and ENERGY STAR servers and that of a typical server. First, we establish general characteristics of the US installed base, before reporting hardware configurations from a major online retail website. We then compare idle power across three datasets (one unique to this paper) and explain their differences via the hardware characteristics to which power draw is most sensitive. We find idle server power demand to be significantly higher than benchmarks from ENERGY STAR and the industry-released SPEC database, and SPEC server configurations—and likely their power scaling—to be atypical of volume servers. Next, we examine power draw trends among high-performing servers across their load range to consider whether these trends are representative of volume servers, before inputting average idle power load values into a recent national server energy use model. Lastly, results from two surveys of IT professionals illustrate the incidence of more efficient equipment and operational practices in server rooms/closets. Future work should include server power field measurements in data centers of different sizes, accounting for variations in configurations and setting changes post-purchase, as well as investigating the linkage between time and server energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both Top Runner in Japan and Ecodesign in the European Union are schemes to set requirements on the energy efficiency (minimum efficiency performance standards, MEPS) of a variety of products. This article provides an overview of the main characteristics and results of both schemes and gives recommendations for improving them. Both schemes contribute significantly to the energy efficiency targets set by the European Commission and the Japanese government. Although it is difficult to compare the absolute levels of the requirements, comparison of the relative improvements and of the savings on household electricity consumption (11 % in Japan, 16 % in the EU) suggest they are in the same range. Furthermore, the time needed to set or review requirements is in both schemes considerable (between 5 and 6 years on average) and the manageability increasingly will become a challenge. The appeal of the Top Runner approach is that the most efficient product (Top Runner) sets the standard for all products at the next target year. Although the Ecodesign scheme includes the elements for a Top Runner approach, it could exploit this principle more explicitly. On the other hand, the Top Runner scheme could benefit by using a real minimum efficiency performance standard instead of a fleet average. This would make the monitoring and enforcement more simple and transparent, and would open the scheme for products where the market situation is less clear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper was to present the results of a life cycle cost analysis concerning the purchase and operation of a more efficient popular refrigerator model compared with a baseline design in Brazil. The summarized results may be useful for organizations working to promote sustainable energy development. This paper specifically focuses on refrigerators, since their energy consumption is predicted to constitute over 30% of the total average domestic electricity bill in Brazilian households. If all new Brazilian refrigerators had an energy efficiency at the level consistent with the least life cycle cost of ownership, it would result in an annual savings of 2.8 billion dollars (US$) in electricity bills, 45 TWh of electricity demand, and 18 Mt of CO2 emissions, with a respective payback period of 7 years which is less than half the average estimated lifetime of a refrigerator. The analysis was conducted following the guidelines of similar analyses available from the US Department of Energy and the Collaborative Labeling and Appliance Standards Program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]