Energy efficiency of consumer electronics and household appliances in the European Union: Market statistics on rescaled energy efficiency classes

Panel: 9. Products, appliances, ICT

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Karsten Schischke, Fraunhofer IZM, Germany
Anton Berwald, Fraunhofer IZM, Germany
Eduard Wagner, Technische Universität Berlin
Nils F. Nissen, Fraunhofer IZM
Martin Schneider-Ramelow, Technische Universität Berlin

Abstract

In July 2017, the European Commission published the revised Energy Labelling Regulation (2017/1369/EU), setting deadlines for rescaling the current energy efficiency classes and introducing a product database. As this database is not yet accessible for statistical analysis as of mid 2021, market data is derived by other means, namely an analysis of a price comparison website covering the market in Germany.

The main objectives of the paper are twofold. First, we analyse market data and shed light on the current EU market situation and energy class distributions for the product groups covered by revised energy labels. Second, for selected product groups, we perform more detailed analyses, taking into account specific parameters of the labels and product information sheets (e.g. TV screen size, washing machine capacity, etc.).

The analysis will allow us to address several questions, such as: What is the current EU market situation? How does the energy efficiency class distribution look like after the label revision? Are the best classes – as intended by the regulation – unpopulated at the beginning, incentivizing product improvement in coming years? Does the distribution vary as a function of product specific features?

The analysis shows, that the various product groups perform very differently on the new energy efficiency scale: Dishwashers make good use of most of the scale and still leave room for incentivising innovation as class A devices are not yet on the market. The situation for washing machines is different: Here more than 40% of all models are right now already in the best performing classes A and B. Television sets populate the lower end of the scale with the majority of devices in class G, leaving the better classes for monitors.

In future, continuous monitoring of market developments will be possible and this paper is meant to analyse the initial status as of spring 2021 as reference for these future evaluations.

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