EU vacuum cleaner regulations

Now corrected (perhaps), thanks to Dinero who spotted an error in the original source for overall electricity consumption.

Overall annual electricity consumption in the EU is 3 million Gigawatt hours ie 3E6 x 1E9, a total of 3E15 watt hours. Source (the decimal point has been omitted from the graph, hence the earlier mistake)

According to this blog, 19TWh would be saved by the maximum power regulation for vacuum cleaners ie 1.9E13 watt hours. I make that saving about 0.7% of the total EU electricity consumption, but it is easy to go wrong with teras and gigas. However, this came to me from Mark Wadsworth, which suggests that the figure is in the right ball park.

ʻWe use a fair bit of electricity, about 400 kWh a month, my online thingy tells me. Let us assume we spend half an hour a week vacuuming. Our vacuum cleaner is 2,200 watts. 

ʻHalf an hour per week = 1.1 kWh, times 4 and a third = 4.7 kWh per month 
= about 1% of our usage. 

ʻLet us assume that the most efficient cleaner uses half as much electricity for same effectiveness 
= reduces our usage by 0.5% 

ʻHouseholds consume about 40% of all electricity (a guess on my part) 

ʻ0.5% x 40% = 0.2% = one-five hundredth; not one-hundred thousandth. i.e. not absolutely nothing, but a very small something.ʼ

It is so small that one wonders why anyone was bothering about it. In terms of reducing carbon emissions (assuming that to be a worthwhile goal), the biggest and most silent contributor has been appliances steadily getting more energy efficient, whether by market forces or EU diktat.
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