Ecodesign and energy efficiency

As part of the EU’s suite of policy strategies for a more competitive and sustainable Europe by 2020, with greater energy security, Ecodesign measures will play a key role.

The European Commission has been preparing two separate Ecodesign Regulations:

• Electricity transformers will ensure that transformers become progressively more efficient as new power transformers put into service in the EU internal market will have to fulfil minimum energy efficiency requirements from July 1, 2015.
• Building ventilation, which have a greater business-to-business (B2B) orientation, will come into force in January 2016.

The resulting energy savings have been estimated at 16TWh per year from 2020 onwards, which corresponds to 3.7 Mt of avoided CO2 emissions, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of Denmark (32 TWh per year).

The new measures are part of a growing family of some 30 Ecodesign Regulations that, together, will bring about hundreds of millions of small to medium energy savings every year in households and businesses.

The aim of Ecodesign measures is to target “cost neutral” savings over the lifetime of the products that are examined for their energy saving potential, which means that the higher purchase costs – due to the innovative technologies used – is repaid via savings over the product’s lifetime.

The Ecodesign Regulation is an example of how the EU can pursue policies that successfully reconcile competitiveness and sustainability and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The association Euro Gypsum produced the following video, which helps to illustrate these concepts:

 Links

• Ecodesign working plan