Size Matters
I just bought a new refrigerator for my co-op here in the city. At first I thought "I've got to get that Energy Star, so I can use less power." I ended up getting a fridge without energy star and here is why:

Over the years refrigerators have gotten larger, a lot larger. I was hard pressed to find a small model at all. I knew that simply reducing the size of the unit could be a better way to cut energy costs. After visiting three vendors I still could not find a 10 cubic feet or smaller sized unit with the energy star. So I compared the smallest "full sized" unit I could find with the larger units with "energy star" the result? It beat every singe one in the area of energy use.

They do make small energy star units, but they are hard to find.

OPTION A
16.5 Cubic feet 490 kWh per year with "energy star"

OPTION B
25.5 Cubic feet 610 kWh per year has "energy star"

OPTION C
8.8 Cubic feet 379 kWh per year, no "energy star" <-- my choice
(If I could have found the energy star model it would have been 360 kWh)

I live in the city, so I can shop often without starting up a car. I love this small fridge because I tend to cook everything in it for my family and things don't get lost or wasted. I can see everything in it since it's not too deep, and it stays full since it it small (refrigerators are less efficient when empty, since when you open then the cold air rushes out)

But rather than encourage people to have smaller refrigerators energy star seems to encourage people to feel OK about having large ones. I mean unless they expand the selection at stores. The clerks at the stores were appalled that I "wanted something smaller" All but 3 of the showroom units were over 26 cubic feet in size! I went around to a few stores and the selection was no better...

I understand that if you can't walk to a shopping area a big fridge may be better in the long run (reducing the number of trips to the store by car) but my parents have a large model and live in a suburb and they just seem to pack it full of food and forget about most of it then throw a lot of items out. (Ask yourself: are you really going to eat all of that food before it rots? All 28 cubic feet of it? And if it won't rot, then why is it in there? Want a cold beer? Put it in the night before... simple... Jesus...)

Oh and here is a link to a paper on just this topic:

In 1993, Whirlpool won the Consortium for Energy Efficiency‘s $30 million —Golden Carrot“ award for a 22-cubic-foot, side-by-side refrigerator, also offered in 25-cubic-foot and 27-cubic- foot models. These —Super-Efficient Refrigerator Program“ (SERP) refrigerators were very efficient compared to other side-by-side refrigerators of the same size but questionable in comparison to the typical new refrigerator: although the 22-cubic-foot model‘s estimated annual energy consumption of 760 kWh/year (Rocky Mountain Institute n.d.) exceeded then-current standards by 30%, it was not only bigger than the average refrigerator sold in 1993 (19.8 cubic feet), but it had higher energy consumption than the maximum allowed by the NAECA standard for a top-mounted-freezer model of the same capacity (Wenzel et al.1997, 77). http://enduse.lbl.gov/info/ACEEE-Pred.pdf.

I think people who can make do with smaller models that simply use less energy ought to get a "star" too?

What are your thoughts on this?