By Rick Daysog, Sacramento Bee

California will become the first state in the nation to require greater energy efficiency in the battery chargers that millions of consumers use to power their cellphones, laptops, power tools and other electrical devices.

The California Energy Commission on Thursday unanimously approved new standards for battery chargers, which the agency says waste nearly two-thirds of the energy they collect.

Thursday’s decision is the latest in a series of actions by the commission imposing first-in-the-nation energy standards on appliances and consumer products. In 2009, the commission adopted new rules for flat-screen TVs.

Since 1976, the commission says, its efforts to make appliances more energy-efficient have shaved $36 billion from Californians’ energy bills.

Energy commissioners said the new rules for chargers will save consumers roughly $300 million a year, conserve enough electricity to power a city the size of Bakersfield and remove 1 million metric tons of greenhouse gas from the atmosphere – the equivalent of taking about 75,000 cars off the road each year.

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