Your Old Fridge Is Costing You. Here's How Much Energy a New Model Saves Each Year

New, more energy-efficient appliances may cost you at the register, but the savings tend to catch up over time. Most people think of heat pumps or solar panels when they hear "long-term energy-saving investment," but your refrigerator quietly makes the same case.

Newer models use considerably less electricity than those from even 10 years ago, and that gap in energy use translates directly into lower utility bills.

I wanted to put an actual number on it, so I did a ton of math, analyzing 2,630 fridges and their Energy Star data to compare today's models to those from 2016. (While I didn't calculate the energy delta for fridges older than 2016, it's almost certainly greater.)

Here's how much energy and money you could save by making the switch.

Where my fridge data comes from

Publicly available Energy Star data is a major player in this analysis. Screenshot by John Carlsen/CNET

For my 2025 samples, I analyzed energy usage in modern Energy Star-certified models. For 2016, I couldn't rely on Energy Star data because it lists only models that meet the most recent standards, not earlier ones.

Instead, I sourced my 2016 data from the California Energy Commission's Modernized Appliance Efficiency Database System. Rather than cover 42 refrigerator classes individually, I grouped them into the following broad categories:

Fridge types analyzed

Sample size: 2025 Sample size: 2016 Top-mounted freezers 385 137 Bottom-mounted freezers 440 192 Side-by-sides 23 68 Compact refrigerators 1,235 150 Total 2,083 547

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