The new energy certificates are here to stay. Did you know there are new energy consumption labels already on the market? In this article, we answer all your questions related to your household appliances. Keep reading to learn more.
Since March 1st of this year, the usage of new energy certificates has been imposed for household appliances like dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, refrigerators, etc. Can you differentiate them from the previous ones? Back in November 2020, they started to market products with both labels, the old one and the new one.
But this is not the only step remaining for the new energy certificates; in September 2021, it is planned that the certificates will be changed for lightbulbs and lamps, other appliances that were missing being added to the new labeling that marks the European Union to control energy consumption. We will no longer see refrigerators with A+++ or washing machines with A+. How is the new labeling now?
New Simple Labels
The reason for this change of certification for the household appliances is to simplify the labeling of the products. After completing many studies, it was observed that consumption did not depend on the qualification of the electrical appliances and that those with the highest classification on the scale were not always the best sellers. Customers no longer bought one refrigerator over another because one had A++ and the other A.
Because of that, the scale has been changed from A to G, removing the + symbols of the first positions and increasing by three more letters. Did you realize that some of your newest household appliances already had the newest label?
A Greater Efficiency
The change of letters to simplify the scale is the only difference we can find in the new energy labels. Despite the fact that the classes respect the initial color scale, green being the most efficient and red being the least efficient, the new top grade (A) is unattainable today. What does it mean that no household appliance can get the A classification? Does that mean that the new household appliances are less efficient?
The answer is no. They wanted to leave the first position empty, because they believe that with time, they can improve the household appliances so much that new products could be launched with a much better energy efficiency than those current on the market. For this reason, they left an empty space for those products to come. For example, which was before an A+++ is now a B, and the old B had an orange color; now it is green.
Digital Energy Certificates
As mentioned before, this is not the only difference we can see between the old and the new labels. Fighting for the digitalization, the new certificates have a QR code through which the consumer can get additional information about the productthey have purchasing, whether it is a flat-screen TV or a dishwasher.
Together with the QR code, the new labels will also have information regarding the water consumption, the storage and the level of noise they produce, among others.