Electrical appliances

Dishwashers

Dishwashers are present in less than 50% of EU households, but they already consume around 340 million m3 of water and 33 TWh of electricity each year – this is higher than the residential electricity consumption of Poland.

Manufacturers are pushing for raising penetration rates (especially in Eastern European countries, where they are still low), which will fuel an increase in the total impact of this product group.

What’s the European Union doing?

An ecodesign regulation and revised energy labelling rules were adopted in 2010. Since December 2016 (last stage of ecodesign requirements), only dishwasher models with energy class A+ or higher are allowed on the market (except for very small models).

After a two-year review study, in 218 the European Commission adopted a revision of the regulations. The ambition is relatively poor on the timing and level of energy efficiency requirements, but progressive repairability and recyclability were introduced, even if these do not go as far as we had expected.

Furthermore, a new energy label format will be implemented by 2021. It retains the very welcome shift back to a simple A-G scale, and other useful modifications (such as the indication of the tested programme time, to avoid exaggerated stretched durations).

The expected savings of these revised rules are 2 TWh of electricity and 16 million m3 of water per year by 2030.

What does the Coolproducts campaign want?

Tighter energy efficiency requirements in the next revision;
A halt to basing the energy labelling rating on the performance of the “eco” programme only, as this programme is only used in 19% of the cases, which is not representative of how consumers use their products;
Reinforce requirements to ensure better durability, repairability and recyclability of dishwashers, and use the energy label to communicate information about these aspects (e.g. repairability score);
Raise awareness on the new label format, to help consumers during the transition period in 2021.