Greenhouse Gas Emissions Due to Power Consumption of Household Whitegoods Appliances

This paper presents information related to greenhouse gas emissions due to the power consumption of the following household appliances: refrigerators, clothes washers, clothes dryers, freezers, and dishwashers; a possible extension to this analysis would include heaters and air-conditioners. Actual energy consumption data for the period 1993 to 1999 were used to estimate the total carbon dioxide emissions for 1994 to 2009 incremented at 5 years; these data can also be used to estimate the energy consumption of these appliances for 2008–2012 with reference to 1990 for reasons of comparison under the Kyoto Protocol. The total carbon dioxide equivalent emissions for the above household appliances show a peak of 29.6 mega-tonnes CO 2 around 1999 with a decreasing trend post 1999 to 27.4 mega-tonnes CO 2 in 2009. Details of the analysis for selected appliances show that refrigerators account for over half of total emissions, decreasing from 60.1% in 1994 to 51.6% in 2009. The aggregate trend activity was found to highly depend on the trend activity for emissions for refrigerators. The trend activity for freezers, clothes dryers and clothes washers is increasing for consecutive years from 1994 to 2009 defying the trend exhibited by refrigerators and dishwashers. The reason for this discrepancy is the relatively higher decreases in kWh/annum for refrigerators and dishwashers in contrast to other appliances. The energy consumption curves for each appliance take this differential into account. The energy consumption curve for refrigerators predicts a much faster decrease in kWh/annum than for other appliances thus causing the downward trend post 1999.