Set-Top Energy Pact Saved Consumers $1.6B in 2018 Energy Costs, Says Auditor

28.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, said an independent audit by D+R International. D+R said 97.8 percent of service providers’ set-top purchases in 2018 met the agreement’s tier 2 levels that became applicable in 2017, exceeding each party’s commitment to have 90 percent of its purchases meet those levels. Some 78 percent of the signatories’ 2018 purchases met tier three levels scheduled to take effect in 2020, two years ahead of schedule, D+R said. The new-unit average power usage of the most energy-intensive type of set-top, the DVR, has fallen by 48 percent since 2012, it said. Participants bought half as many new set-tops in 2018 than in 2014, likely attributable to subscriber losses and consumers’ growing use of apps vs. an operator-supplied set-top box, said the auditor. Consumers used more than 36 million customer-owned devices such as smart TVs, smartphones, tablets, personal computers, and streaming players -- Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV -- to watch video services via app last year, up 33 percent year on year, it said. “With the increasing shift toward apps for streaming, the savings will grow even more because many consumers will no longer need a set top box to watch their shows,” said Noah Horowitz, Natural Resources Defense Council senior scientist. NCTA General Counsel Neal Goldberg said the agreement’s flexibility enabled signatories to “save even more energy than initially projected while still adapting to changing technology and services.” Signatories include AT&T/DirecTV, Comcast, Charter, Dish, Verizon, Altice, Cox, Frontier, CenturyLink, Arris, Technicolor, NRDC and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy; CableLabs also played a role. An energy report on home broadband gear was released Monday (see 1908120051).