The European Commission has published the regulations for the marking of energy consumption of TVs in the EU. The final regulations could be applied as early as the beginning of 2012. Displays research specialist Meko has used its detailed forecasts for the European TV market to calculate that if every TV sold in a year improved its energy efficiency by one level, Europe would save the equivalent of the energy output of 1.66 nuclear power reactors.
As it takes around seven or eight years for most TVs to be replaced that would mean a reduction of around 14 power stations over the next generation of TV sets.
The labels, as expected, are based on the design used for white goods in Europe and are slightly less stringent than some earlier proposals. As well as an allowance for for sets fitted with hard disks and/or dual tuners, the regulations say that the power used for the calculation can be reduced by 5% if the following conditions are fulfilled when the television is placed on the market:
(a) the luminance of the television in the home-mode or the on-mode condition, as set by the supplier, is automatically reduced between an ambient light intensity of at least 20 lux and 0 lux
(b) the automatic brightness control is activated in the home-mode condition or the on-mode condition of the television, as set by the supplier
From January 1st 2014, the G level will disappear, the F goes in 2017 and E will no longer be allowable by 2020.
The Energy Saving Trust in the UK has persuaded major retailers to adopt the new labelling system as soon as practical, rather than waiting for the legislation to take effect. Retailers in the scheme include Best Buy UK, Comet, Co-operative Electrical, DSGi (Currys and PC World), John Lewis Partnership, Home Retail Group (Argos), Marks & Spencer, and Sainsbury’s. As always in European legislation issues, the rate of adoption around Europe will vary according to local conditions.
Bob Raikes, Managing Director of Meko, commented, “I’m very pleased that Peter Bromage from the Energy Saving Trust is the keynote speaker at our up-coming Glade 2010 conference, the first day of our 2010 DisplayForum event. He will talk about the attitudes of retailers and consumers, so if you are active in the European TV business, you should make sure that somebody from your company is at the event”.
The Energy Saving Trust will be explaining their voluntary initiative at the DisplayForum 2010 conference in London on 2 November this year, and other speakers including DEFRA, TCO and EPEAT will also discuss the impact of labelling regulations and environmental certifications.
According to independent website topten.info, the best rated TVs are currently manufactured by Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Philips, LG, Panasoinc and Loewe. All manufacturers will have to act quickly to make sure that they are not left behind.
The full regulations are downloadable from http://tinyurl.com/3yqo2lk
Details of the DisplayForum 2010 conference are at www.displayforum.com
