Let me tell you my story about replacing my 21 year old refrigerator about a year ago. My son's science teacher required every student in the class to conduct an energy audit of their house. I was stunned to find out that our refrigerator was the largest consumer of electricity in our house - by far.
It was consuming about 4,730 kilowatt hours of electricity a year. That’s about the same as leaving 5 - 100 watt light bulbs on all day, every day of the year.
I replaced the refrigerator with a new Energy Star refrigerator.
The new refrigerator uses about 80% less electricity than the old refrigerator. (That's not a typo!)
The first thing I noticed was that my electric bill went down by $40 a month!
Probably more importantly, this translated into a reduction of almost 2 tons of Carbon emissions per year.
(The rule of thumb in New England is 1 lb. of Carbon per kilowatt hour. The rule of thumb can climb as high as 2 lbs. of Carbon per kilowatt hour in other sections of the country where they use more coal fired plants to produce their electricity.)
On top of that, the new refrigerator is far quieter and filters our water.
Talk about a win-win-win! The planet is healthier, my family is healthier, and my finances are healthier.
Why am I mentioning this now? Because it is a good time for you to buy a new refrigerator if you haven't done so already.
It turns out that Energy Star refrigerators made after April 28, 2008 must be yet again another 20% more efficient than the refrigerators sold a year ago. So you can save even more than I did!
When shopping for a new refrigerator, check http://www.energystar.gov/ to see if the one you are considering meets the new standards.
The May 2008 Consumer Reports has an article on selecting refrigerators starting on page 35.
What are you waiting for?
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