Is Your American Refrigerator Energy-Efficient?

The average American refrigerator utilizes more electricity in a year than the average adult across several countries consumes.

Siobhan McDonough from VOX argues that the issue isn't that Americans should do without air conditioners, let alone refrigerators, but that the world needs to prioritize how to provide considerably higher amounts of electricity to the world's poorest countries.

Monster Refrigerator

McDonough calls the average North American refrigerator a "monster."

McDonough's refrigerator uses 450 kilowatt-hours (kWh) each year to run compressors that transmit heat from within the refrigerator to the kitchen around it. The air conditioning systems will move the heat outside for much of the year.

Still, McDonough's fridge is not as inefficient as it sounds: four of the six top energy-efficient refrigerators on Treehugger's list used significantly more energy, with the Treehugger best pick consuming 602 kWh.

Meanwhile, according to the World Bank, Bangladesh's average per capita energy consumption is 302 kWh, India's is 805 kWh, and Pakistan's is 508 kWh. The three are the nations where temperatures are expected to exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit this spring and where locals could benefit from a few kilowatts of cooling.

This begs the question of whether refrigerators need to be so large and energy-intensive.

Small Refrigerator

In 2007, Toronto architect Donald Chong held a kitchen display called "Small Kitchens Make Good Cities," which was based on the idea that individuals with small fridges shop every day to support their local butcher and baker. Many people in Europe do this, which is why their refrigerators are generally so small.

In North America, the fridge is part of an economic system designed to maximize convenience and consumption, where you drive your big car to the big grocery store to buy big packages that go into your big fridge. This goes back to the post-war years.

In Sandy Isenstadt's "Visions of Plenty: Refrigerators in America around 1950," he explained that the refrigerator functioned as off-site inventory storage for the growing food industry.

Consumer empowerment was used to facilitate this: flattening temperature variations and storing foods indefinitely meant more efficient use of domestic capital. The refrigerator of the 1950s was a tableau of the industrialized food chain, a visualization of the capitalist landscape, as an in-home showcase of the greater market.

Derek Markham, a Treehugger, never bought into my small fridge theory and agrees with Isenstadt on consumer empowerment.

He argues that having a large fridge, freezer, and pantry is the better option for the time-strapped and uber-frugal, as it allows them to take advantage of seasonal foods and sale items, as well as provides some food security and supports better year-round nutrition on a budget.

Katherine Martinko of Treehugger has expressed similar sentiments.

However, the small fridge is part of a larger picture of energy consumption and the sufficiency culture. The refrigerator is not self-contained.

According to the Energy Sufficiency Project, people can live happily with a smaller fridge if it makes sense to shop frequently for fresh food.

The infrastructure required for this to happen is a store selling the food that consumers want at a price they like on a route they use every day. If this does not exist, consumers are more likely to choose a shopping pattern that requires more cold storage space, and thus a larger fridge.

To influence this, people will need to look beyond energy efficiency policies.

By raising everyone's consumption to North American or European levels, energy inequality will never be eliminated, and carbon emissions will eventually take it.

Treehugger suggests reducing energy consumption to a level that is sufficient but not excessive. That could mean living in a walkable or rollable community where the park is the backyard and Main Street is the large refrigerator and pantry.