News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on EU brings in 'right to repair' rules for appliances. Parent comment

Re:EU brings in 'right to repair' rules for appliances by TeMPOraL on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:04AM (#21123740)
That's just savings in end-user monetary expenses, which is a proxy for energy use, but not necessarily a good one.

I wonder whether this calculation holds once you account for the energy used to develop, construct, market and transport the new fridges that replace the older-but-working fridges. It's a genuine question - I haven't seen such calculation done. My current intuition is that the extra marginal energy used in manufacturing a new fridge dwarfs the energy savings of replacing the old one before it dies.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:EU brings in 'right to repair' rules for appliances by benj111 on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @06:38AM (#21123901)
The link gives a figure of 700kwh saving a year.

This [1] gives the embodied energy for a fridge as 5900 Mj which equals 1600 kwh.

So broadly speaking you new fridge 'pays' for itself in 2 years. I suspect its worse that, but even if its 5 years, my point still stands.

[1] https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Appliance

[ Parent | on HN ]