Living up to expectations? Monitoring the effects of Ecodesign and Energy Labelling in Germany

Proc. eceee Summer Study, Giens

Authors: Corinna Fischer, Yifaat Baron, Markus Blepp, Tilman Hesse, Ina Rüdenauer, Britta Stratmann, Jürgen Sutter, Uta Weiß

Ecodesign and Energy Labelling are policies based on extensive ex ante impact assessment. Preparatory studies project potential savings for each product group. Impact assessments reestimate them for concrete regulatory alternatives. The bulky “Ecodesign Impact Accounting” harmonized all this data in order to provide a comparative assessment of energy savings (VHK 2015). However, retrospective accounts of what has actually been achieved are much scarcer. The authors of the paper have been involved in a study for the German Ministry of the Economy, trying to pinpoint national level savings that can be associated with Ecodesign and Labelling for six product groups (boilers, water heaters, light sources, electric motors, household cold appliances, and ventilation units). Ecodesign (ECO) scenarios have been compared to Business as Usual (BAU) scenarios, using national sales and energy consumption data wherever possible. This provides more reliable insights than before, especially for those product groups that have been regulated for some years so that actual market developments could be taken into account. The assessment suggests considerable savings in ECO as compared to BAU. However, they are consistently smaller than what could be expected if the EU-wide Ecodesign Impact Accounting figures had been scaled down for Germany. Also, ECO vs. BAU savings do not always mean that total energy consumption decreases over time. The paper discusses possible reasons for the differences between national and EU savings, and suggests future policy avenues to deal with the increase in total energy consumption.

Year

2017

Publication type

Refereed articles

Further content:

Energy