The European household appliance industry association, CECED, has called for a new approach to energy ratings of household appliances in the forthcoming EU Energy Labelling Scheme as many appliances go beyond the existing rating scales of A to G. For energy-efficient appliances that rank better than A, manufacturers are now using A+ and A++ But this is becoming unwieldy as energy efficiency continues to improve.
Instead, CECED is calling for a flexible scale of 1 to 7, 7 being the most efficient, which will then increase to 8 after a certain percentage of products have reached the highest rating, then to 9 and so on, as energy efficiency continues to improve.
They are also calling for the phasing out of refrigerators and freezes that are currently rated A by 2013.
However, the layout and colour coding of the current scheme would be retained to retain consumer recognition.
