Sustainable manufacturing of consumer appliances: Reducing life cycle environmental impacts and costs of domestic ovens

Abstract

Electric ovens are among the least energy efficient appliances, with the efficiency of only 10%–12%. With new policy instruments in Europe requiring energy reduction, manufactures are seeking to develop more efficient domestic appliances. The aim of this paper is to aid sustainable manufacturing of an innovative, highly-efficient oven (HEO) by evaluating its life cycle environmental impacts and costs in comparison to conventional ovens. The results suggest that the HEO has 9%–62% lower environmental impacts than conventional ovens with the equivalent savings in the life cycle costs ranging from 25% to 61%. Replacement of conventional ovens by HEO in Europe (EU28) would save 0.5–5.2 Mt of CO2 eq. and the life cycle costs would be lower by €0.5–1.96 billion (109) per year. At the household level, energy consumption would be reduced by up to 30% and consumer costs by 25%–50%. These results suggest that policy measures should be put in place to encourage the uptake of energy efficient ovens by consumers.