(Credit: CNET)The state of California is mulling over new legislation that will prevent sales of TVs that don’t meet a relatively stringent energy efficiency requirement. Most TVs CNET has tested fail to meet the requirement today, although the standard as currently proposed won’t go into effect until 2011.
According to its FAQ, the California Energy Commission plans to vote on the proposal this summer. The most recent draft of the proposal (PDF) puts forth the specific power-efficiency requirements, based on watts-per-square-inch of screen, in a tiered approach. Tier 1 would go into effect in 2011, while the stricter Tier 2 would hit in 2013. There’s also an alternate, more lenient version of Tier 1 included in the proposal. Televisions that fail the requirement would be ineligible for sale in the state.
Digging into the proposal, we found that it’s significantly more-aggressive than the current voluntary Energy Star 3.0 program, for which nearly every new HDTV qualifies. Among LCD TVs we tested in 2008, 19 out of 39, or exactly half, fail the requirement for 2011, while all but two fail for 2013. Among plasmas all but 3 out of 23 fail. Check out the chart below for specifics.
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