The prospects for the life-cycle sustainability of fans and ventilation units under the EU’s Ecodesign Regulation

On 30 March 2022 the European Commission published its long-awaited Sustainable Products Package. The core of the Package is the proposal to replace the Ecodesign Directive with an Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, which according to the Commission’s Executive Vice-President for the European Green Deal Frans Timmermans, “will ensure that only the most sustainable products are sold in Europe”.
Whilst expanding ecodesign to cover almost all tangible goods, the Ecodesign Regulation also presents new challenges for manufacturers of the Heating, Ventilation, Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration (HVACR) ‘Energy-related Products’ (ErP), even for those that are familiar with ecodesign requirements, including ENER LOT 11: Fans, and the implementing legislation for products incorporating fans, including GROW LOT 6: Ventilation units, among others. The Ecodesign Regulation will mandate ENER LOT 11, GROW LOT 6, etc to more comprehensively address sustainability objectives beyond the energy efficiency requirements on which the HVACR sector has become familiar under the Ecodesign Directive since 2009.
Indeed, ecodesign requirements will be extended to consider the entire life-cycle environmental impacts of products, from material efficiency, in respect to durability/reparability, to resource efficiency, in the form of recyclability, and the full life-cycle product environmental footprint. Pre-empting the Ecodesign Regulation’s impact EVIA established a Circular Economy/Sustainability Taskforce in 2020 to ensure that the ventilation and fans industry prepares in advance for the implementation of such requirements in ENER LOT 11 and GROW LOT 6.
Whilst engaging with the EU institutions on the proposal itself, the Taskforce is already laying the foundations for technical implementation in revisions of ENER LOT 11 and GROW LOT 6 in the mid-to-late 2020’s. This presentation during the EVIA Fan Forum at Chillventa will present the implications of the Ecodesign Regulation, across multiple linked EU initiatives targeting sustainability, and will discuss the CE/Sustainability Taskforce long-term project to determine product environmental footprint methodologies for ENER LOT 11 and GROW LOT 6 to prepare or the next revision.