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Thursday, September 19, 2013

Ezra Klein: Your Fridge Uses Way More Energy Than You Think

Electricity consumption - Todd Moss

After seeing this graph, you’ll never look at your refrigerator the same way again

Todd Moss, vice president and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, recently bought a new refrigerator. It's one of the nice new refrigerators. The super-energy efficient refrigerators. The ones that come with a little yellow tag bragging about how little energy they use each year. But Moss, who's got a more global view than most, knows "energy efficient" means very different things on different continents.
"I know I live an energy-intensive lifestyle," he writes. "Americans on average use 13,395 kWh/year (IEA data for 2010), which is nearly three times what the typical South African uses and 100 times the average Nigerian.  But I was still pretty shocked to see how my new single-family fridge compares with an average citizen in the six Power Africa countries."
Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein is the editor of Wonkblog and a columnist at the Washington Post, as well as a contributor to MSNBC and Bloomberg. His work focuses on domestic and economic policymaking, as well as the political system that’s constantly screwing it up. He really likes graphs, and is on TwitterGoogle+ and Facebook. E-mail him here.


1 comment:

  1. Washington state replaces some old refers with new efficient ones for free. Their claim is even at the cost of the replacements the saved energy saves the state more than the cost of more power plants!

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