Electrical appliances

Ventilation units

Ventilation units control air circulation in residential and tertiary buildings.

The annual electricity consumption of these products is estimated at around 85 TWh/year of electricity in the EU, equivalent to the entire residential electricity consumption of Italy and Belgium combined.

Ventilation units become indispensable in highly insulated buildings, and will be increasingly used as building renovation progresses. There is a great need to regulate and reduce the energy consumption of these products, especially that often they remain switched on for very long periods of time.

What’s the European Union doing?

An ecodesign regulation for ventilation units was adopted in 2014, with differentiated staged requirements applying in 2016 and 2018 to residential ventilation units and non-residential ventilation units in 2016 and 2018.

In addition, an energy label was adopted for residential ventilation units, that entered into force in 2016, with energy classes ranging from A+ to G.

These regulations are expected to save about 20 TWh/year of electricity by 2025, as much as the current total electricity consumption of Slovakia. The review of these regulations started in February 2019 and is expected to conclude in 2020.

What does the Coolproducts campaign want?

Streamlined ecodesign requirements on energy efficiency for all non-residential ventilation units;
Ecodesign requirements for the leakage rates of all ventilation units (5% maximum limit);
Rescaled A-G energy classes;
Resource efficiency requirements, for instance in the form of an information on the energy label (e.g. repairability/durability score);