At last month’s well attended Green Alliance Ecodesign conference, we were really struck by something Marie Donnelly of the European Commission’s energy directorate said. She told the audience that on her first days in the job as Director of energy efficiency & renewable energy at the EU Commission, one of the first things she was given to read was an article from the Daily Telegraph that was very critical of the Ecodesign of Energy Using Products Directive process. We wrote about this article – which was misleading in many ways – a few weeks ago. For sure, there have been some other pretty critical articles like this one, which we have also written about in the past – particularly on the incandescent lightbulb ban. And particularly in the UK.
They can certainly give the impression that the media is hostile to the whole Ecodesign process. And understandably, officials at the European Commission feel that this sort of criticism needs to be taken into account. We know from our conversations with them that they are carefully monitoring critical media coverage and that this is having an impact on the policy making process.
But let’s look at this issue more carefully. Is it really correct to say that the UK media is overall hostile to the Ecodesign Directive? And does giving this sort of article to Marie Donnelly on her first day in the job give her a complete and fair picture?
What the media is really saying on efficiency
Firstly, UK media are absolutely full of articles advising people how to save energy, indicating that there is a strong interest in the public on ways to save energy. The Sun newspaper – not exactly a radical environmentalist newspaper – regularly publishes articles about the benefits of energy efficient lightbulbs. And when some of its competing newspapers were reporting about the alleged consumer revolt over the incandescent lightbulb phase out, the newspaper responded by calling the lightbulb ban a "no brainer" and giving away thousands of CFLs for free to its readers. And a more recent article mentioned the EU ecodesign policy in a completely neutral, factual way, while again supporting the need to switch to more efficient lighting. This year, a UK supplement to National Geographic published a long article (PDF) which mentioned the Coolproducts campaign and was generally supportive of stronger energy efficiency standards for products.
Even more importantly, some UK media coverage has not only been supportive of the Ecodesign Directive: at the time of the decision on lightbulbs, an opinion piece on the BBC website criticised the Commission for not being sufficiently ambitious.
There’s also plenty of evidence of positive, supportive media coverage in the rest of Europe. French consumer magazine Technique et Environnement covered the Ecodesign policy extensively and in a very supportive way this year. More recently, prominent Dutch energy blogs covered the launch of our report "Energy Savings in Practice"in early December, which argues we can be far more ambitious with the Ecodesign Directive than is currently the case. The articles can be found here, here and here.
There has also been a lot of media coverage of the World Cup for TV efficiency that our member organisations ran in the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain and Germany.
So, have the European Commission officials who brief Marie Donnelly seen these articles and should they perhaps ensure their bosses know about them?
What does the public really want?
Beyond the strict media coverage issue, there are also other issues to consider. Do a few critical articles represent evidence that there are wider concerns among the public about decisions being made under this policy? We argue this is not the case. Over 144,000 citizens last year signed a petition - organised by Avaaz - for more ambitious product efficiency requirements in the EU. On top of that, a very large number of European civil society organisations are supporting the Coolproducts Manifesto.
The EU Commission and Member States have a duty to listen, and carefully monitor these supportive calls for action, with the same attention - if not more - that they are devoting to critical media articles.