They're operating on the fallacious premise that current appliances use too much power to achieve their intended use. This is like the low flow toilet nonsense -- "if it only takes 1.5 gallons of water to remove waste, then 3 gpf toilets are using two times more water than they need". Yeah, except statistical analyses have shown that not only is this premise incorrect, low flow toilets require more than twice the number of flushes to get the same result, because the world ain't linear extrapolation.
Likewise look at wet hair. There's a certain minimum amount of energy required to evaporate X amount of liquid water. Variables like the humidity of the surrounding air, how thick is the wet hair, etc, increase this energy requirement. Guarantee you the supposed energy savings in these appliances will be more than offset by people having to operate them longer.
The net result is more, not less, consumption of energy -- but that's not really the point is it?