Ya’s motto is: use only what you need. It saves a big chunk of energy, so less windmills, solar panels, and money.
Now the Ecodesign Initiative of the EU makes legislation for this. Because it forces manufacturers to make their machines use only the energy they need. And that saves us lots of unnecessary use of energy and combustion of CO2. How does this work?
Vacuum cleaner
Let’s look at an example. Ever wonder why your vacuum cleaner gets so hot? Well, most customers believe ‘more power is better’. So, the 2.400 watt vacuumcleaner must be the best one. Well, it is not. A research on vacuum cleaners concluded that ‘some of the 2000 watt-plus vacuumcleaners are for 1.200 watt heaters’. After this study, the EU forced manufacturers to lower the maximum wattage while at the same time demanding better functioning. From 2013, the maximum power was limited to 1.600 watt, from 2017 even to 900 watt. These measures save 23 terrawatthours in 2030. For example, this is enough to light 23 million houses for one year. It is more than two times all the windenergy generated in the Netherlands in 2021 (8,9 terawatthours).
Ecodesign worked out more guidelines and in 2020, which all together saved some 1037 terawatthours of energy. This is more energy than The Netherlands used in 2020 (some 933 TWh).
Sustainable products initiative
The Ecodesign Directive is a success story. Thanks to boring EU-guidelines, the EU emitted 170 megatonnes less CO2 in 2020 (which is more than the total of Dutch CO2-emissions!). As a matter of fact, these ‘boring’ EU’s ecodesign rules, made by a group of dull and grey office workers, could account for one third of reduction EU has targeted ( a 55% greenhouse gas reduction by 2030).
With the recent EU -Sustainable products initiative, EU widenes the Ecodesign Directive to a broader range of goods. They also force the industry to make products durable, repairable, reusable and recyclable.
Miracles
So you see, at Ecodesign, grey office workers work day by day, detail by detail, consistently doing the real work on sustainability in their boring offices. We think they do miracles.
Sources:
Euractiv (1)
Comments? Want to sail with us? Contact us on info@fossilfreearoundtheworld.org