The contribution of the European Union's Ecodesign and Energy Labelling Directives to industrial energy efficiency

Panel: 3. Matching policies and drivers: Policies and directives to drive industrial efficiency

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Andras Toth, European Commission – DG Energy, Belgium
Marcos Gonzalez Alvarez, European Commission, Belgium
Cesar Santos Gil, European Commission, Belgium

Abstract

While the scope of the European Union's Ecodesign Directive (2009/125/EC) has included industrial products since the adoption of the first version of the Directive in 2005, the Energy Labelling Directive (2010/30/EU) was extended to cover such products only during its last recast in 2010. The Ecodesign implementing measure on electric motors has already proved its worth in bringing substantial energy savings across sectors, including in industry. However, the rate of adoption of implementing measures on industrial products has fallen far behind the speed with which household appliances have been covered. One possible reason is that the saving potential at product level usually appears dwarfed when compared to potential improvements at system level. The developers of implementing measures have had to deal with the urge to extend the scope boundary to the installations in which the products operate. While the two Directives do not explicitly exclude installations from being targeted by implementing measures and delegated acts, there are no dedicated provisions either on how the measures and acts are supposed to tackle the specificities of installations when it comes to defining the practical details of applying the requirements (e.g. market surveillance). There is also little experience with energy labelling of industrial products, and many doubt that such labelling would be useful at all, considering the professional nature of all actors involved in the process of selecting industrial products for purchase. The authors of this paper are European Commission officials who have worked directly on ecodesign/labelling of industrial products. They analyse the experience gathered so far with respect to products such as professional and industrial laundry equipment, refrigeration, motors, lighting etc, in an attempt to identify best practice in the application of the two framework Directives to industrial products.