Note to Detroit Consider the Refrigerator
Refrigerators consume a lot of energy; all alone, they account for almost fifteen per cent of the average home’s electricity use. In the mid nineteen-seventies, California—the state Chu now lives in—set about establishing the country’s first refrigerator-efficiency standards. Refrigerator manufacturers, of course, fought them. The standards couldn’t be met, they said, at anything like a price consumers could afford. California imposed the standards anyway, and then what happened, as Chu observed, is that “the manufacturers had to assign the job to the engineers, instead of to the lobbyists.” The following decade, standards were imposed for refrigerators nationwide. Since then, the size of the average American refrigerator has increased by more than ten per cent, while the price, in inflation-adjusted dollars, has been cut in half. Meanwhile, energy use has dropped by two-thirds.
The transition to more efficient fridges, Chu pointed out, has saved the equivalent of all the energy generated in the United States by wind turbines and solar cells. “I cannot impress upon you how important energy efficiency is,” he said.
Chu is an inspired choice to lead the Energy Department, but he’s clearly going to have his work cut out for him. Among the many groups that have failed to absorb the lessons of the refrigerator are Congress and its new ward, the American auto industry.
The same day that word of Chu’s appointment began to leak out, Congress backed away from a provision of the auto-bailout package that would have forced the automakers to abide by new efficiency standards that California—once again—is trying to set. California’s Clean Car rules would require vehicles sold in the state to become roughly twenty per cent more efficient by 2020. The U.S. automakers have been fighting the standards in court for years. Some drafts of the bailout bill would have forced them to drop these lawsuits in return for federal assistance; the Bush Administration, however, said that it would not agree to any package with that provision.
