Schjær-Jacobsen, Jørgen

Energy labeling is believed to have great impact on the energy efficiency of household appliances sold. Many different labeling schemes exist around the world. As far as is known, none of these facilitates the easy tightening of specifications to keep up with technological advancements. The present proposed labeling scheme is simple and eliminates the above problem. The label simply consists of a year. That year would represent the year in which the performance of the product in question is/was state of the art. Each year the authorities would define the requirements for next year's label. It should be easily understandable by everybody: the more recent the year the better the product. The scheme readily lends itself for an almost unlimited variety of products, and would also cover properties other than energy consumption. It is always up to date, it is globally applicable, and it encourages manufacturers to continually improve their products

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Downloaded from orbit.dtu.dk on: Dec 18, 2017Proposal for a New Energy LabelSchjær-Jacobsen, JørgenPublished in:Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Energy Efficiency in Domestic Appliances and Lighting(EEDAL'11)Publication date:2011Document VersionPublisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordLink back to DTU OrbitCitation (APA):Schjær-Jacobsen, J. (2011). Proposal for a New Energy Label. In Proceedings of 6th International Conferenceon Energy Efficiency in Domestic Appliances and Lighting (EEDAL'11)Proposal for a New Energy Label Jørgen Schjær-Jacobsen Dept. of Civil Engineering, The Technical University of Denmark 1 Abstract Energy labeling is believed to have great impact on the energy efficiency of household appliances sold. Many different labeling schemes exist around the world. As far as is known, none of these facili-tates the easy tightening of specifications to keep up with technological advancements. The present proposed labeling scheme is simple and eliminates the above problem. The label simply consists of a year. That year would represent the year in which the performance of the product in question is/was state of the art. Each year the authorities would define the requirements for next year's label. It should be easily understandable by everybody: the more recent the year the better the prod-uct. The scheme readily lends itself for an almost unlimited variety of products, and would also cover prop-erties other than energy consumption. It is always up to date, it is globally applicable, and it encourag-es manufacturers to continually improve their products. 2 Examples of Existing Energy Labels Many existing labeling schemes seem to have been designed without dynamic labeling in mind, i.e. the revision at regular intervals to keep up with technological advancements. If labeling is not kept up to date manufacturers are not encouraged to improve their products, and consumers cannot rely on the labeling to select the better product. As it became inevitable existing labeling ranges have been extended essentially in two ways:  Extending scales by adding more grades  Tightening specifications for existing grades Below a few examples of existing labels, selected at random, will be presented, some of them with extensions. Figure 1 shows a Singapore energy label for an air conditioner. The energy efficiency is denoted by zero to four check marks; the more check marks the better. It is not known if and how extensions are planned [3].       Figure 1. Singapore air conditioner energy label 2 The Indian refrigerator energy label (Figure 2) features a one to five star scheme; the more stars the better. It is not known whether or not plans exist to extend the range [4]. The Chinese label (Figure 3) resembles the European A...G label, except the grades are numbered 1 to 5, where in this case 1 denotes the more efficient product. It is not known if and how extensions are planned [5].      Figure 3. Chinese energy label   Figure 2. Indian energy labels 3 The Building Energy Rating (BER) adopted in Ireland is shown in Figure 4. It includes no less than 13 grades: A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, C1...F, G. It would be more easy to grasp (though less colorful) could it be expressed as a single year. It is not known if and how extensions are planned [6]. The American Energy Star (Figure 5) is an example of a label without any grades. A certain product either earns the Star or it doesn't. The requirements are not very strict. They are generally only tigh-tened once Star qualified products in a particular category exceed a market share of 50% [7]. Thus there isn't much incentive for manufacturers to improve their products, nor for consumers to select the better product.   Figure 4. Building Energy Rating                         Figure 5. The American Energy Star label has no grades 4 The Thai energy label, shown for an air conditioner in Figure 6, is graded 1 to 5. In this case the higher number denotes the more energy efficient product. The proposed updating principle is keeping grades but adding a year that defines when the specifications were updated. In the figure the label to the right has had the year "2006" added [8]. A similar measure has been proposed for the European label. The user has no way of knowing whether or not an old grade 5 is better than a new grade 4. The Australian 6-star energy label (Figure 7) has been extended by a 10-star label featuring 4 "super efficiency"  ratings, gaining some respite. The more stars the better [9].           Figure 7. Australian 6-star and 10-star energy labels                Figure 6. Thai energy labels. The label to the right was updated in 2006.  