With the rapid economic growth and improvement in standard of living, Chinese people are employing more and more household appliances to make their living convenient and comfortable, of which refrigerators are indispensable. Because refrigerators operate continuously irrespective of seasons and regions, the total electricity consumption of refrigerators is huge and consequently causes severe energy-related environmental issues. China has been paying more and more attention to this and issued a national energy efficiency standard, GB12021.2-2003, for refrigerators. This paper first describes the standard briefly. Then it develops a mathematic model to evaluate the potential energy savings and environmental impacts of the standard. The estimated results indicate implementing the standard will save large energy, as well as benefit greatly to environment. Thus, it is very necessary to implement energy efficiency standard for refrigerators in China. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.