Appliances Get Their Own Recycled Clunkers
Programs
Aug 26 -
Cash for clunkers ended this week
-- for cars.
But old energy-hogging
refrigerators and freezers qualify for recycling and cash from more than 60
utilities across the nation. And the federal government is making money
available to states so consumers could get rebates of $50 to $200 for new, more
energy-efficient appliances later this year in a so-called cash-for-appliances
program.
Combined, the appliance
initiatives have a goal similar to the cash-for-clunkers program for autos:
They get less-efficient appliances off the nation's energy grid in favor of
newer, efficient ones.
The government's rebate program,
in which the Department of Energy is providing states with $300 million
approved earlier this year as part of President Obama's $787 billion stimulus
plan, serves another goal similar to the cash-for-clunkers program: It's
designed to boost the economy.
"These rebates will help
families make the transition to more efficient appliances, making purchases
that will directly stimulate the economy and create jobs," Energy Secretary
Steven Chu said in announcing the rebate program earlier this summer.
Unlike cash for clunkers,
consumers taking advantage of the rebate program won't need to trade in their
old refrigerators to get the benefit of buying a new one with an Energy Star
seal designating it as efficient.
A win-win situation
Meanwhile, utilities in many
states offer to pick up and recycle old refrigerators and freezers and give the
customer a rebate from $25 to $50. Such programs began on the West Coast in the
last decade but more recently have been moving east.
"It's an excellent
win-win-win situation," says John Hargrove of NV Energy in
Old refrigerators and freezers
are some of the biggest energy users in homes, and replacing old ones with
energy-efficient models will save customers from $50 to $150 a year on their
electricity bills, says Steven Rosenstock, manager
for energy solutions at the Edison Electric Institute, which represents 70% of
the investor-owned utilities in the United States.
In five years, NV Energy has
picked up 50,000 refrigerators, giving $30 to customers in
In
DTE Energy, parent company of
Detroit Edison, which serves 2.2 million electric customers in
"Today's appliances consume
three times less than old appliances," says Steven Kurmas,
president of Detroit Edison. "We're hoping to get rid of 30,000 by
2011."
"By providing an incentive
of $30 and removing (the appliance), we figured we could take a lot of demand
out of the system," says Tim O'Donovan with the New Jersey Board of Public
Utilities.
'Environmental time bombs'
At Nebraska Public Power District,
Ken Curry says the utility hopes to defer construction of new power plants with
programs such as refrigerator recycling, which already has picked up 1,400
appliances since starting this spring.
"We're estimating that the
refrigerators we're picking up have eight years remaining life, and by getting
them off the grid, we're saving 19 million kilowatt hours over the life of
those units," he says. "And if our customers are saving money on
their electric bills ... they can upgrade to a better brand. A lot of our
customers can relate to that."
Jaco
Environmental is a Seattle-based company that has been picking up and recycling
refrigerators for 20 years, first for retailers and now for utilities. It runs
recycling programs for 61 utilities in 26 states.
Money from the stimulus bill is a
boon for business, says Michael Dunham, director of energy and environmental
programs for Jaco.
Jaco
recycles 95% of the refrigerator, including toxic chlorofluorocarbons, which
are destroyed at a waste-to-energy incinerator. The steel is used in rebar to
reinforce roadways, and the plastic goes into everything from laptop computers
to cellphones.
"These refrigerators are
environmental time bombs," Dunham says. "But this is all recycled and
made into new products."
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