Appliance Efficiency Can Supercharge National Climate Plans
CLASP’s Lauren Boucher discusses the many benefits of including appliances in the current round of NDCs.
At the heart of the Paris Climate Agreement lie country-specific climate plans developed by governments around the world, officially known as nationally determined contributions, or NDCs. The third iteration of these plans, due this year, will play a key role in determining whether the world hits critical 2030 climate targets.
In the first two rounds, one powerful tool for reducing emissions—appliance efficiency—was notably underutilized. CLASP is working to change this for NDC 3.0, providing a toolkit to help policymakers incorporate appliances into their 2025 NDCs.
Lauren Boucher, a Washington, DC–based member of CLASP’s research team, led the creation of the toolkit. She spoke with CLASP editor Sarah Wesseler about the importance of appliance efficiency in climate mitigation and the role of national climate plans in achieving it.
Lauren Boucher
CLASP
Sarah Wesseler: I want to start by zooming out to the big picture of efficiency in climate mitigation. In climate media, we hear a lot about the need to transition away from fossil fuels, but not as much about the need to use energy more effectively, regardless of the source. Does this reflect the actual mitigation potential of renewable energy compared to efficiency? Where does efficiency actually fit in?
Lauren Boucher: It’s true that efficiency is often left out of conversations about the energy transition, but that’s definitely not because the two things are unrelated, or because renewables are inherently more important.
One way to think about it is that when we ignore energy efficiency, we’re making the transition to renewables harder and more expensive.
I’ll back up and give some more context. In 2015, when the Paris Agreement was signed, the international community set a formal target of limiting warming to no more than two degrees, and also agreed that NDCs would be the mechanism for reaching net zero emissions by 2050. But most people working on climate change didn’t know exactly what this should look like in practice. What, specifically, did countries need to do to hit the two-degree target?
One of the leading organizations that’s been helping to answer these questions is the IEA [International Energy Agency]. In 2021, it put out a really influential report showing that reaching net zero would require the world to triple its renewable energy capacity, but also double the pace at which efficiency improves every year.
People sometimes look at the doubling energy efficiency and tripling renewable energy targets as two distinct goals, but they’re actually fundamentally intertwined. Efficiency measures reduce overall energy demand, which allows the share of renewables in a country’s energy mix to grow faster.
It’s also important to think about the doubling efficiency target in the context of the global economy. Historically, when a country’s standard of living has improved, its energy consumption has risen significantly. Obviously, we want to see living standards around the world continue to rise, particularly in places where people can’t meet their basic needs today. But we don’t want to use more energy in the process, since that would mean needing to build even more renewables—which isn’t always easy—or continuing to use fossil fuels.
The IPCC’s [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] modeling addresses this issue by showing that we need to decouple economic growth from emissions. The idea is that the world needs to use the same amount of energy, or ideally even less, to produce more goods and services. So energy efficiency enables us to achieve both climate change mitigation and economic development.
This is even more important because the world isn’t on track to meet the tripling target. A lot of countries have made real progress in building more renewables, but globally, we’re not where we need to be.
"When we ignore energy efficiency, we’re making the transition to renewables harder and more expensive."
Wesseler: Where do appliances come into this picture? Why focus on appliance efficiency specifically?
Boucher: Well, it’s important to note that when people in the energy sector talk about appliances, they’re actually referring to a much wider range of things than you might think. CLASP specializes in appliances, but our scope isn’t limited to domestic products like dishwashers and refrigerators—we also work on industrial motors, lighting, space heating and cooling equipment, et cetera. Basically, for energy experts, appliances is a catch-all term for products on the demand side of the energy equation.
So when you talk about efficiency, you have to talk about appliances. Products like fans, refrigerators, motors, and streetlights are everywhere—they work silently in the background of our lives to make them easier, safer, and more convenient.
And when you tally up the emissions produced by all these things, it really adds up. In fact, the appliance sector is responsible for about 40% of all energy-related CO2 emissions globally.
The upside of all this is that, because these products are so ubiquitous, appliance efficiency is an incredibly powerful climate solution with a ton of co-benefits. In places where the grid is powered by fossil fuels, improving appliance efficiency leads to significant emissions reductions and also improves outdoor air quality. But there are benefits even in areas with a cleaner energy supply—lower bills for consumers, for instance, and reduced strain on electric grids. Efficiency also helps more people afford appliances like refrigerators and air conditioners, which are really vital for adaptation and economic development. So appliance efficiency is a true win–win for everyone.
And the good news is, we already know how to make appliances more efficient. Policy mechanisms like standards and labeling have been delivering results around the world for decades. We know they work.
These policies are also extremely cost-effective, which is particularly crucial in a world of limited climate finance. CLASP has data showing that in terms of administrative costs, you can reduce tons of emissions for pennies. And the IEA has shown that the benefits of standards and labeling programs outweigh the costs by a margin of four to one.
So, in short, the energy transition depends on balancing energy supply and demand, and appliance efficiency is one of the cheapest, smartest ways to do that. But unfortunately, we’re off track in making that a reality.
40% of global energy-related CO2 emissions come from the appliance sector
Wesseler: How far off track are we talking?
Boucher: Well, NDCs can help us understand this, since they provide detailed information about national priorities. CLASP ran keyword searches on the first two rounds of NDCs, which were submitted in 2015 and 2020/21. The results clearly showed that countries haven’t been prioritizing appliance efficiency enough. More than half of them didn’t mention appliances at all, and the ones that did established pretty underwhelming efficiency targets, if they had them at all.
There is a lot of variation from country to country, though. Some governments have clear, quantifiable efficiency targets for specific appliances in NDCs, while others take a more general approach, like just saying they’ll improve the efficiency of air conditioners. And it’s possible that some countries considered appliance efficiency when setting their targets for overall emissions reductions, but didn’t mention it in the final NDC text.
But as a whole, NDCs certainly haven’t been ambitious enough to hit net zero emissions by 2050. CLASP published a report in 2023 that identified specific energy efficiency targets for ten key appliances, which we call the Net Zero Heroes. Hitting those targets would get the appliance sector very close to net zero by 2050, but what we’re seeing in NDCs, and in practice, is far from that.
Wesseler: So what’s the solution? What advice would you give to policymakers who are working on their 2025 NDCs?
Boucher: Every country can take real, meaningful action on appliance efficiency. Countries that currently have limited appliance efficiency policies can put in place strong regulatory frameworks and adopt robust standards that prevent technology lock-in of energy-hogging appliances. This would create a ton of benefits within those countries: lower energy demand for the nation as a whole and reduced energy bills for consumers, plus protection against international manufacturers’ dumping practices that leave people stuck with outdated, inefficient appliances.
But countries with strong regulations can also do more. Our analyses clearly show that even some of the most stringent appliance efficiency requirements currently in place are not enough to reach net zero. Motors and air conditioners, in particular, need a lot of work to hit Net Zero Hero targets. The leading countries should continue to push the envelope and regularly update their regulations for these and other appliances, charting a path for others to follow.
There’s so much more juice to squeeze from appliance efficiency, and all governments should take advantage of that.
CLASP's Net Zero Appliances NDC Toolkit helps governments incorporate climate-friendly targets for appliance efficiency into Nationally Determined Contributions to the Paris Agreement.
