Search eceee proceedings

Can Europe continue deciding on product policies (MEPS, labels, etc.) without monitoring the market?

Panel: 6. Appliances, product policy and ICT

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Sophie Attali, SOWATT / Guide Topten, France
Anette Michel, Topten International Services, Switzerland
Eric Bush, Topten International Services, Switzerland
Edouard Toulouse, Topten International Services, Switzerland

Abstract

The Ecodesign and Labelling Directives are driving important changes for appliances, office equipment, lighting, consumer electronics, soon motors, etc.

During these Directives' update process, decisions were often taken based on outdated and/or partial market data, i.e. without knowing the distribution of market shares between different levels of energy performance and often using poor quality data for stock models, jeopardizing scenarios and anticipated policy impacts.

Beyond uncertainties for policies' results, this is not cost effective: experts dedicate a lot of time to create baselines that remain hypothetical, and are hardly ever confronted to market evolutions.

This situation is even more surprising since this gap could be filled-in: market data does exist -or could - and is not so expensive that Europe is doomed to do without.

In order to guide the market transformation towards energy efficient end-consumer goods through effective policy design, Topten proposes a pragmatic and straightforward approach: a systematic European-scale monitoring of sales, i.e. a regular analysis based on up-to-date market data covering all countries and key products.

A recent Swiss market monitoring (2004-2011) shows that with just a few information on market shares per energy class, appliances' size & prices, it is possible to evaluate the implemented policy tools, to see when a product needs a regulation update, the reaction of industry, etc.

Such an exercise implemented at the EU level would deliver evidence for the regular update of energy label scales and the necessary lifting of minimum energy performance standard thresholds. It would also allow for the comparison of different national developments contributing to the definition of optimal policy paths. It may not seem revolutionary, but it would ease the work of the whole energy efficiency community, provided the monitoring specifications are well designed – and we have ideas on that!

Downloads

Download this presentation as pdf: 6-301-13_Attali_pre.pdf

Download this paper as pdf: 6-301-13_Attali.pdf