Sidebar: Fighting Energy Thieves Abroad

In 1995, Switzerland's Federal Office of Energy launched a program to encourage TV and VCR manufacturers reduce the standby power consumption of their products to 3 watts.

The industry complained that it was impossible to design standby units that used less than 6 W, but by 1997, most new TVs met the new low-power target and several units only consumed 0.1 watt. The average US TV, however, consumes 5 W when turned "off" (some older models burn 20 W in the off position).

Science News Online reporter Janet Raloff notes that most European appliances now feature a "hard off" switch - an "off" button that means what it says. US appliances should offer customers this option: So far, they don't.

At the Kyoto Climate Summit, delegates were challenged to create a voluntary global limit of one-watt of standby power for all consumer electronics. (The EPA's Energy Star award falls short, allowing standby power drains of up to 3 W.)

"We need to preserve the integrity of the word 'off,'" insists energy conservation advocate Alan Meier, who argues that it is dishonest for a manufacturer to have an "off" button on an appliance if that appliance continues to draw 10, 20 or even 30 W of power when it's not in use.