National Energy Use for TV Set-Top Boxes Down by 23 Percent
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund
More than 90 million U.S. households have one or more set-top boxes connected to their televisions and these boxes from service providers like Comcast, AT&T, and Dish Network nationally consume lots of electricity every year. But a new report released today shows consumers saved almost $1 billion on their utility bills last year because the boxes have become significantly more energy efficient due to the hard work of the box makers, as well as the cable, satellite, and telecommunications companies that procure them.
And because the ubiquitous set-top boxes needed to receive and decode the incoming pay TV signals are using so much less electricity, more than 5 million tons of carbon pollution from power plants was avoided last year, as well.
Much of this progress occurred due to the commitments made in a 2012 Voluntary Agreement between the service providers, box makers, and leading environmental groups—including NRDC—to significantly bring down national set-top box energy use. At that time, set-top boxes consumed more than 10 large power plants’ worth of electricity annually, creating more than 16 million tons of climate-change pollution.
The Voluntary Agreement (VA) established maximum allowable annual energy use levels for the new set-top boxes purchased by the service providers and installed in America’s homes. The newly released annual VA report for 2016 shows these commitments are indeed being met and that national set-top box energy use has gone down by a significant 23 percent since 2012.
Where are the savings coming from?
Around 85 percent of U.S. homes subscribe to some form of pay TV and most homes have more than one set-top box. In fact, over 225 million set-top boxes are installed in our homes, enabling us to access pay TV and, in some cases, record and play back shows at a more convenient time via a digital video recorder (DVR). Unfortunately, set-top boxes have historically wasted a lot of energy when the user is neither watching nor recording a show and mistakenly believes their box is “turned off.”
The figure above illustrates how things are improving and that nationally, the annual energy savings really add up over time as older, less-efficient units are being replaced by newer, improved models. To put the 16.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) of cumulative savings into perspective, they’re greater than the amount of energy consumed each year by all the households in Chicago. The two big drivers of these savings are:
- The 40 percent reduction in new DVR energy use since 2012, and
- The shift to low energy-consuming “thin client” boxes that are increasingly being installed on the second and third TVs in a home instead of a conventional set-top box or a DVR, which traditionally consume two to three times more annual energy, respectively.
Where to from here?
Despite the great progress that’s been made, today’s installed set-top boxes still consumed more than six large coal-burning power plants’ worth of electricity nationally in 2016. But new technologies that can deliver significant additional energy savings exist and are beginning to be rolled out. For example, new software allows a user to access content directly on a smart TV via an “app.” This allows consumers to get rid of one or more of the set-top boxes in their home, providing additional energy and cost savings.
The Voluntary Agreement is due to expire at the end of the year, and discussions are now underway to extend it for several years and put the industry on a path to produce even more savings—all while delivering the same great product offerings.
Make sure to exchange your old, inefficient boxes
If you are one of those customers who have several DVRs in your home that are approximately 5-years-old, call your service provider and tell them you want up-to-date equipment. This might save you more than $50 annually on your electric bill, and perhaps reduce equipment rental fees as well. You might even be eligible for a box-less solution, and instead access your shows from the “cloud” via an app on your TV, tablet, or smartphone.
Read the full article at: https://www.nrdc.org/experts/noah-horowitz/national-energy-use-tv-set-top-boxes-down-23-percent
