One Watt Initiative

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International Energy Agency

The One Watt Initiative is an energy saving proposal by the International Energy Agency to reduce standby power-use in all appliances to just one watt.

Standby power, also called vampire power, refers to the electricity consumed by many domestic appliances when they are switched off or in standby mode. The typical power loss per appliance is low (from 1 to 25 W) but when multiplied by the billions of appliances in houses and in commercial buildings, standby losses represent a significant fraction of total world electricity use ^[1] According to Dr Alan Meier, a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, standby power accounts for as much as 10% of household power-consumption. A study in France found that standby power accounted for 7% of total residential consumption; while further studies have put the proportion of consumption due to standby power as high as 13%. ^[2]

The IEA estimates that standby produces 1% of the world's CO2 emissions ^[3]. To put the figure into context, total air travel contributes less than 3% to global CO2 emissions ^[4].

Technical solutions to the problem of standby power exist in the form of a new generation of power transformers that use only 100 milliWatts in standby mode and thus can reduce standby consumption by up to 90%. Another solution is the ‘smart’ electronic switch that cuts power when there is no load and restores it immediately when required.

The One Watt Initiative was launched by the IEA in 1999 to ensure through international cooperation that by 2010 all new appliances sold in the world only use one watt in standby mode. This would reduce CO2 emissions by 50 millions tons of in the OECD countries alone by 2010; the equivalent to removing 18 millions cars from the roads. ^[5].

Both South Korea and Australia have introduced the one watt benchmark in all new electrical devices, and according to the IEA other countries, notably Japan and China, have undertaken "strong measures" to reduce standby power use. ^[6]. In 2001, US President George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13221, which states that every government agency, “when it purchases commercially available, off-the-shelf products that use external standby power devices, or that contain an internal standby power function, shall purchase products that use no more than one watt in their standby power consuming mode.” ^[7].