Summer is coming, and that means the plasma TV that bathed you in warmth all winter will soon become between you, your air conditioner and comfort. Yes, we love the images that are pumped out by the emissive cells of a plasma display, but as a general rule, LCDs spin the electric meter more slowly. This benefit is not lost on The LCD TV Association, which has launched its GreenTV logo program to tout the fact. The baseline requirement for an LCD TV to wear the badge is ambient light sensors that adjust the backlight brightness, a feature good for at least a 30-percent reduction in electricity consumption. The association has more plans as well, so expect to see environmentally-conscious features like recyclable parts, fewer heavy metals, and LED backlights get billing as well. With the EPA's Energy Star ratings coming to TVs this year, being "green" could be a real differentiator in the market -- and we all know that more badges on the box mean more sales, right?

We've no idea if Panasonic's sudden urge to decrease the power consumption of its plasmas has anything to do with this, but nevertheless, the Environmental Protection Agency has announced an updated ENERGY STAR specification for digital televisions that will hopefully "lead to further reductions in the amount of energy consumed by DTVs." The new standard will reportedly grant the coveted ENERGY STAR label only to "the top 25- to 30-percent most energy efficient TV models," and furthermore, it will (for the first time) "take into account active mode or 'On' mode power consumption in addition to standby mode energy use." Needless to say, the CEA found a moment to applaud the new spec, and as far as we can tell, it's being instituted immediately.

[Via Widescreen Review]

Some HDTVs use more power than others, but they all have the ENERGY STAR sticker right? Unfortunately this sticker doesn't tell you much, and our friends down under intend to change that. They want to make sure consumers know how much power that HDTV they're buying will use. This makes perfect sense to us, we already have such ratings on many of our appliances, but what doesn't make sense is that they are also considering banning HDTVs that use what they consider too much power. The real problem is that they want to do this by 2011 and some of our favorite TVs will have a hard time shaving off the watts in time. As much as we love HD, we think this is a pretty good idea; educate the consumers, while at the same time pressure the manufacturers to develop more efficient products. Just so long as we can still buy our 60-inch plasmas TVs if we want to.

NuVo Technologies is sure proud of its new Essentia E6G whole home audio system, but rather than waxing rhapsodic about its lengthy list of features, it chose to boast about its newfound Energy Star rating. Aside from the being an apparent power sipper, the E6G also touts Philips Class D digital audio amplification (40-watts per zone), an RS-232 bidirectional control interface, 1U rack height, a newfangled control pad, OLED display and support for six sources and an equal number of zones. Of course, we sure hope you save a few dollars on that energy bill if you plan on picking this up, 'cause you'll be shelling out $2,299 up front before ever plugging it in.