Article by Roger Beuret, Convenor of the ELA Ecodesign Working Group – 22 February 2019

Why Ecodesign?

There is a worldwide demand to reduce energy and resource consumption. The EU legislation on Ecodesign and energy labelling is a tool for improving the energy efficiency of products. It helps eliminate the least performing products from the market, contributing to the EU’s energy efficiency objective.

• The Ecodesign Directive 2009/125/EU provides consistent EU-wide rules for improving the environmental performance of products, such as household appliances, information and communication technologies or engineering.
• The Energy Labelling Regulation may complement those Ecodesign requirements with mandatory labelling requirements.

The latest Ecodesign Impact Accounting Status from October 2017 reports significant improvements for the period 2010 to 2020 in ecology as well as in economy:

• Close to 1788 TWh primary energy saving, i.e. saving of 16% for the average product.
• Reduction of 315 Mt CO₂ greenhouse gas emissions (7% of 2010 EU-total).
• € 104 bn net saving on consumer expenditure.
• € 58 bn extra revenue for industry, wholesale, retail and installation sector.
• 0.9 million extra direct jobs for industry, wholesale, retail and installation sector.

Why are lifts included in the Working Plan 2016 – 2019 (WP3)?

Lifts were already studied in 2011 for the Working Plan 2012-2014 (WP2). At that time, they were not selected but marked for follow up. In the preparatory study to establish the Ecodesign Working Plan now 2016 to 2019 (initially 2015 – 2017) a potential of 8 TWh primary energy savings (equals 3.2 TWh/y final energy savings) in use phase until 2030 was put on the table by the Commission consultant and considered promising by the Commission. It must be noted however that due to lack of up to date information, the consultant pre-study bases itself mainly on the E4 Project which dates back before 2009, and these savings’ estimates seem completely unrealistic. The consultants will need to take into account the numerous improvements achieved since then for their savings prediction.

Why the Ecodesign Preparatory Study for Lifts?

The aim of this preparatory study is to provide a detailed technical, ecological and economic analysis for the European Commission to decide for or against a regulation. Since July 2017 this preparatory study is in progress, open to all interested stakeholders for active contribution and participation. Following the “Methodology for Ecodesign of Energy related Products” (MEErP) of the European Commission seven tasks (shown below) are performed and draft reports published by the project team under the lead of Fraunhofer ISI.