ABS Australian households ranked energy star rating more important than price or brand when buying a household appliances according to a report released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
Water efficiency rating was ranked first for washing machines, but price was ranked the most important factor in buying a heater.
This is a change since the last survey in 2002, which found that price was the most important factor for the majority of white goods, with energy efficiency overriding price only for dishwashers.
However, comfort rather than energy saving was the reason why nearly all (83 per cent) householders had installed insulation in their homes - only four per cent of households said they had installed insulation to save energy.
Continuing the comfort theme, the number of households with air-conditioning or evaporative cooling more than doubled between 1994 and 2008 - from almost a third (32 per cent) to two-thirds (67 per cent).
Some of the other key findings in the survey were:
The proportion of households using solar energy increased by 60 per cent between 2002 and 2008 (from five per cent to eight per cent). Most of this is for solar hot water systems.
Leading states for solar hot water were the Northern Territory and Western Australia, where it was used by 54 per cent and 21 per cent of households respectively.
More than half of all Australian households (52 per cent) were GreenPower aware in 2008, including five per cent already paying for GreenPower.
The ACT had the highest GreenPower awareness (66 per cent) while Queensland and Western Australian had the lowest (38 per cent).
