Any increase in the cost of TVs would be offset by savings in owners’ electric bills, the commission said. More efficient models are expected to shave about $30 a year off owners’ electric bills and collectively save Californians about $8 billion in energy costs by 2021.

In 1977 the commission approved aggressive efficiency standards not only for refrigerators and freezers but also for air conditioners…. In the next decade, the Energy Commission followed with efficiency standards for furnaces, dryers, swimming-pool heaters, household cooking appliances, heat pumps, showerheads, and fluorescent-lamp ballasts, among other products. Those rules became models for use in other states and, eventually, for federal appliance standards. In 1978, using a pioneering computer program developed by Rosenfeld and his colleagues, the Energy Commission opened another front by approving more-sophisticated energy-efficiency standards for new buildings. Other states, and even other countries, followed.