You may not have realised it, but one of Australia's most successful climate change schemes has been the little "energy rating" stickers on fridges, heaters and other appliances.
And since they were introduced, they have saved you a heap of money, too.
The star rating energy stickers and minimum standards that ban cheap, inefficient appliances from the market have saved Australia more electricity than the entire state of South Australia consumes every year.
But some of those standards have become outdated. And for some appliances, they were never introduced.
Late last year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) revealed household appliance standards had cut national electricity consumption by 15 per cent in Europe and the United States.
But in Australia, the reduction was only half as much, about 7 per cent.
Outdated standards have eaten at household savings
Australia's savings are milder because our weather is milder than that experienced by our friends in the northern hemisphere.
But Australia has also fallen behind on updating some of its standards — the minimum standards for televisions, for example, haven't been updated since 2013, despite massive advances in TV technology in the past decade.
And while the standards for refrigerators and freezers were updated in 2019, that was to bring them into line with standards that had already been in place in the US for five years.
In the US, the average American household saves $US318 ($425) a year on their power bill thanks to the country's appliance standards, according to an International Energy Agency report.
The energy department found standards in Australia were saving households between $140 to $220 each year on their power bill.
The council's head of policy, Rob Murray-Leach, said it did not make sense for a small market such as Australia to be setting its own standards.
"Really, our standards should be consistent with Europe or the US," Mr Murray-Leach said.
"They don't automatically update when the EU or US updates; what would kind of make sense [is] when they update, we update a year later."
The differences are not insubstantial.
Every extra star on a television's rating is equal to a 20 per cent reduction in its electricity consumption.
That means a 50-inch three-star TV costs $77.50 less to run a year compared to a same-sized one-star TV — using 241kWh less, according to the government's energy rating calculator.
But Australian standards have fallen so far behind other countries that TVs rated four stars here actually fail the minimum efficiency standard in Europe and the United States.
The Department of Industry admitted that Australia's minimum standards were in some cases "lagging behind prevailing international standards", creating a risk "for less efficient products to dominate in the market".
It said the regulatory framework was "out of date" and unable to deal with some new products on the market, and it was looking at whether to update the minimum standards for several products.
Mr Murray-Leach said a bigger problem was that some appliances were not rated for energy efficiency at all.
He said there weren't energy efficiency ratings for hot water heat pumps, despite these being some of the most power-hungry appliances.
The council said introducing standards would benefit manufacturers and consumers.
The ABC asked Energy Minister Angus Taylor why some products were not regulated, and whether Australia should automatically align itself with US or EU standards.
The Energy Efficiency Council said lagging standards in the past had allowed low-quality appliances that could no longer be sold in Europe or North America, such as air conditioners, to be dumped into the Australian market.
But bringing Australian standards up to speed would also help the nation meet its net zero by 2050 commitment.
The IEA found if every country adopted the most up-to-date energy efficiency standards for appliances, it would have the same effect as halving the total electricity consumption of China.
"Energy efficiency standards without a doubt have been the most important carbon mitigation policy in Australia," Mr Murray-Leach said.
Editor's note (2/5/2022): The original version of this article attributed a figure on household power bill savings to the Energy Efficiency Council. The figure was calculated by the Department of Energy and republished by the council. The original version stated that every extra star on an appliance’s rating is equal to a 20 per cent reduction in its electricity consumption. This percentage applies specifically to television appliances.
