ENERGY EFFICIENCY : ENVIRONMENTALISTS STILL UNHAPPY OVER NEW TELEVISION LABELS.

Reacting to a revised draft for the energy labelling of televisions drawn up by the European Commission, an environmentalist NGO, the European Environmental Citizens Organisation for Standardisation (ECOS), is now calling for the energy efficiency scale used for the label to be notched up by two additional classes. The proposed labels, with an A to G' scale indicating the energy efficiency of televisions sold, should start hitting shop shelves from the middle of 2011. This would be one year after adoption of the measure under the recast directive on energy labelling(1).

In its revised document, the Commission still claims the proposed changes would result in annual electricity savings of 43 TWh by 2020, compared to the situation if no measures are taken. Nonetheless, ECOS' Edouard Toulouse sees the Commission's proposed energy label scale as not stringent enough. "In order to take into account recent technological improvements and avoid introducing too quickly confusing A+, A++ and A+++ classes, the scale should be made tougher," argues Toulouse.

According to ECOS, it is inappropriate and misleading to introduce a new label for which three classes would become "empty" and "pointless" after only one year. With delayed entry into force of the new measure for televisions, the bottom of the scale labels (E, F and G) will only appear in shops in mid-2011 at the earliest. Toulouse notes that scheduled entry into force is now also just one year before the second stage of the ecodesign implementing measure for televisions enters into force (April 2012). This latter measure effectively...