February 2026 EnergyWiseSM Tip: Water Coolers
February 2026 EnergyWiseSM Tip: Water Coolers
By: Energy Efficiency Program Manager Cory Fuehrer
Have you heard what the latest gossip around the water cooler is about? The water cooler, itself!
Business experts have long debated whether there is value to the chat that occurs when office employees meet during their venture to the device to obtain hot water for tea, coffee or a refreshing glass of cold water. Water cooler conversations tend to revolve around weekend plans, popular TV shows, movies, sports, or office-related, non-work-specific news. While traditional management approaches ranged from discouraging to prohibiting these interactions, research from the University of California, Santa Cruz reveals these interactions are crucial for boosting company culture, improving employee collaboration, fostering social support, and reducing stress.
So where did this common office fixture come from? In 1906, Halsey Willard Taylor and Luther Haws were exploring ways to further reduce the deadly impact of typhoid in schoolchildren. Research during the middle of the previous century determined it primarily spread though drinking contaminated water. Observing that schoolchildren were drinking from communal tin cups of water, Hawley invented and placed the water fountains (or bubblers) into schools.
In 1909, Haws created the Haws Sanitary Drinking Faucet company and patented his water cooler in 1911. The early water coolers stored water in a sealed glass container and used large blocks of ice to chill it.
Shortly before the 1920s, the first five gallon water bottles began to appear and the iconic “upside-down bottle on a cooler” design often associated with 20th-century office life was launched. By 1938, the world’s first ‘self-contained electric water cooler’ was patented that provided internal refrigeration and eliminated the need for ice deliveries. The 1950s and ‘60s saw the introduction of hot and cold-water dispensers, which remain the standard design today.
Today’s water coolers also have features such as touchless dispensing sensors, temperature controls, UV sterilization and machine usage tracking. Since sustainability and optimizing employee health have become major business interests with concerns of plastic waste skyrocketing and microplastics entering our bodies, most businesses have or are switching to plumbed and internally filtered water coolers.
While these features can significantly add to the unit’s energy use, water coolers that have earned an Energy Star® certification save 22% or more of the energy that an uncertified, conventional model would use. In fact, if all water coolers sold in the U.S. were Energy Star®-certified, the energy cost savings would equate to more than $250 million each year. With the average commercial water cooler typically lasting five to 10 years, total savings would be between $1.25 and $2.5 billion.
Your local public power provider, in partnership with Nebraska Public Power District, has additional ideas of how to efficiently use the electricity they provide. In addition, they may offer EnergyWiseSM incentives to reduce the initial costs of efficiency improvements. Contact your local utility or visit www.energywisenebraska.com for additional details.
