Achieving energy efficiency through product policy: the UK experience

The focus of this paper is on energy efficiency of domestic equipment. It is contended that, in the UK and-by extension-elsewhere. Government has to take the lead in defining low-energy standards for products. In the absence of policy, manufacturers do not recognize the need for carbon reductions in the equipment they design and consumers are unaware of the variation in energy performance in the product range. At present, neither market pull nor technology push can be relied upon to deliver energy savings. The imposition of a weak minimum standard on domestic fridges and freezers in 1999 will, over the lifetime of the appliances already sold by December 2002, save 1 Mt C of carbon dioxide at nil cost, to government or to the manufacturers, and a net benefit to consumers of 855 m: a highly cost-effective policy. The difference between energy efficiency and energy conservation is that it takes time for the cumulative benefits of an energy efficiency improvement to result in the maximum effect on energy demand reduction: the benefits of the 1999 energy efficiency standard will accumulate until at least 2020. This period is equivalent to the cycle of stock replacement for that particular object. The final level of energy conservation depends upon the offsetting effects of growth in ownership levels and the size of new equipment purchases. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.