Full Description

Household laundering consumes over 150,000 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of site energy and about five million acre-feet of water per year in the United States. In 2001, the United States federal government adopted updated mandatory energy-efficiency standards for residential clothes washers. These standards do not address commercial clothes washers typically used in multi-family common area laundries and laundromats or coin laundry stores. Furthermore, these new standards do not explicitly establish water efficiency standards for clothes washers. Thus, significant opportunities to save water and energy by installing more efficient clothes washers remain. Reducing clothes washer-related water usage has multiple secondary benefits that include preserving the precious capacity of municipal water and wastewater treatment and delivery systems and avoiding the energy consumption used to pump the incremental water through the water and wastewater systems. Recognizing the interrelated benefits of water and energy efficiency is crucial to further pursuing these opportunities. This paper describes two strategies outside the scope of the Federal standards process that leverage this energy-water synergy to capture the energy and water savings opportunities missed by the recent Federal standards update: local appliance standards proceedings and voluntary incentive programs. An overview of the recent California appliance standards proceeding for commercial clothes washers is used to illustrate this option. The role of voluntary programs, the second strategy, is assessed as an adjunct or alternative to local standards. Includes 9 references, tables, figure.

Product Details

Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 01/01/2002 Number of Pages: 16File Size: 1 file , 200 KB