The European Commission (EC) has released proposals to help consumers and businesses ‘navigate the green maze’ of environmentally friendly products and organisations.

According to the EC, there is a ‘proliferation of methods for measuring the environmental performance of products and organisations’ (EC data found that there are 62 ‘leading intiative and methods’ on product carbon footprinting and 80 on carbon reporting alone) that can create ‘confusion on the market’ and ‘lead to additional costs for companies trading across borders’.

Indeed, it cites a recent Eurobarometer survey that found that 48 per cent of European consumers were confused by ‘the stream of environmental information they receive’.

Further, the EC notes that due to amount of differing environmental figures on products, it is ‘not possible to compare the results of measurements’.

To help overcome these problems and bring European products under a more aligned system, the EC is now proposing to build a ‘Single Market for Green Products’.

According to the EC, the single market will ‘provide principles for communicating environmental performance, such as transparency, reliability, completeness, comparability and clarity’, as well as promoting greater international cooperation in terms of methodological development and data availability.

New measurement schemes

As part of this proposal, the EC will develop and introduce two schemes to measure environmental performance throughout the lifecycle of a product: the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and the Organisation Environmental Footprint (OEF).

These intend to ‘reduce methodological choices already at the level of the general method’ and see ‘product category and sector-specific rules… developed with the goal of enabling comparison of environmental performances between similar products and companies active in similar sectors’.

A three-year testing period, in which the rules for these schemes will be developed (by ‘volunteers from stakeholder organisations’), will be launched ‘soon’.

It is hoped that member states, companies, private organisations and the financial community will take advantage of the ‘voluntary use of these methods’ to streamline the current environmental information reporting system.

Speaking of the new propsals, EC Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik said: "To boost sustainable growth, we need to make sure that the most resource-efficient and environmentally-friendly products on the market are known and recognisable.

“By giving people reliable and comparable information about the environmental impacts and credentials of products and organisations, we enable them to choose. And by helping companies to align their methods we cut their costs and administrative burdens."

Read more about the Single Market for Green Products.

New boiler standards

The news comes as European politicians voted through new draft efficiency standards for boilers as part of the European Union’s (EU) Ecodesign Directive, potentially allowing for savings of 10 per cent of Europe’s energy consumption by 2020.

According to the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), increased energy efficiency in boilers and water heaters alone could account for 15 per cent of the EU’s goal of improving energy efficiency by 20 per cent by 2020, while research from a recent Ecofys study, found that the Directive could also help European consumers and businesses save €90 billion (£77 billion) per year in savings and reduce EU dependency on gas and coal imports by 23 per cent and 37 per cent respectively.

Under the new standards, from 2015, gas and oil-powered condensing heaters will be limited to a maximum rating of ‘A’ on the boiler efficiency ratings of ‘G’ to ‘A++’.

Subsequently, from 2019, a new ‘A+++’ rating will be introduced. From this point on, only ‘super-efficient’ renewable and co-generation boilers will qualify for any rating of A+ or above. Furthermore, condensing boilers that are currently awarded a green label will have this downgraded to yellow.

Standards will ‘save Europe millions of euros’

Environmentalists have welcomed the adoption of the standards with WWF’s Energy Conservation Policy Officer, Arianna Vitali Roscini telling EurActiv that she was “really happy that this was adopted”.

“This is one of the efficiency measures that really deliver energy consumption reductions, even if it is technically detailed and not so visible”, she said.

Stéphane Arditi, a senior policy officer for the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) and Co-ordinator of the Coolproducts Coalition, wrote on the Coolproducts blog that the ensuing emissions reductions would be ‘massive’, adding that ‘Europe’s energy efficiency targets have received a huge boost thanks to these votes’.

Writing that the standard could reduce Carbon Dioxide emissions by 136 million tonnes a year by 2020 (equivalent to taking almost 65 million cars off EU roads), Arditi added that the Ecodesign regulations ‘are more low-key than more well known climate and energy policies, but…can see its powerful potential to help save us money and the climate.’

However, despite the Directive being established in 2005, it took almost eight years for the new measures on boilers and water heaters to be established.

Speaking to Resourcein January 2013, Arditi, said: “It is simply shameful that after more than seven years’ discussion we still do not have regulation. The whole process needs to be revised. It cannot be that we take seven years to decide regulation for every category.

“Currently, because we have no clear deadlines, every time a stakeholder lodges a protest, there’s a delay as that information is considered. It’s not an effective system. Each time we postpone a decision, it’s estimated as a lost saving of about €50 million a day for European citizens.”

The new Ecodesign Directive text will be reviewed in 2014 and the new boiler standards come into force in 2015.