California First to Levy Cell Phone Charger Regulations

It is true...about 10-13% of all electricity is standby/vampire/phantom power. But this includes everything from microwaves to dvd players to wall warts. In my house, these other items out number the battery chargers I have.

Still, this mandate will save a measurable amount of power. Even 1% savings on this massive scale is a lot of energy.

Nearly all your chargers are designed based on cost, not on energy efficiency, since the consumer probably doesn't no any better on what things consume inside their household anyway. No company would design a more expensive charger without marketing it as some sort of value add (aka, charging them 300% more for calling it a "Green Charger").

California is such a large market, whenever they mandate something, it effectively becomes a national mandate, as i highly doubt at the end of the day they will make two production runs of some charger.

Given the state of the market, i doubt they would be able to increase costs anyway.