Taking Efficiency for a Spin: The Market Transformation Trajectory of Super-Efficient Dryers

Beginning in 2010, NEEA led an end-to-end Market Transformation approach to laundry appliances, culminating in a record number of energy-efficient dryer options for Northwest consumers.

With so many options available in stores throughout the region, efficient ENERGY STAR® and heat pump dryers—which are all ENERGY STAR qualified—experienced a significant increase in sales, rising from 44% in 2020 to 54% of all electric dryer sales by the end of 2024.

Fourteen years in the making, this ongoing success is built on the alliance’s unique and established approach to Market Transformation, including:

• Scanning the market to find emerging dryer technologies with the highest potential to provide the most efficient and beneficial products for Northwest consumers.
• Collecting data to support the market in producing and elevating the most efficient laundry technologies.
• Testing and recommending the most efficient products to influence the elevation of voluntary standards for dryers sold in the United States.

Every step of the way, the alliance helped convene like-minded organizations, including manufacturers, utilities and energy efficiency organizations, to amplify the reach and influence of the Northwest. This began in 2010 with NEEA serving as a member of the Super-Efficient Dryer Initiative (SEDI), a national coalition of utilities and energy efficiency organizations united to bring heat pump dryers to the U.S. market. Across 14 years and counting, NEEA has acted as a collaborative leader in efforts to grow the availability of energy-efficient heat pump dryers, while ensuring the market is equipped to continue increasing the number of product options for Northwest consumers.

Ensuring Future Dryers Pass the Test

Through the years, NEEA helped guide this Market Transformation success by developing new efficiency specifications and testing procedures for clothes dryers, and then actively collaborating with manufacturers to help them build products that meet those specifications. This included providing lab testing to verify product performance and conducting a field study in 2013 to help manufacturers understand the ways that consumer behavior affects dryer energy use.

When heat pump dryers entered the market in 2017, the alliance collaborated with ENERGY STAR to ease market confusion by helping them create a new and voluntary Most Efficient Clothes Dryers specification and associated test procedures. This collaboration with ENERGY STAR and manufacturers led to increasing interest from utilities, resulting in the inclusion of heat pump dryers in the ENERGY STAR Retail Products Platform (ESRPP). By incentivizing retailers to stock and sell heat pump dryers, this program enables utilities to offer direct-to-consumer incentives on the more widely available product.

When the first full-sized, all-in-one washer/dryer launched with a heat pump dryer in 2022, NEEA enabled data reporting so Northwest utility partners could participate in new ESRPP midstream incentives that take advantage of increased consumer choices and interest. As a result of this work, regional sales of heat pump dryers increased from less than 1% of total dryer sales in 2022 to 4.5% by December 2024.

Supporting the Market’s Next Cycle of Transition

• Expanding opportunities with ENERGY STAR and regional programs to bring the benefits of efficient clothes dryers to even more Northwest consumers.
• Collaborating with key laundry manufacturers to develop a test procedure to inform future voluntary standards.
• Conducting lab testing on heat pump dryers to validate them for listing on NEEA’s Qualified Products List.