Effects of rescaling the EU energy label on household preferences for top-rated appliances

Abstract

The European Union has decided to replace its current A+++ to D labelling scheme for cold appliances with a rescaled A to G labelling scheme. Employing a demographically representative discrete choice experiment on refrigerator adoption using an online survey among more than 1000 households in Germany, this paper explores the effects of the rescaled scheme compared to the old scheme on the stated uptake of top-rated refrigerators. Since in practice both schemes will be shown for a transitory period, the paper also analyses the effects of displaying both labels simultaneously. The findings from estimating a mixed logit model suggest that showing the rescaled A to G label alone significantly increases valuation of top-rated refrigerators compared to showing the current A+++ to D label alone. In comparison, when the A+++ to D and the rescaled A to G schemes are shown simultaneously, no benefits of introducing the rescaled label are found. Thus, policymakers should strive to enforce the application of the rescaled label scheme as quickly as possible and to shorten transitory periods where both labels are shown simultaneously.

Labeling of Installed Heating Appliances in Residential Buildings: An Energy Labeling Methodology for Improving Consumers’ Awareness

“…The EU Commission has foreseen a rescaling of the energy labels of ErP since there is continuous technological evolution of the appliances present in the market. The effect of rescaling refrigerator labels has been evaluated by Faure et al [18]. The rescaling of heating appliances and water heaters has not been published yet, but the labels calculated with the proposed methodology can easily be adapted when the new regulation is published since the energy labels are defined based on the calculated efficiency.…”

“…Different options for space heating systems and water heaters can be found in the literature, including heat pumps and hybrid systems, a combination of solar thermal or PV systems with other generation systems and improvement of control strategies [7][8][9][10][11][12]. Awareness can be raised by providing information about the expected performance with an energy label [1,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22], or by providing information about the actual energetic performance [23][24][25]. In the second case, information on consumption can reduce consumption, on average, from 4% to 20% depending on the application [23][24][25].…”

The Influence of New and Old Energy Labels on Consumer Judgements and Decisions about Household Appliances

“…It was designed so that very few appliances will initially be able to achieve an "A" rating, leaving space for more efficient products to be introduced in the future. Therefore, the most energy efficient appliances that are currently available on the market have B or C energy classes, which correspond to the previous A+++ class [7,17]. The introduction of these changes was accompanied by information campaigns explaining to consumers why and what has changed in the new energy labeling scheme (See e.g., https://www.gov.pl/web/klimat/nowe-etykiety-energetyczne (accessed on 25 November 2021) for the Polish governmental campaign).…”

“…Our study extends the existing literature on energy label perceptions and their influence on consumer judgements and decisions. While there have been previous experiments in this area, they mainly focused on the perceptions of the A+++ to D energy class system (applicable until 2021) [6,16] or compared both labeling systems, but these studies were carried out before the official rollout of the new A to G system (e.g., a study conducted in 2018 by Faure, Guetlein & Schleich [17]). As far as we know, there has not yet been much research since products with the new labeling system appeared on the market showing how the labeling systems influence consumer judgements and decisions.…”

“…As far as we know, there has not yet been much research since products with the new labeling system appeared on the market showing how the labeling systems influence consumer judgements and decisions. In addition, earlier studies often showed consumers only the full energy labels of products (sometimes with additional information about them, such as their price, guarantee, and capacity) [6,10,17]. In order to increase the ecological relevance of the experiment, we decided to precisely map the website of one of the large European home appliance stores (Media Markt) and the information about the household appliance that appears after using.…”