Introductory text

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,

Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

Having regard to Directive 2009/125/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 October 2009 establishing a framework for the setting of ecodesign requirements for energy-related products^f1, and in particular Article 15(1) thereof,

After consulting the Ecodesign Consultation Forum,

Whereas:

Article 16(2) of Directive 2005/32/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council^f2 makes provision for an implementing measure, one of the priority measures being to reduce standby losses for a group of products.

The networked standby electric power consumption of electrical and electronic household and office equipment had been addressed by the technical, environmental and economic study on standby and off mode losses carried out in 2006/07. It concluded that network connectivity was to become a common feature of household and office equipment. The Regulatory Committee on the Ecodesign of Energy-using Products recommended on 21 June 2008 addressing the question of networked standby in a separate process, due to a lack of data at the time.

The Ecodesign Work Plan 2009-11 identified networked standby as one of the priorities. Accordingly, the Commission carried out a preparatory study in 2010/11 which analysed the technical, environmental and economic aspects of networked standby. The study was devised in association with stakeholders and interested parties from the EU and non-member countries, and the results were made publicly available.

The study estimated the power consumption of electrical and electronic household and office equipment products sold in the Community related to conditions providing networked standby to be 54 TWh in 2010, corresponding to 23 Mt CO₂ emissions. If no specific measures are taken, consumption is predicted to increase to 90 TWh in 2020. The conclusion was that electricity consumption related to networked standby can be significantly reduced. The present Regulation should increase the market penetration of technologies yielding improved energy efficiency for networked standby, leading to estimated energy savings of 36 TWh in 2020 and 49 TWh in 2025, compared to a business-as-usual scenario.

In particular, the study found that the power management function that switches equipment into a condition having networked standby when not providing a main function is essential for delivering the potential savings. It is acknowledged that equipment, reactivated by an external or internal trigger, can be in an active mode for a limited period of time independently from its main function(s), e.g. to enable servicing or downloading of software. Power management should ensure that the product returns into a condition having networked standby after having completed the tasks.

The preparatory study concluded that for networked standby a differentiation of requirements along the degree of network availability was needed. To that end, a limited number of HiNA equipment was identified, amongst which router, network switch, wireless network access point, hub and modem whose main function is the processing of network traffic. Since this equipment is expected to react on incoming traffic immediately, the condition having networked standby can be equivalent to the idle mode.

Given that the functionalities in conditions of standby and networked standby are interlinked and the product scope is equivalent, the Ecodesign Consultation Forum supported, on 14 September 2011, the view that the ecodesign requirements regarding networked standby should be set out in an amending act to the existing Commission Regulation (EC) No 1275/2008^f3.

The requirements for standby and off mode, and for networked standby should be reviewed together. Given that the review date laid down in Regulation (EC) No 1275/2008 precedes the entry into force of the first stage of the networked standby requirements, the Regulation review date should be postponed by one year.

Given that televisions which are subject to a product-specific ecodesign implementing measure were exempted from the scope of Regulation (EC) No 1275/2008, ecodesign requirements for television-related networked standby are included in Commission Regulation (EC) No 642/2009^f4. The technical, environmental and economic study on networked standby estimated that the ecodesign requirements for networked standby of televisions would generate estimated savings of 10 TWh by 2020.

For coffee machines, the Ecodesign Consultation Forums^f5 of 16 December 2011 and 18 April 2012 supported the view that a product-specific implementing measure should not be adopted, but that the standby requirements of Regulation (EC) No 1275/2008 should be made more explicit for coffee machines.

This regulation introduces specifications for the application of the power management requirements to coffee machines with regard to the default delay time after which the equipment is automatically switched into standby/off mode.

It can be concluded from the technical, environmental and economic study on household coffee machines, carried out under the Ecodesign Directive, that limiting the delay time after which coffee machines are automatically switched into standby/off mode will result in additional annual savings of more than 2 TWh by 2020. These have not been considered in the savings assumptions for Regulation (EC) No 1275/2008,

HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION: