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The European Commission has recently announced two guiding principles for EU product policy: First, product policy shall ensure that the performance of front-runner products in terms of sustainability becomes the norm, and second, the effectiveness of the current Ecodesign legislative framework is going to be significantly improved. Within this paper, already existing front-runner approaches and recent and ongoing product policy-making processes were reviewed. Based on the results, an EU front-runner approach is outlined. The presented approach (i) refers to performance levels of the best products already available on the market, (ii) aggregates information in existing databases, and (iii) works semi-automated. Together, all three attributes have a high potential to facilitate and accelerate the specification of appropriate minimum requirements for products at the EU level. This way, EU policymakers can deliver on the core objectives of the Ecodesign legislative framework much better. The basic mechanism and its legal entrenchment of the approach are illustrated for the energy efficiency of energy-related products. In addition, the Front-Runner Approach can be applied to any product group in the scope of the upcoming Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation and to a wide range of product-related minimum requirements, such as durability, reparability, or recycled content. The study’s objective is to suggest a tailor-made and dynamic approach to keep the EU product legislation up to date using innovative technology based on the investigation of current regulations and identify the gap. Experiences from three international case studies suggest that a front-runner approach to setting energy-performance standards can drive innovation and reduce energy consumption via promoting energy-efficient products; transparency about available products is one of the key factors and can be established by a database. The EU front-runner approach comprises extending the existing energy label database (or making use of the digital product passport) and introducing a legislative procedure that triggers changes in the energy efficiency requirements in the specific EU regulations if the database shows that a certain threshold value is reached. Challenges such as limited EU staff capacities and opportunities such as increased dynamic are discussed.
(i) Überblick zum aktuellen Stand der Normung und aktuellen Normungsvorhaben im Bereich Ökodesign.
(ii) Vorstellung des Forschungsprojektes (Steigerung der produktbezogenen Energie- und Ressourceneffizienz) vor allem in Hinblick auf Vorhaben die sich auf die Langlebigkeit, Reparierbarkeit und Recyclingfähigkeit.
Improving the energy efficiency of products was identified as the most important short-term opportunity to decrease energy consumption and therefore CO2-emission worldwide. More efficient products are created due to technical innovation. Restricting market access to efficient products only and making the most efficient products stand out by energy labelling are legislative approaches to encourage this development. Market surveillance authorities’ checks are fundamental to protect the consumer from wrongly declared goods on the market and ensure fair competition between manufacturers. However, the activities of market surveillance authorities are limited by their financial resources. Testing all product efficiency parameters in an accredited laboratory is very time consuming and cost intensive. In this article, a theoretical concept is presented which can be used to develop screening tests enabling market surveillance authorities to perform product tests with less financial resources. The concept identifies components which lead to non-compliance or make a product less energy efficient with minimum effort. The principle is based on a combination of random product tests, disassembling specific products and comparing components. This represents a new approach in product testing procedures beyond the current market surveillance activities. The concept is being tested within a research project funded by the German government.