The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) will no longer hold policy responsibility for the regulation of energy-using products, it has been announced today (3 March).

Instead, the responsibility for this category – which includes the implementation of EU regulations such as the Eco-design Directive of Energy-Related Products (which sets minimum environmental performance standards), and the Energy Labelling of Products Directive – will transfer to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

The Prime Minister has agreed that all of Defra’s work on energy-using products, and the team responsible, will transfer to DECC, effective immediately.

According a Defra spokesperson, the transfer is 'common sense' as work on improving the energy efficiency of energy-using products and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, ‘fits better with the strategic objectives of the Department of Energy and Climate Change’.

In the Prime Minister's written statement to parliament today, David Cameron said: ‘This written ministerial statement confirms that policy responsibility for energy-using products will transfer from the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs to the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

‘This responsibility includes, but is not limited to, the UK’s interests in the TEA Implementing Agreement on Energy Efficient End-use Equipment (4E) and the Super-efficient Deployment Initiative (SEAD); the Eco-design Directive (20091125/EC) and Energy Labelling Directive (2010/30/EU), and the UK regulations which transpose them (SI 2010/2617 and SI 2011/1524, both as amended), and associated market surveillance activities; and the UK’s role as project co-ordinator for the European Ecopliant project.’

Speaking to Resource in response to the news, Phil Harfield, Senior Projects Officer at Ecodesign Centre, said: "There is an urgent need for ecodesign to be applied to all products, not just energy using products, and a lifecycle approachPDF icon needs to be taken.

"The 'end of life' stage of the product will still be sitting with the waste branch in Defra. The intrinsic link between the stages will hopefully be played out in close working relationships between Defra and DECC.

"EDC would like to see material efficiency incorporated in the ecodesign directive in future, in order to make a real impact on climate change."

There have been increasing calls for Defra to have some of its portfolio responsibilities taken away from it. Earlier this year, a group of Conservative MPs, 2020C, voiced its belief that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) should be given responsibility for government’s waste portfolio to help ‘redefine waste’ and make sure it’s seen as a business ‘opportunity, not a liability’.

The call followed on from Defra’s announcement that it will be ‘stepping back’ from waste policy from April 2014 due to budget cuts.

The news of the transfer of responsibilities comes on the same day as environmental think tank Green Alliance released a new report outlining that improving resource use, reuse and product manufacture (such as ecodesign in energy-using products) is the ‘only reliable way’ the UK can protect the economy from resource ‘price shocks’ in future.

Read the Green Alliance report or find out more about the EC’s ecodesign policy.