5 The ordinary EU energy label is shown in Figure 8, left, for a clothes washer. It features a 7-grade scale A through G, where A denotes the better product. This scale has been extended for certain ap-pliance types by adding three new grades: A+, A++, and A+++, and eliminating the grades E, F, and G (Figure 8, right) [1]. In this way a couple of years' respite has been obtained, at the same time adding to user confusion. Figure 9 is taken from a recent Danish advertisement. It is an example of a manufacturer pointing out that the advertised dishwasher, among other things, consumes 10% less energy than required for a European A grade. It proves that energy labeling in this case is not up to date. 3 Future Energy Labels When the European A+++ label becomes obsolete, should it be extended to something like the one suggested in Figure 10? The user might have difficulties counting the plusses.   Figure 9. The European A rating is not up to date                   Figure 8. Ordinary and extended European energy label 6 Figure 11 shows a rival for the new scheme proposed in this paper, a label proposed by CECED (Conseil Européen de la Construction Electro-Domestique, European Committee of Domestic Equip-ment Manufacturers). The grades are numbered 1 through 7, where in this case the higher number denotes the more energy efficient product. In the future, when improvements occur, the grade "1"              Figure 10. Future EU energy label?           Figure 11. Extendable label proposed by CECED 7 would be eliminated and a new grade "8" added, etc., ad infinitum [2]. Thus this scheme presents an effective solution to the problem how to adapt to future requirements. However, the lay user has no way of knowing which grade currently represents the state of the art. 4 New Proposed Energy Label The new label proposed in this paper simply consists of a year. That year would represent the year in which the performance of the appliance in question is/was state of the art. Each year the authorities would determine how much next year's requirements should be tightened compared to those of the current year. The degree of improvement would be defined by the current rate of technological advancement. One should attempt to always be slightly ahead of time, so that only on rare occasions will a product appear on the market that carries the current year on its label. In other words, the requirements of next year's label should be defined to somewhat exceed the perfor-mance that is expected to appear on the market during that year. In that way there is always room for manufacturers to improve the labeling of their products. This labeling scheme is simple and expected to be easier to understand by everybody than most exist-ing labels: the more recent the year the better the product. For instance, a refrigerator labeled "2009" would perform at least like the most efficient refrigerators available in 2009, one labeled "2010" would be somewhat better, and so on. The scheme readily lends itself to a variety of products, like electric and electronic equipment, cars, tires, buildings, lighting, heating, cooling, ventilation, doors, windows, etc., and would also cover prop-erties other than energy consumption, e.g. performance, environmental impact, safety, and ergonom-ics. It is believed to be globally applicable, except maybe in places where people cannot read a year num-ber. Adjustments may be necessary to adapt to calendars other than the Gregorian. A simple example of a washing machine label according to this idea, based on the ordinary European label, is shown in Figure 12. It is illustrated how some properties, like water consumption, are graded individually. An actual label should of course be rendered more aesthetically appealing by a capable           Figure 12. Example of new proposed energy label for a washing machine 8 artist, maybe adding a flower, green Earth, or other pleasant symbol. 5 Conclusion As far as is known no existing energy labeling scheme is well suited for dynamic labeling, at the same time being easily understandable by everybody. This has been shown for a number of existing and proposed schemes. (Of course there is still a chance that such a scheme does exist without the au-thor's knowledge). Conversely, the topical proposed scheme  Is always up to date  Is easily understandable by everybody  Covers a variety of products  Covers a variety of properties  Is globally applicable  Encourages manufacturers to improve their products  Encourages consumers to pick the best available product 6 References [1] Household  appliances: energy consumption labelling (until 2011)  http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/consumers/product_labelling_and_packaging/l32004_en.htm [2] Revision of the EU Energy Label layout; ANEC views and arguments http://www.taenk.dk/upl/cms/1/2271_ANEC-ENV-2008-G-017.pdf [3] Singapore National Environment Agency: The Energy Label http://app.nea.gov.sg/cms/htdocs/article.asp?pid=2844 [4] Ministry of Power, Govt. of India: Switch to Electrical Appliances With BEE Label http://www.emt-india.net/Standards_Labeling/Posters/BEE-HTAdvertisement26Mar2008.pdf [5] Ecolabel Index: China Energy Label www.ecolabelindex.com/ecolabel/china-energy-label [6] Building Energy Rating (BER) Scales http://www.buildingenergyireland.ie/BERCerts1.html [7] About Energy Star http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=about.ab_index [8] Srinual Soksod and Panu Suwicharcherdchoo: Rescaling the Energy Label No.5: 2006 version in Thailand http://www2.egat.co.th/labelNo5/article/D_art/panu_eng%201.pdf [9] Sample of the Australian Energy Labels for Refrigerators and Freezers http://www.energyrating.gov.au/rf5.html  

Proposal for a New Energy Label

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Proposal for a New Energy Label

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