Energy Star Savings Calculator

Energy Star is a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency program that certifies appliances and electronics meeting specific energy efficiency standards. Certified products typically use 10-50% less energy than minimum federal standards.

Why this calculator asks for your electricity rate

Every figure below is in kilowatt-hours, not money, and the cost comes from the rate you enter. That is deliberate. Electricity prices vary by more than a factor of four across the places this page gets read: around 11 cents per kWh in Utah, 17 cents as a US average, 30 cents in much of Germany, and past 40 in Hawaii. A calculator with a price baked into it is wrong for almost everybody and goes stale every year besides. Enter your own rate off your bill and the answer is yours rather than a national average’s.

Typical annual energy savings over a new standard model

Refrigerators: about 15% less energy, roughly 100 kWh a year. The dramatic gains come from replacing a pre-2000 refrigerator, which can draw three to four times what a current certified unit does.

Dishwashers: around 90 kWh a year, plus about 3.5 gallons of water per cycle. On a metered water supply that second saving is worth real money and this calculator does not count it.

Clothes washers: roughly 25% less energy and a third less water, near 105 kWh a year.

Central air conditioners: certified units beat the federal minimum by only about 8%, near 300 kWh a year. The change that matters is replacing a system over ten years old, which can cut cooling energy by 20% to 40%.

Water heaters (electric): a heat pump water heater is two to three times as efficient as a resistance heater, saving on the order of 850 kWh a year. In most homes with electric hot water, this is the single largest saving available.

LED bulbs: replacing a 60 W incandescent with a 9 W LED saves about 51 W. Run three hours a day, that is roughly 56 kWh a year per bulb.

CO2 reduction

The average U.S. grid emits about 0.386 kg CO₂ per kWh, and the calculator uses that figure. Your own grid may be very different, and the difference is enormous rather than marginal: France runs near 0.06 kg per kWh because of its nuclear fleet, Norway lower still on hydro, while coal-heavy grids sit above 0.7. The same kilowatt-hour saved is worth ten times as much carbon in Poland as in France.

Savings accumulate over an appliance’s lifespan, typically 10 to 20 years, and the calculator shows the running total. One thing it deliberately does not do is apply inflation or projected rate rises, so read the money as today’s terms. Electricity has generally risen faster than general inflation, which means the real-world saving tends to come in above a flat projection rather than below it.