Feds to move to limit power consumed by electronics in standby mode

Steve Rennie, THE CANADIAN PRESS
OTTAWA - Canadians are wasting too much energy, Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn said Tuesday as the government moved to set limits on power use.

The Conservatives introduced amendments to the federal Energy Efficiency Act to give Ottawa sweeping regulatory authority over energy use. "I've said that this energy source, the energy we waste, that's larger than the oilsands," Lunn said.

"There's an enormous resource there, and we're going to go tap into it."

Under the current law, the government has to regulate product-by-product. The proposed amendments would let Ottawa regulate everything that uses energy or affects power consumption in one fell swoop.

That applies to consumer electronics that use energy even when they're turned off, and to products like toilets and thermostats that don't themselves consume power but still affect power consumption.

The Conservatives first announced proposed standards last year to limit power used by consumer electronics while turned off or in standby mode.

A July 2007 news release said standby power accounts for up to 10 per cent of an average household's yearly electricity consumption. It said the estimated savings of limiting standby power consumption would be equivalent to taking a large coal-fired power generating unit off-line.

Speaking on background, a Natural Resources official said the government is considering a one-watt limit for standby mode.

Industry greeted the proposed regulations with a shrug. A spokeswoman from Sony Canada said they would have little bearing on the company's line of consumer electronics.

"All Sony televisions consume less than one watt of power in standby mode, and Sony is continually developing innovative technologies that improve the energy efficiency of our products," Candice Hayman said in an e-mail.

Environmental groups were likewise tepid in their response.

The World Wildlife Fund's Julia Langer says Canada lags far behind most countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in energy-efficiency.

She says the government needs to impose tougher restrictions on industry rather than "housekeeping measures" if it's serious about saving energy.

"It's not that it's bad, it's just that we're getting impatient for actual regulatory initiatives that are going to ban inefficient products," she said.

© The Canadian Press, 2008