The European Commission has announced today that it has adopted four new minimum energy efficiency requirements. These cover industrial motors, circulators, televisions, refrigerators and freezers. Our readers may remember that these were all discussed in March this year, at the time when our penguins went to Brussels to ask for some ambition, and when more than 120,000 people signed an Avaaz petition for energy efficient products in Europe.
The new regulations lay down energy efficiency requirements which will save about 190 TWh per year by 2020, which is comparable to the combined annual electricity consumption of Sweden and Austria, according to the Commission's press release.
Well done, says the Coolproducts campaign. However, as we have said repeatedly before, these standards could have been even more ambitious, leading to around 20% higher electricity savings.
The measure on fridges had such a low level of ambition that it will cause virtually no change in the market in Germany and the Netherlands, as the current market for these products in these countries is already above these minimum requirements.
As for TVs, the requirements that have been proposed will lead to savings of only around 28 Terawatt-hours, compared to the increase in electricity demand from TVs that will happen with no policy, around 72 TWh. This means that the new regulation doesn't even compensate for the fact that consumers are buying increasingly complex, large, and therefore more energy- guzzling TV sets. Let alone causing an absolute reduction in electricity demand - which is what we need if we want to fight climate change.
We hope that future product efficiency measures will better reflect the urgency of climate change, the cost effectiveness of this policy, and the huge potential to reduce energy demand. In particular, we would like much stronger standards for boilers, water heaters and air conditioners.