§ Mr. WatsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what work her Department is undertaking to ensure that industry increases the energy efficiency of(a) televisions and (b) television set-top boxes when in stand-by mode. [179172]
Mr. MorlseyThe Department's Market Transformation Programme, working closely with the DTI and in consultation with industry and other experts, has established a substantial evidence base on the energy consumption of appliances and equipment in use, including standby mode, and on the potential for improvement.
For TVs and set-top boxes, we have sought undertakings by manufacturers to reduce both "on" and "stand-by" power consumption. Following an EU industry commitment, we expect that the majority of new televisions sold in the UK will soon consume around 1 Watt of power in stand-by mode rather than the 3-8 Watts consumed by older models. Furthermore, our commitment to more sustainable procurement requires any Government Department which purchases televisions to specify a stand-by power requirement of no more that 1 Watt.
My Department has strongly supported the development of the EU voluntary Code of Conduct for set top boxes, which we estimate will already secure energy savings of about 3 Terawatt hours per annum by 2010. We are working via the EU and channels such as the IEA to further raise the profile of this policy issue. We are also working with the Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes and the Energy Saving Trust to explore the scope to use the Efficiency Recommended logo to encourage consumers to choose boxes which use the least energy. And, with DTI, we have agreed on minimum and best practice standards as part of the Government's policy on the switch over to digital TV services.
§ Mr. WatsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what estimate she has made of energy consumption arising from the use of set top television boxes in the last year for which figures are available. [179192]
§ Mr. MorleyThe Department's Market Transformation Programme has estimated that there were about 10 million set top television boxes in use in 1425W the UK in 2003, which consumed about 1.3 Terawatt hours of electricity. The estimate for 2004 is that the number of boxes in use will rise to nearly 12.5 million, with electricity consumption approaching 1.5 Terawatt hours. (The estimates cover the separate boxes which are used to receive digital TV signals via cable, satellite and Freeview transmissions. They do not include the energy consumed by decoders which are built into televisions and recording equipment.)