5 More States Introduce TV Energy Efficiency Legislation

The California regulations, however, are vehemently opposed by the CEA. It argues that the rules will negatively affect manufacturers and hurt commerce.

Johnson points out that, although the California regulations have been adopted, they haven’t been approved. “There is always a chance that the Office of Administrative Law in California will find problems with it,” Johnson says. It would make sense, he adds, for other states to wait and see how the California law affects business before pushing forward their own legislation.

Smizik's office says that 85 percent of TVs on the market today meet proposed tier 1 standards and 35 percent meet tier 2 standards. It reiterates that TVs over 58 inches are exempt from proposed standards. This is similar to the California data presented by the CEC.

Johnson asserts that the CEC relied on outdated data to determine the regulations. He calls it “an incomplete accounting of the market when it comes to TV energy used today. So when they tried to calculate savings, they were calculating off an insufficient base line causing them to exaggerate energy savings projection.”

Cost of Energy Savings

“Energy efficiency has real cost in our industry just as it does in other industries,” Johnson says. “They [CEC and other states pushing legislation] ignore that. Manufacturers in our industry have invested millions of dollars over the years to develop and bring TVs with a variety of features. Energy efficiency is an objective, but not the only one.”

Smizik, Chairman of the Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change in the Massachusetts state legislation, contends that energy regulations will be good for business. “We’re certainly not anti-business. We think that consumers and businesses can work together to make a cleaner environment and less cost.”

Manufacturers want standardization of laws, Smizik says. “They don’t want one state to be different that all others.” He adds that state laws like these are the way to go until federal regulations are put into place.

“This is something that has to be done,” Smizik says. “It’s good for consumers. They’ll have smaller electric bills. It’s good for manufacturers because they’ll have to make their products more efficient and being able to say that helps them sell their products.”