Reducing energy savings standard to 0.5W from 1W; MKE set up measures to boost energy efficiency.

Refrigerated display units - contributing to 25% of the total power consumption at distribution centers - along with servers and storage for Internet data centers (IDC) - core equipment of the cloud computing era - will have to have energy efficiency stickers on them.

The portion of major home appliances - such as gimchi refrigerators, electric washers, dishwashers and electric rice cookers - with energy efficiency grade 1 will be decreased from current 30~60% to approximately 10% by applying more stricter standard.

These changes were key issues of the Lifestyle Energy Consumption Efficiency Improvement Plan announced by the Ministry of Knowledge and Economy (MKE).

According to this plan, from this coming April, air conditioning systems will be classified from high-efficiency certified products to efficiency grade sticker products that excluded from the government's loan support and preferred supplier list for public agencies.

In addition, the minimum consumption efficiency standards for incandescent light bulbs will be more stricter and the sales of low efficiency light bulbs will be completely suspended in the market from 2014.

Moreover, the standby power reduction level will be cut down in phases to 0.5W by 2015 from 1W at present. This will dramatically lower standby power loss which accounts for 6% of total residential power loss. To implement this change, the 0.5W rate applies to monitors, scanners and dishwashers beginning this year.

Furthermore, MKE will work with other departments to require 50% of buildings to install standby power blockers (vs. the present 30%) so that the people can easily suspend standby power in everyday life. The project will also proceed with supplying blockers such as multi-adaptors and outlets.