Appliance energy standards in Europe

Abstract

In recent years there has been a revival of interest in appliance energy efficiency standards in Europe, in particular within the European Union 1 (EU). This paper summarizes the activity that has occurred across continental Europe, from the EU to Russia, but focuses principally on Western Europe. The paper discusses the components of residential electricity demand by end use and the role played by appliances, the energy consumption and energy efficiency trends for selected appliances, the European appliance market, the development of the EU's mandatory energy labelling scheme and some of its results, the testing and certification institutions in Europe, the EU's mandatory minimum energy efficiency standards proposal for refrigerators and freezers but current preference for voluntary agreements, the maximum energy consumption standards in Russia, the Swiss target-value approach, and the savings potentials of appliance energy efficiency standards for ‘cold’ appliances, ‘wet’ appliances, leaking electricity, electric motors, and office lighting. Since this paper was written (in 1995), the EU has passed legislation to introduce mandatory minimum energy efficiency standards for refrigerators and freezers that will enter into effect in 1999. The standards are set at a level intended to ensure that models sold after 1999 will, on average, require 15% less energy than the average of models sold between 1991 and 1992 after normalization for storage volume and cooling service. Despite these activities, the paper demonstrates that there remains a huge potential to save energy cost-effectively. 1 The former European Community (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, UK) became the European Union (EU) after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993. A year later Sweden, Austria and Finland opted to join. The former European Community is referred to as the EC-12 in this paper.