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Maybe, but this isn't a demand created in the marketplace, it's a regulation. I've been in a factory that makes electrical boards, zillions of them. They're cheap because they've been making them forever and they're readily available. When they're changed to consume less watts it'll have a major impact on those factories - and for what? To whose benefit? Supposedly it'll benefit the consumer, but the consumer isn't asking for this.

I'm not saying I favor the regulations, or that the benefits will exceed the costs. But I believe that efficient power supplies are presently on the down-sloping side of the supply curve and so the increase in demand will reduce the marginal cost. As to whether the energy savings will justify even the reduced cost, that's debatable, but my point is that the costs aren't as severe as some here would contemplate.

Conservatives often blast Democrats for failing to acknowledge that markets adapt to pressures (e.g. that doubling taxes will shift people's behavior and thus often not double revenue), but this is a case where conservatives need to acknowledge that markets will adapt. The amount of adaptation may not be easily predictable, but I suspect it will be quite significant.

I suppose we'll have to wait and see. I'm not a very good sparring partner on this subject because I would prefer laissez faire over anything else, which makes me somewhat of a zealot.

It just seems to me that if reducing the power used were easy someone would have done it and slapped a sticker on their toaster (or whatever) that says, "USES LESS ELECTRICITY! SAVE UP TO $_ PER YEAR OVER OTHER BRANDS" to gain a competitive edge.